My name's Lell Pavey. I am the son of Simon Pavey. Get it over and don't worry, that's how you should know me.
LLel (Guest)
The first thing that I think you need to focus on is really understanding the fundamentals of riding off-road and what those are. For me, it doesn't matter how good you get, whether you're a complete beginner, whether you're like a semi-experienced trail rider maybe you've been doing some green-aiding for a few years or you're a decent enduro rider or you're an elite level enduro rider. The fundamentals are all the same and the better you are at those, the easier that's going to make the task that you're trying to achieve. Those fundamentals for me are your standing position. You really have to understand in the long run not not at the beginning, it's a bit complicated but in the long run you want to try and understand what it is that you're trying to achieve with your body so that if you put your body in the right place, everything else gets easier like it really does. You don't need to be anywhere near as fit. You don't need to be anywhere as near as coordinated or as strong. If you're starting in a good position and finishing in a good position. That can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it right from the nuance of where you put your feet. I've literally just finished editing a mini-tip about this to your hand position and where you're looking and so on. That stuff is super important. Then the other fundamental that's quite important is your clutch control. It doesn't need to be the best clutch control in the world, but to understand what you're trying to do and how to make that happen is really important. Then I would say, a little bit of understanding the same with the brakes, because the three things kind of all go in tandem together and the better you get, the more you're just using those same skills in more complicated ways. They always refer back to really good basic braking technique, really good basic clutch control and really good basic standing position. Once you've got those, it kind of sets you up for success and if you haven't got those, you will just hit a seeding much lower than your athletic potential is going to be, if that makes sense.
I've spent a lot of time teaching at my old man's school as well, so I kind of did more than a decade of teaching there and the primary course they run is a level one course and the first four hours of that course are giving a new rider those fundamentals to make sure that you're starting off in the right direction. If you don't have those. It's a game over. We see it especially at the school. You see it, where people who are experienced riders come. Maybe they've been trail riding for five years, maybe they did a load of motocross when they were a kid and those fundamentals were never explained to them and they don't have them. It's almost like they run into the same problems a new rider does, even though they've got more experience and they can go faster and they understand what the dirt is doing. They still just hit the same limit.
Even if you take that to someone like myself like I never made it to the elite pro level. I was too lazy and unfit and also my fundamentals weren't quite good enough and as I've got older they've got better that's always kind of your limit, if that makes sense. Like even when you watch the very, very best pro riders, you can get extremely good with kind of mildly janky fundamentals. Like you're kind of nearly there but not quite there. If you start to understand what you're looking at, you'll see it in like supercross, where some of the best riders in the world still have technique holes and it punishes them all the time and the ones that don't have those technique holes are the ones that really make it look effortless. It's an interesting thing. So for me that's the absolute first thing understand the fundamentals of standing position, clutch, control and brakes, and when you get those then you can go a long way.
Clive (Host)
Do you show drills for practicing and getting clutch control right?
LLel (Guest)
Yep, there's some really good drills for it, some really simple ones actually, and this will kind of lead into the second point, and I've made a few mini tip Mondays on this over the years and actually these ones tend to be the least popular ones because they're not flashy and exciting, but they're the ones that let you do the flashy and exciting stuff. I'd say there's kind of two clutch control drills that I find to be really, really helpful at basic level. The first one is I didn't actually come up with this, I think I can't remember who came up with it, but they teach it at off road skills on the level two, foundation course and upwards. Basically you learn to pull away on any bike with no throttle in a high gear On a GS like you can start that in third gear. That's where we start.
So you take someone, put them on a bike, put it in third gear and pull away without using the throttle at all, no throttle and then learn to ride around a really basic course using the clutch and gears with no throttle uphill, downhill, changing gears, no throttle ever. And then learn to do it in fourth gear and fifth gear and sixth gear, and what it teaches you is that most clutch control is about learning to be incredibly patient with the clutch and also learning to separate your body movement from what your left finger is doing so that you can hold the clutch in one place and keep it there for a long, extended period of time. It's the foundation for doing incredibly difficult hill starts, which leads into much more difficult things like super difficult uphills and learning to be explosive and hop the bike and lift the bike and all of those things all come from that one foundation of being patient with the clutch and separating your body movement from what your fingers are doing.
Clive (Host)
You said one finger. Do you use one or two fingers? I did the trials school a few weeks ago and that was one finger clutch, one finger break all the time.
LLel (Guest)
It depends a little bit on the bike but I would say and it depends how hard I need to pull on the handlebars I say most of the time I ride with one finger. Yeah, If the clutch is really heavy or like you're a bit tired maybe I use two. But also depends on your forearm strength. Right, you are both pretty big dudes and I'm like a big dude and I've got quite big hands. So for me using one finger is not difficult. If you have smaller hands or your clutch is a bit heavy, for you too is no problem.
But I think sometimes a bit counter intuitive when you've learned to ride on the road, especially in Europe, like the way they teach us to ride on the road, is to use four fingers. But the problem you have with that is separate. Like I said about separating your body movement from your clutch control. That's really difficult using four fingers. As humans, when we panic, our reaction is to grab. It's a really primal thing. It comes from being a monkey falling out of a tree. I think If you fall you grab with a lot of force, and the same thing happens on a dirt bike. And if you can't separate using the clutch from your panic reaction that creates a problem at some point, earlier than you think as well. Probably the first time you get stuck on a hill and you should stop, but you pull the clutch in and go backwards at a rapid rate. I don't know if any of you have tried to ride backwards, but that's a really. That's an advanced thing to do, not a beginner thing to do.
Noel (Co-host)
And that exercise, that is, that that's done at tick over or just at low revs, yeah, absolutely, Absolutely Just no flop at all.
LLel (Guest)
Yeah, and it's going to change depending on the bike and the amount of torque and the amount of flywheel it's got. But for sure, even on like a two stroke dirt bike, you can do that in a higher gear than you think. You just have to learn that patience, learn what's going on. I said two, but I think it's one of three clutch control jerals that I kind of have taught over the years. That I think are really really incredible tools for rapidly leveling up your understanding of how a clutch works. The other one is hill starts. But instead of doing hill starts off the break, like we're taught when we go and do your road school stuff Like that's how I was shown when I went and did it on a road school was to come off the back break. But actually when you ride difficult enduro stuff, I think if you look at most extreme enduro riders and most good enduro riders, no one's coming off the back break to do a hill start because you need an understanding of where the grip level is. So you learn to do it by holding the bike on the clutch first. So you're using the clutch and the throttle and to go from that position requires a lot of patience as well. They kind of link together. So we teach the same thing on the off road school.
A lot of hill start work because it's super, super good for your clutch control. It just teaches you that patience in such a literal way, because when you do it well, you ride up the hill and the wheel doesn't spin, and when you do it wrong, you either stall or you will spin, and so you have that immediate feedback. That's a really good drill for that Like you can practice that yourself. It doesn't need to be a particularly steep hill. Just go and find something that's like slightly steeper than you think is comfortable and practice. How far can you ride backwards? Which way are we facing now?
Noel (Co-host)
Well, just facing forward, but just coasting down a hill.
LLel (Guest)
I'm not particularly good at that. I'd say like one in 10 times. I can probably do like five meters one in five times. But you know, I don't know if you saw like the best guy I know this is Neil Hawker, the guy that was doing the demos on the BMW stand. He is like unbelievable at this. I mean every school for the last seven years he has practiced it on every bike he's put away. He is relentless with it. But as a result he is now very, very good at that, like consistently, can ride 20 or 30 meters backwards. He's got really good control of it. He knows exactly how to do it time and time again. It's really impressive to watch. But it's impressive, I think, only if you know it's difficult. He does it at the show every year and no one cares, like no one notices. And then he does like a burnout and everyone's like whoa, that's so cool.
LLel (Guest)
But obviously you're steering and your balance is all reversed, it's fucking pointless. It has become one of those skills that as I've got better at it. It is pointless, but I use it all the time. Whenever there's a bank to turn around on, I have a go because I can.
Noel (Co-host)
I don't think it's pointless. I can imagine a scenario where you want to almost do some static balance to look at something and maybe reposition yourself by moving backwards slightly.
Clive (Host)
Yeah, there's that case whereby a lot of people they get stuck on a hill climb. Actually, what they should be doing should just be rolling backwards until you find somewhere with traction that's not got a rock in your way.
Noel (Co-host)
So how cool would it be to do that with your feet up.
LLel (Guest)
Yeah, it would look. I mean, anyone there would be super impressed, and that's all that matters is your five mates on the hill, isn't it?
Clive (Host)
We talked about fundamentals Once we've practiced those, and we continue to practice these things forever right. It's not as if you just do it like Neil with his reverse riding. It's something you can always improve on and keep plugging away at and doing more and more often, as you remember to try it.
LLel (Guest)
I think that is my second point. Oh fuck, sorry I've spoiled it for you now. No, no, you've segwayed so beautifully into it, it's like we planned it.
I was driving home earlier and I was literally thinking about these things. What would they be? No, so I think that's a really important part, because I've thought about this quite a lot over the years, because occasionally you meet someone who's been trail riding for 35 years and not in a mean way, but they're still a bit shit. No, I kind of always try to understand how that happens really, and the conclusion I've come to is that when you go out and you just ride for fun and there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this, like the whole point of riding motorcycles is for fun but when you just go and ride for fun and you're not thinking about what you're doing or why you're doing it, or putting any purposeful practice, the rate of progression is quite slow really, and it depends a bit on who you are as a person. Some of us are much more analytical than others. But that kind of points back to the problem of if you want to get better, I think you really need to be quite purposeful with what you're trying to do, and it doesn't mean you can't go out just trail riding and have a good time, but sometimes it's a really good thing to add in a specific skill, whether it's working on making sure that your riding position is as good as it can be and you're balanced and you're trying to understand what's going on, or if it's focusing on how you break, or focusing on how you use the clutch, or trying to learn to lift the front wheel, by having some element of deliberate, purposeful practice and if you really want to actually get good quickly, dedicating some time to it on a regular basis, of getting a pack of sports cones from SportsDirect or, if you live in a non-UK country, decathlon and going and using the drills that people are making great videos about on the internet to good effect. There are some wonderful drills that can really help you, whether they're on my channel or some of the other YouTube channels that make incredible tutorial videos. There's a few I watch because they're better at what I want to be better at than I am, and they figured out ways to teach these things, and sometimes the way I teach something might not work for you.
There's so many options, but that point of going and being deliberate with your practice is something that I think a huge quantity of people miss. They'll go and do a training school and they'll pay 500 quid for it and they'll get all these great lessons and all this great knowledge and then they'll just do nothing with that for another year until they do the next training school. If that's what you want to do, crack on. There's no judgment. But if you actually want to make progress you have to practice. For me that was the biggest upskill in my own riding is when I put time into riding around cones because I was teaching other people to do it and actually going and practicing on my own on my dirt bike, riding around in circles in the woods until I got better at riding around that circle. It may be a bit boring, but the end result is that you put in a little bit of graph there. You get much more enjoyment out of riding your bike in the long run because you can do more with it.
Noel (Co-host)
I mean, you've never done that and not seen results, have you? So of course it works. Yeah, exactly yeah. Just as a slight aside, do you have days where you're really on it and everything seems to work really well and other days where it doesn't seem to pull into?
LLel (Guest)
place? Yeah, 100%. Some days you get on a bike and maybe the stars have been the wrong color at night or I don't know, you had a few too many beers and you just cannot ride a motorcycle like you, just feel like shite. I think that's just the natural law of things, and some days you get on it and your brain is a bit quicker and your movement is a bit better, and maybe you had a stretch of four weeks ago and that's still helping. I don't know what it is, but some days you just have that, don't you? You get on a bike and you feel like God's gift to earth, definitely.
Noel (Co-host)
Yeah, I can never walk out, whether it's because I'm thinking about it too much or not thinking about it enough, or my tire pressure's different, no me either.
LLel (Guest)
Yeah, no me either. I mean the more you do, the more you kind of start to separate your own riding from like the bike, for example, because I've done a lot of bike testing over the years, I kind of practiced in a good level of feel. So I kind of know whether the sag is off or the tire pressures are off or whatever, just mostly by feel, not always, but mostly by feel. So then I really know that it's me, that's a bit sh** and not a bike, which I don't know if that's a good thing or not. At least sometimes, if you have the doubt, it can make you feel better about yourself.
Clive (Host)
I often find that just relaxing helps an awful lot. Just to sort of position yourself on the bike and just kind of set yourself down a little bit, to just kind of relax and, as often as going with the bike, letting the bike do its thing underneath you, isn't it really? And bouncing on top of the bike rather than holding on for grim death.
LLel (Guest)
100% Like learning to not over input. The bike is a really important part. I didn't come up with it, but one of the instructors at the school always says wheels around and if you let them do their thing they'll just roll over them. It's kind of a good thing, like when you're touching the handlebars heavy all the time and you're inputting it. You're upsetting the bike and, yeah, it's a recipe for disaster. The softer and gentler you can be with it, the better, for sure.
Clive (Host)
I mean, I've been trail riding now for 20 years or whatever, and I just remember going out trail riding. Initially I'd come back absolutely exhausted, completely boosted. But now, well, I'm a lot older so I'm still fairly knackered. But you just get better at it, don't you really? It's that whole thing about using momentum is massively important on getting up hills, and I think a lot of that because I've not really had any proper training comes with years and years of experience. But part of the reason of talking to you is, well, let's cut out those 15 years of wasted shit riding and take some advice and do some practice. Trials day a few weeks ago was absolutely phenomenal. For me made a massive difference. Who was that way? Trials day they're down in near leak. Stu Day is the guy that runs it. We had a guy called Ian Gorton there on the podcast a few weeks ago. Absolutely brilliant.
LLel (Guest)
Yeah, I did a taster with him at a gas gas event last year and I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot really quickly. I never rode trials and there's some differences in technique and differences in the way you think about stuff and for me it's like you have to kind of change not so much the leaning and the balance, is more just the detail with the foot pegs, how he kind of teaches it versus how, like I come from a much more traditional enduro motocross style background in how you move on the bike and how you control it and I think for the most part that works really well on adventure bikes. But there's some parts where trials, technique being slightly different, is super helpful. It was quite interesting to learn that really and to make some progress and hear that different opinion and kind of go back to almost being a bit of a beginner.
27:56
Do you know? And go. Okay, I need to rethink about this and listen to what this dude's saying, because he's way better than me. Did it grab you? Would you want to do more of it? Absolutely. So I actually looked into doing a bit more where I live. Trials is not that accessible exactly where I live in the country, which is a bit strange.
28:10
A lot of the UK there's areas where you can join a trials club and they have like a dedicated area you can go and ride and it's pennies and there's lots of competitions, but strangely, in this little area adores it? It doesn't seem to be anything that close. I haven't found anything, so, but yeah, absolutely. I think trials is. Do you know the bit? That's surprising, especially from coming from riding bikes in a quicker manner, like I grew up riding enduro, and enduro is, even though it's slow and technical, it's really about going as fast as you can. I really enjoyed riding around a flat piece of ground at one mile an hour. Like I had just as much fun is a different kind of fun, but I had just as much fun as I had on the motocross track at that gas gas event. I think there's a lot to be said for that as well. Right, like, if you've got a flat piece of ground, you can have a huge amount of fun on a seven horsepower 125 trials bike. Did you guys enjoy it as well?
29:00 - Noel (Co-host)
Well, this is why I have one all the time really, because it's kind of my. Probably ride it more in the winter time. It's my little when the roads get gritted and it all gets a bit horrible to ride at speed and cold wind. It's quite nice just to get the trial bike out, pop out onto the estate.
29:12 - LLel (Guest)
What kind of estate do you live on? Council estate or country estate?
29:16 - Clive (Host)
So the trials bike or is a serum? What's the next skill or thing we need to think about?
29:24 - LLel (Guest)
The next one is a little bit more introspective and I think it's a little bit to do with your own ego, which is a much more philosophical, psychological conversation. In my experience of like myself over the years and my own overinflated ego and then teaching other people that the people who are the kindest to themselves but also managed to put their own egos in their back pocket and take in what's being said and take critique well and not have high expectations of themselves to be something, those are the people that have the most fun and then learn the quickest, and the two go hand in hand. I think that's kind of quite an important thing. I had this a lot myself. When I've tried to learn other sports, I part of my own self identity was always being like vaguely decent of things. Like I was pretty good at football as a kid and I was pretty good on a motorbike as a kid not amazing, but like decent and that was kind of my thing was like, oh yeah, if I do a sport, I'm like decent at it.
30:13
Eventually you kind of realize that, yeah, you have a moment in your life where I think I had a moment in my life where I was like I need to just drop that because it's actually getting in the way. Like my desire to be good quickly is ruining how fun this should be and actually I should just enjoy it a bit more was mostly my girlfriend that kind of pointed out to me. She was like you're being a dick, stop being a dick. I was like, okay, I'll do that and it's been much better since.
30:35
But as a result like I even in my own dirt bike riding like for me that makes a really big difference because I don't care whether I'm fast or not fast, as long as I'm having a good time, then I'm having a good time and I'm probably going to get better and I that's what I've seen at the school as well is when someone turns up and their identity is attached to being super good at stuff, they're having a hard time, or they don't want to listen or they just want to go fast and do skids.
30:58
They might start out quite good because they're brave and they're full of bravado, but their progression is really stunted and quite often you see it where the they end up the worst person in the group after two days when they started out as the best. So if you can kind of find it in yourself to be a little bit self aware. I know it's like a really odd thing to say, but if you can find it to be a bit self aware, I find it helps massively with how much enjoyment you have and how quickly you learn.
31:22 - Clive (Host)
Are you recognizing any of yourself in this now?
31:24 - Noel (Co-host)
I think I'm quite good at taking instruction, because I do consider myself to be probably quite shit. Probably agree, I'd be very nervous to go out for a ride with you because I imagine you'd be behind me a little going oh Jesus, oh Jesus. I've been doing stuff that we might have talked about this before. That probably works for me, but it's not that great. When you were saying before Clive, about getting tired, you know, I still find myself going up quite extended climbs and thinking, oh, my arms are killing me and I'm pulling on the handlebars, my position's all wrong and I'm not in a relaxed position on the bike and probably in the wrong place on the bike.
31:57 - Clive (Host)
I think if Lell was behind you, you'd see what all of us see and that the image that's only been recently shattered Now we all wear comms Noel is an incredibly good, incredibly smooth rider recently following him with confidence.
32:16 - LLel (Guest)
Are you a talker when you're riding?
32:18 - Noel (Co-host)
No, not really, but there's a lot of.
32:21 - LLel (Guest)
I have quite a hard time talking if I'm concentrating. I can only do one or the other. I can have a chat or I can ride and concentrate, but the two don't mix.
32:31 - Clive (Host)
But I actually recognize myself in what you've just said a younger version of myself because I was so fucking desperate to be good at this, because I loved it so much. It was all seemed to be about going fast and being the quickest, and I think that's completely changed now with with age and I'm probably a much better rider for it as well. Now I've come round to Noel's perspective. Really I don't really want to go out with people certainly not on the trails that want to go fast, because it's just not the place to do it really.
32:56 - LLel (Guest)
I totally agree and also like for me, like you just said, I ended up a better rider because I stopped caring so much, like even now I don't go racing very often anymore and I definitely don't have the fitness to ride a three hour race at race pace without putting in some work. But when I go riding like my results have been better because I don't care if the guy in front of me is faster, like I don't try so hard, I just enjoy it for what it is. It's a day out on my bike, I'm having a great time riding with some friends. I might fall off, I might do a jump.
33:26 - Clive (Host)
It's going to be great, it's interesting when we go out with people that haven't ridden or are fairly new to riding and they'll worry about oh God, you know, I'm going to be a bit slow, I'm going to be a bit shit, we don't fucking care, you know, as long as you have a good time, let us go in front so we can film you falling off and then we can laugh about it on the fourth coffee stop that day.
33:43 - LLel (Guest)
Now I am 100% on the same page. Like I will ride with anyone of any ability. I don't care. It's not what it's about, Is it for me? It's about like riding a motorbike is super fun regardless, and doing it with other people is a great experience. Ability is kind of not the reason to go out riding. Really. Is it Like if I want to go fast and do something difficult, I'll go and do a race. If you just want to go trail riding, I'll ride with anyone.
34:07 - Clive (Host)
It's still going to be fun, isn't it? Yeah, also hurts less when you fall off if you're going slower Usually.
34:14 - LLel (Guest)
Sometimes depends a little bit, doesn't it?
34:15 - Noel (Co-host)
Have you always seen more of that ego with men more than women?
34:20 - LLel (Guest)
100%. Yeah, occasionally you get it with women, but I don't want to oversimplify this. But normally I've found that if women have an ego when you're teaching them, it's much more like inwards than outwards, like they're much harder on themselves rather than not listening to what you're saying. With men, like I think this is probably quite a documented thing. If you put a group of seven men together and like there's some primal instinct for someone to want to be at the top of that group and assert some authority, like that's going to happen a little bit, because you also see the dynamic change a lot. If you have six men and a woman, it just changes the whole dynamic of the group. It's pretty fascinating to watch.
35:00 - Noel (Co-host)
In what way? What does it do?
35:01 - LLel (Guest)
It softens the whole group off massively. Men's behavior changes completely as soon as you introduce a woman into that teaching environment. Generally I find that ego shrinks a little bit. Maybe other people have got a different experience, but that's been my experience anyway. When you have a group of women that are learning together, they're all much more supportive of each other outwardly, so Like they try to help each other along. They're chuffed for each other when it goes well, whereas I think until a group of guys know each other well, that doesn't happen. Once they know each other well, or there's someone in that group that creates that dynamic, it can happen, but it doesn't just happen, naturally. Does that make sense? It sounds like you guys have got it where, like if one of you gets up a hill, you'll all have a bit of a joke and laugh about the others being shit, but actually you're all just chuffed for each other that you're having a good time.
35:48 - Clive (Host)
No, we're not there. No, we're fucking near there.
35:51 - Noel (Co-host)
Bloody women. They're just nicer, aren't they Far better people than?
35:54 - Clive (Host)
we are.
35:55 - Noel (Co-host)
Far better people.
35:57 - LLel (Guest)
You guys are really cute. How long have you been together?
36:01 - Clive (Host)
I'm sure some people think we do actually live together. We had a break. Once we had a break. I'd love to do one of those more common wise skits where we're actually in bed together with our helmets on, or something like that.
36:12 - LLel (Guest)
So that's kind of a big one really, the ego thing.
36:19 - Clive (Host)
Before we get onto point number four, I'll give you a little chance to think about what it is. If you haven't already. I just wanted to tell you what your most popular instructional videos were on YouTube, if you don't already know the most popular one in fact, the most popular there's the same one with Can I ever?
36:34 - LLel (Guest)
guess it. Go on then. Yeah, go on, I'll have a guess. I think U-turns and U-tests.
36:38 - Clive (Host)
U-turns, turning in tight places and spin turns Isn't it ridiculous.
36:44
And that's like 750,000 views plus the other two as well. So there's probably a million views on how to do a U-turn. What do you put that down to? People want to learn how to do fucking U-turns. I haven't finished yet shut up, so the other ones you've done. Five essentials Just work for the UN. Five essentials one is like the second most popular standing sitting looking footpegs and counterbalance anywhere your sunglasses, gravel corners, a brake slide turn tips for shorties I think I've renamed that myself and then one tip to change your riding forever, and that was the two finger on the clutch thing. So there you go.
37:22 - LLel (Guest)
I'd say. Actually, some of those are quite fundamental things, which is it's interesting, because Most of those videos are actually solvable by mastering those fundamentals that I kind of mentioned, or not mastering, but getting pretty good at those. In the first point, which is kind of interesting, that people want to learn the I don't know how to word this really but people are trying to get to an end goal without knowing. It's like a bit of a Mr Miyagi thing you need to learn to wax a car before you can defend the shot, and it's the same kind of thing really. And I think that's kind of my fourth point. Then, really, if you don't know what those fundamentals are, I think a really good shortcut to getting there is to go to a good school. It's not a magic bullet, but if you can afford to going and doing a course with someone who clearly has a good structured lesson plan, has good ways of teaching, is articulate and excites you, go and do that because it will shortcut you.
38:20
In my experience of this stuff, it's much harder to learn this stuff on your own by watching videos and trying to be introspective about yourself than it is to go and ride in front of someone else who knows what they're doing, knows what to look for, knows how to correct those mistakes quickly and efficiently. It's kind of like a 10x on your progress. Otherwise you'll spend weeks and weeks and weeks riding around trying to figure this stuff out and going out and doing these YouTube videos on your own and you'll make progress, but it just won't be as quick. So if you have in the UK it's about 500 quid, isn't it? To do a two-day school wherever you go? But go and do one of the good ones.
38:55
The BMW Offroad Skills one, no, but the same. Chris Birch's one is great. The Yamaha one is good. Who else would be a good school? The stew day one, I'm sure for you guys, for your trials riding, I'm sure that was an immediate level up. He puts you in the right position, he explains to you how the footpegs work, he gets your clutch control better, and then you do two hours with him and you're like, holy shit, I've learned so much and I feel so confident. When I started on this I felt like Bambi and I think that's one of those things that in life, if you can afford to, well-structured training by someone who's been doing it a while and knows what they're doing is a really good investment in your time, if you can afford it. If you can't, then watch YouTube videos.
39:36 - Clive (Host)
I think the key is there, that well-structured thing, because you can go somewhere and they can kind of put you on a bike and go try riding up there. He'll see how you get on and I'll give you some tips afterwards. But I think what was great about the stew day thing and we've talked about this at length, so I won't go on it for too long but properly structured, building one lesson onto the next, and it was a remarkable day. Well, we were only there for four hours. It was incredible.
39:59 - LLel (Guest)
When I think that format, if you go to a school that has that format and I think with stew, what I experienced is he's clearly a person that cares quite a lot about finding the right method to teach you the thing he wants to teach you. It's one of the things that I think is quite special about my old man's place is the same thing. There's a bunch of instructors there, myself included, who really cared about finding the best way to teach you the thing we were trying to teach you and to make sure that we were understanding that to the really best level that we could so that we could teach it well. Because there's a lot of old tropes in riding technique that don't actually help you solve the problem. Things like stand up straight or put your elbows up. They're kind of a bit too reductive, they don't really solve the problem. And if you can find a place where they do solve that problem and they have that layer upon layer thing, you learn quickly.
40:50
But also I think it protects your confidence a lot, because I'm sure you had it with stew because you're not overstepping what you're capable of and you have the previous foundations. It's just like climbing a set of stairs and you might get scared a few times, but you're not shattering your confidence because he's taken you to a hill that you absolutely cannot write down without nearly dying. Some people are fine with that and they revel in that experience, but in my experience, more people are not. That person Do you know? That person is the kind of person who's like I'm going to go skydiving when they're 12, but they were the person who's hanging upside down from a tree. They are the people that generally don't need as much instruction because they've figured it out, because they have done so much of it already, whereas if you're not that person, I think protecting your confidence is really important to your long-term enjoyment of it as well. Perfect.
41:35 - Clive (Host)
So have you got one more.
41:36 - LLel (Guest)
I do have one more, yeah.
41:37 - Clive (Host)
I'll ask you the question again in a minute, and then I've got five different scenarios which we can maybe just kind of give like 30 seconds do this, this and this.
41:46 - LLel (Guest)
Are you telling me to talk for less time? No, not at all.
41:49 - Clive (Host)
No, no, no if there's more to it, because this has been, this is really good. It's far better than I thought it was going to be, to be honest. Thank you, you're doing well. You don't like it now?
42:00 - Noel (Co-host)
Well, I was saying how do you have to say this is very worth taking, that this is way better than I thought it would?
42:05 - LLel (Guest)
be. I'm like such a naturally like my mindset is everything that I see is like the glass half full. So you said that and I was like that's great, I'm so pleased.
42:15 - Clive (Host)
That's the way I meant it.
42:17 - LLel (Guest)
You could give me a half a pint of shit and I'd be like that's half a pint of not shit. That's the way my brain works. So I think the fifth one and this is quite a common idea that people have and I've totally been guilty of this myself in other sports is this idea that I'm not good, so I shouldn't have good equipment until I'm good. I don't need it, and it's actually it's pretty counterintuitive, I think when you're, when you're a beginner at any sport, having poor performing equipment is much more difficult for you than it is for a good rider. If I get on a dirt bike and the suspension isn't great, I have enough knowledge not the best knowledge, but enough knowledge to ride around that problem and still ride pretty quickly and still make that bike do mostly what I want it to do. Maybe it's not as good as it could be, but I can probably still jump a pretty decent sized jump, probably still ride over a pretty decent sized log, mostly with like a good understanding of what's going on. But when you're a beginner, you have do not have the skill, the balance, the timing or the knowledge base to ride around those problems. So if you have shit tires, if you're sag on your bike, whatever it is, whether it's a GS or a Sierra 300, if that's wrong, it will be really hard to go around a corner. It will be really unstable. If it's wrong the wrong way, if your handlebars are in a bad place, if your levers are pointed in different directions, if your brakes don't work, all of those things just make your life so much harder. And it's such a common thing that I hear people say I don't need to do that because I won't tell the difference. It doesn't matter if you can tell the difference. If your bike's shit, it's still shit just because you don't know.
43:58
I would say that, like it's worth just paying a little bit of attention to your bike setup and making sure that you've done as much as you can do. I made a really simple video about the five things that you should do with a new bike, just to make sure it's perfect and to give you the best starting place Until you've got more of a knowledge base and you fiddle and you learn the feeling you might not be able to take it beyond that, but at least you're starting from a place where your bike is working as good as you can get it working and then when you start learning, that process is going to be much easier because you're not fighting the equipment. That includes being careful not to put crutches on your bike to solve problems that are problems in your technique. A good example of this for me is bar risers. Like there's nothing wrong with bar risers in the right situation for the right reason, but don't put them on because your riding position is bad.
44:49
If you're five foot nine, you definitely don't need bar risers on almost any bike. Maybe on a Sierra 300L they could go up 10 mil Maybe, but you definitely don't need them. You can definitely ride that bike very well and very comfortably without them if you're in the right position. It's the same on all bikes. I would say almost all bikes can be ridden in a good position if you learn that good position without them Now. If you want them in the long run, that's fine. But don't whack 30 mil bar risers on and then wonder why you keep washing the front wheel or wonder why your balance is off all the time and you get thrown around a lot. You'll be too upright. So there's a little bit of that as well, where you've got to be careful not to throw mechanical solutions at physiological problems. Those are two really unnecessarily big words to describe that. That's my last one. Make sure your bike is set up well. Don't push it on it. It doesn't need until you know that you actually want it.
45:41 - Clive (Host)
Same with musical instruments. If you've got a cheap guitar, you generally have high actions, almost impossible for anybody to play, let alone a kid. Same with brass instruments, which I'm very familiar with. Now I've got a slightly better one than I started off with and it's so much easier to play.
45:56 - LLel (Guest)
There's a balance of that where I'm not saying you need to go and buy a KTM 690 years. Your first bike, a Sierra 300L, is a great bike. You don't need a high performing thing, you need the thing you have to be performing well. There's a difference there, right? The 300L is a good example. The rear shock is really soft in standard trim, which means that the sag is always too much for anyone who's more than 75 kilos. And if the sag is too much, it makes it hard to stand up properly because the whole bike is leaning backwards and it means it won't turn, so it's going to climb out of rut. It's going to feel awful in corners If you put any luggage on it. It's going to handle badly for anyone. But if you just put a stiffer spring in there for 70 quid and set the sag with a tape measure, I guarantee it's better for everyone.
46:43 - Noel (Co-host)
You're a big bar riser guy, aren't you, clive? You've got massive bar risers on bikes, and I think I do the same. And I think I do the same without really thinking about it, but I'm 6'2".
46:53 - Clive (Host)
I basically like to get a comfortable standing position when I get on any bike. I feel like I'm almost 90 degrees bending over.
47:02 - LLel (Guest)
It depends a bit on what you're doing with that bike as well. But if you were at the extreme end and you were racing a dirt bike, even at six foot two, I would never use bar risers because that bending at 90 degrees it's uncomfortable on a long trail, which I agree, it's not comfortable. But that is a much more stable position, which is why you see tall guys really hinged at the hips and quite bent over. If you go back and watch like old footage of David Knight, he was a super big guy and he always ran really low handlebars. If you're trying to go really fast, that low position is very stable. I agree with you. In terms of going trail riding on a dirt bike, it's pretty uncomfortable because it's quite an extreme position. It's designed to be so. There's always a bit of a balance with that as well. That's why adventure bikes have more upright riding positions, because it is more comfortable. I don't need to be riding my GS like I'm racing Dakar, like it's just not. It's a different sport right.
48:01 - Clive (Host)
I like to be able to stand to attention, just in case I hear the national anthem.
48:06 - LLel (Guest)
Technically, I'm Australian, so you're going to say something rude about me now. No good. Just a quick check before we move on from bar risers, because I know this will trigger my dad if he listens to it how tall are your bar risers?
48:20 - Clive (Host)
The ones I had on my KTM were pretty tall. These ones are, I think are, just 20mm.
48:24 - Noel (Co-host)
I've got fat bars on. So there's like a converter rocker thing that inadvertently almost raises them just in a regular yoke to take these fat bars. But I probably am just sort of standing up looking for a comfortable position if I'm standing up for long periods of time on a big European trail ride.
48:39 - LLel (Guest)
I think there's nothing wrong with that, because even if you go and look at actual rally bikes, the gap between the handlebars and the foot pegs is much more than it is on a dirt bike. It does affect the handling and the way they handle, but the gap is much more because if you have to ride a thousand kilometres in a day, being completely bent at the hips all day is going to ruin your back like it just is. There's a balance there for sure, and there's no hard rules either. You've got to find what works for you a little bit.
49:06 - Noel (Co-host)
I definitely need to look into it more, because I am very haphazard about setting a bike up. I pretty much just do it so that it.
49:10 - LLel (Guest)
We could do a podcast about that In life, one. We could mic ourselves up and do it in real life.
49:16 - Clive (Host)
That sounds like a video though.
49:17 - LLel (Guest)
Yeah, we can do a video, let's do it.
49:23 - Clive (Host)
So I've got five different scenarios. If you would Imagine yourself, I'd like to paint a picture. You've joined Nolah 9, the Lake District. Heading out onto the trails, there's some rocky, steep ascent, steep descents. There's water crossings, there's ruts, deep gravel. There's everything that a day's trail riding in the UK can throw at you. We've just come off the Windermere ferry, we're heading towards Greysdale and the first trail we meet. I'm just making this shit up as I go along. I'm going to run out of steam eventually.
49:52
First trail we go, you know, the one from Nol heading up to the Fox. Quite a steep, quite a rocky ascent. How should you approach that?
50:00 - LLel (Guest)
First off, what bike are we riding?
50:01 - Clive (Host)
Very much. Everybody that listens to this podcast either rides a CRF or a GS and they're not taking the GS up Greysdale to the Fox.
50:10 - LLel (Guest)
If we're talking kind of a CRF 300L. Firstly, you need to make sure you start off these things in a good position to deal with the acceleration you need. If you're stood square in the middle of the bike and then you accelerate, you're going to fall backwards. You need a little bit of like lean into it. You mentioned it earlier. Some momentum is super helpful, but I think there's a sweet spot with momentum as well where you have to be mindful of how much your brain can process.
50:32
In a hill like that, where it sounds like you can't really get away with stopping so easily, you don't want to be stopping on it. You have to find the sweet spot for your brain where you can attack that hill with some good momentum, but not so fast that your brain can't keep up and you shut off, because the moment you shut off it's hard to recover the speed you've lost again. So you want to be nice and smooth and moving at a pace your brain can process. Look medium far ahead in general this is another point that's part of your fundamentals is where you look. Generally I try to scan the trail so that I know what's coming. I don't know if there's any rock steps, but in a lot of rocky hills you kind of sometimes get some rock steps or a big slab rock. You need to know those are coming before you get there, but you don't just want to stare at them blindly and hope that you miss all of the other obstacles in between. So we're doing a bit of scanning there.
51:21 - Noel (Co-host)
This is such a huge part of trail riding that people don't talk about much, and that's picking lines. It's so crucial, isn't it? I've tried up that particular track that Clive's talking about very, very slowly, probably slower. I always try not to be in front because I know I'm going to ride it slower than other people because I'll always be in first gear, probably in fairly high revs, but I'll always be picking the line. I'm obsessed with picking the right line and not getting into a silly situation.
51:41 - Clive (Host)
It's like that thing, isn't it? Having a plan is all well and good until you get punched in the face. You can pick your line as much as you like, but your bike is going to take you somewhere else nine times out of 10 there. No, I disagree with that.
51:52 - Noel (Co-host)
So much of it. I think it's about getting as good at picking that line, isn't it?
51:55 - LLel (Guest)
It totally is, and I think you've touched on something really important that changes as you get better. It kind of circles back to the thing I said about learning to be patient with the clutch. Once you learn to be patient with the clutch, you can also learn to be a bit more patient with the throttle, because you stop that situation where you engage wheel spin by accident or you stall by accident because you have the skills to ride through that. Once you have those, the next phase is to learn to ride uphill as slowly as possible. He's actually one of the next mini tip Monday that I'm filming is a drill on this. My old man's school we teach it on, I think, level two and level three.
52:30
It's the key to unlocking going up really difficult hills, because the moment you can slow down and pick your line and then generate drive where there wasn't any before, you suddenly open up a whole world that you didn't have because you have time, and you have the time and the patience to be able to get up stuff. Before you have that, you have to just work with the momentum and the speed that your brain can process things at. What's probably happened to you there as well. Noel, I think your brain has sped up and your ability to ride slower has got better. The two when they start to meet is when you can be really deliberate and pick the line up a hill. You see this at the most extreme end, with extreme enduro, because the guys that are the best at this are unbelievable at riding incredibly slowly up incredibly difficult things and then generating the speed to get over the thing that can't be ridden up slowly. It's almost incomprehensible how good they are at this. It's just that at the top end, really You've stopped at the fox.
53:23 - Clive (Host)
you've taken your photographs, which are obligatory once you reach the top of Grisdale, and the next thing is I think you should tell people what the fox is. The fox is this huge wooden sculpture. I think there's a bit of a sculpture trail in Grisdale Forest.
53:36 - Noel (Co-host)
Yes, there is yeah.
53:37 - Clive (Host)
So it's part of the sculpture trail and it's this massive, eight foot long wooden sculpture of a fox. That's why it's called the fox. So what goes up has to come down. Then quite a steep, rocky, boulder strewn descent down to the visitor centre Nice, which you do on the way back up, which turns into a steep uphill.
53:56 - Noel (Co-host)
Baby head size boulders.
53:58 - Clive (Host)
Yeah, top tips for descending tricky things.
54:01 - LLel (Guest)
There's two good rules with downhills. For me, the first is that if you're going down you're going to get to the bottom, so we're good. The second is, if in doubt, flat out Obviously those are both jokes. No, I would say again a little bit the fundamental. So you start with your riding position. Make sure that that's good. When you're going downhill you don't want too much weight on your arms. So that means you need your hinge at the hips, you want your butt back a little bit and you want your heels down. And doing those two things puts the weight a bit more on your hamstrings. Your hamstrings is a nice big muscle. You'll probably feel it unless you stretch them a lot. So you'll know when they're working and that kind of takes the weight off the handlebars. It gives you a little bit of latitude to let the handlebars move a bit more over those baby head boulders.
54:45
The second thing is how we use the brakes. So I think braking pressure on the levers both of them should be quite constant. You don't want it coming on and off in an aggressive motion. It's not a digital thing, it's analog and we can apply smooth pressure. Braking is constant and it's over time. If you want to stop. You just add a tiny bit more pressure and you give it more time and you will stop. The same goes for slowing down. So what happens on those kind of loose heels is that you have to come off the brakes a little bit. So we have to start to look at the ground, choose our line carefully, to choose the bits where it's obvious that you can slow down more. Maybe you have a good bit of ground that's nice and smooth. You can do a bit more slowing down there so that when you come onto the loose ground you can gain a little bit of speed. And it's not the end of the world. Those are probably my three things your vision, how you brake and your body position.
55:32 - Noel (Co-host)
Are you thinking about weighting the front wheel in that scenario to sort of get some more grip on the front tyre?
55:37 - LLel (Guest)
Not, really you're already heading downhill anyway. There's enough grip there. If you were really really pushing to get some grip into the front wheel, you might put some pressure through the handlebars. But generally if you're just trying to get down a hill like that, I would say probably not. You probably just want to try and keep them as loose as possible. It's a bit situation-dependent, but for the most part it's a basic rule. Not so much.
55:57 - Clive (Host)
I know he listens. That question was for our friend Andy Hill, who I've seen get off and walk down really steep hills.
56:04 - LLel (Guest)
The last bit we're down to is not to ignore the gearbox. The gearbox is a really good safety net. It depends on the hill and your comfort and your brain speed and everything. But the gears are a really good way to slow down If you run into that situation where you're like, oh shit, I can't stop here. All right, it gets a bit scary, but most bikes have a maximum speed in first gear. We teach this on the school as well, but on a GS, the maximum speed on a 1250 GS in first gear is like 12 miles an hour. Obviously, sometimes 12 miles an hour feels horrendously fast, but it is only 12 miles an hour. So on a CRF 300 L it's going to be even slower. You can use that engine braking to your advantage. You can make a mistake with the front wheel or you need to come off the brakes. You can use that engine braking to keep things in check a little bit.
56:43 - Clive (Host)
And you're standing upright heading downhill.
56:45 - LLel (Guest)
Yeah, generally that's the one place where I would stand up more than I would anywhere else, like on a 300 L going uphill. You mentioned it before that sometimes you feel like you're holding on going uphill, but on a little bike, enduro bike, trail bike, not an adventure bike the position sometimes you have and it's more advantageous to sit down because you can accelerate easier when you're sat down than when. If you're in a good position sat down, then you can stood up, but going downhill it's kind of the opposite. You really need your balance dialed in, you need to be quite separate from the bike to let it move and to be far back. So unless the hill is super steep and beyond your ability, I would try to be stood up.
57:23 - Clive (Host)
And, of course, when you're going down those big rock steps as well, you need to get your ass right over the back wheel to stop yourself from. Well, ideally you're kind of wheelie over it, wouldn't you? You're in stable level, but if you have to roll over a massive rock step, get your ass over the back wheel.
57:38 - LLel (Guest)
Yeah, and normally further than you think. I think is a golden rule is that you think you're far back, but you're probably not. Heels down and get your ass back some more. Where are we going next?
57:47 - Clive (Host)
You've got to the bottom of the fox. At the other end you're at the Greysdale Visage Centre. You're turning left and you're kind of heading off to some farm tracks. Now some lovely lanes, but there's a couple of them that are fairly heavily rutted. Fucking ruts. Everybody hates ruts. How do you ride fucking ruts?
58:05 - LLel (Guest)
So I have got a great video on this. Actually, not to plug my own stuff here, ruts are relatively simple at a basic level and then you just need time, time and time and time. But the first thing, your body position is really really critical in ruts. You need your toes tucked in. That is a non-negotiable, unless you want your toe to meet your heel at some point or them to replace each other. I've seen it happen. It's not pretty. Please tuck your toes in. You want your weight sunk a little bit through your heels of your boots so that it sets your body position. Well, there's much more detailed explanations of this in videos or if you go and do a course with someone, they'll probably explain this more than we've got time for here, but get your body position right.
58:41
Loose on the handlebars. The most important thing in ruts, after your body position, is how we use the throttle. So when we accelerate on a bike, the rear end squats and when you decelerate, the weight transfers to the front wheel. So every time you chop the throttle on and then off, you change how the bike handles and it will make it want to climb out of ruts and turn, and it's a really bad thing. So the goal is to try to be as smooth and as constant as you can through a rut. Not accelerating, not decelerating, just finding a pace where your brain can keep up with what's going on and just brrrr all the time. That single note, exhaust, constant. That is a game changer for your rut riding. The better you get, the faster you can do that. But it's always still the same technique Always constant, smooth, drive through the rut. And then we talked about it before a little bit.
59:34
Where you look is also quite important. If you can pick your vision up, even just like a meter or two, it makes a massive difference to your personal balance and it will change your experience with rats. That thing I talked about before of how quickly you can process what's going on is also really important with rats. So when you're starting to learn, there's so much input through the bike and so much you're trying to keep in charge of. If you go Too fast your brain just cannot keep up. So you have to go slower and as you get better that will obviously grow. And the last thing I would say is you have to cover the clutch in ruts because it you get out of jail card the moment you make a mistake. If you pull the clutch in, you can save the situation. But if you don't pull the clutch in and you're on a bike that's driving forwards and you're off balance, your orders gonna happen is you're gonna drive your face slowly into the ground and your mates are gonna laugh at you and you're gonna get covered in mud.
01:00:22 - Noel (Co-host)
You think dragging the butt brake helps at all? Does that stabilize it in that situation?
01:00:27 - LLel (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, you can. I say a little bit more of an advanced thing depends on where you're at with your level, but for sure I do that the moment it always goes to shit is when the front wheel seems to catch and you can't correct.
01:00:38 - Noel (Co-host)
Yes, correct that. I've had the most success riding in ruts when I put my weight way back on my XR I, if my Carves are touching the luggage rack, you know, and I'm really leaning back. That's when I can correct slight mistakes with the front wheel. If it catches, there doesn't seem to be too much weight on it.
01:00:53 - LLel (Guest)
But I think you don't want to be too off balance. If that makes sense, there's a sweet spot. The one other thing I would say and this is quite a this is quite an advanced thing it takes a little bit of time to get your head around when you have that situation where the front catches. Especially, it's easier in the UK because a lot of time our ruts are wet. If you can turn into the rut, so say you're riding along and the left side starts to grab, if you can turn the handlebars into that, it pushes the bike back into the middle. That is not something that's gonna happen the first time you think about this.
01:01:18 - Noel (Co-host)
That sounds really counter-intuitive.
01:01:21 - LLel (Guest)
It totally is and it definitely took me like a few years to get my head around it, but it definitely works. Now there's a limit of riding a GS down a wet rut on 50 50 adventure tires. That's not gonna work like it's nearly impossible. But riding a CR 300 L or an XR with a dirt bike tire on the front, 100% it works. It takes a bit of time and practice, but now that I've said it to you, you've got a whole winter to practice riding down wet ruts in the Lake District.
01:01:49 - Noel (Co-host)
In the on the TET in northern France there's loads of tracks. Where tract has been through it so many times, you know that this sort of a kind of ten inches deep and then they get covered in grass. They're the worst ones out there.
01:01:59 - LLel (Guest)
The ones where you don't even know if you're in a rut or not, you're just riding in deep grass that might be a rough, yeah, might not be a rut.
01:02:05 - Noel (Co-host)
You just don't know.
01:02:06 - LLel (Guest)
Yeah, that's a riffing.
01:02:08 - Noel (Co-host)
That's a tricky one to give advice on, isn't it really? Because you're pretty much riding in the dark. I can't as long as you pray at the start of those tracks, I think you're right if you or just ride behind someone and see and get engage, it put a feeler gauge rider out in front.
01:02:21 - LLel (Guest)
We've done three lanes. So far Is there anymore.
01:02:24 - Clive (Host)
There's loads. I've got 120 miles to do been really wet. Actually it's the Lake District, it's the West part in England. You've got through the rutty section. You've done alright if you've used some skills. You've got these new skills in place. Now You're kind of nearing the end of the ride. You've reached the Tarnhors section part on horse. Is there's a really I think you'll find.
01:02:42 - Noel (Co-host)
It's Tarnhours. What's this, tarnhors? Where's that?
01:02:45 - Clive (Host)
Nobody says Tarnhors, that I've heard.
01:02:47 - Noel (Co-host)
I've never heard anyone call it Tarnhors.
01:02:49 - Clive (Host)
It's not as if you've lived here your whole life. Anyway, Tarnhours is beautiful. It is a beautiful part of the Lake District, yeah fantastic view of Langdale Pikes and things. But part of the track there is they've chucked loads and loads of gravel on it To fill in some of the bomb holes.
01:03:04 - LLel (Guest)
So you're riding through foot-deep gravel and I'm kind of thinking gravel, mud, sand or similar sort of very Similar and I would say, if you can ride a wet rut, well the principles of riding sand, the feeling is different, but the technique is very similar. Wait a little bit further back. But a lot of the attitude of the bike is determined by the throttle. So body position good, heels down, but a little bit further back. Constant drive, not accelerating, not decelerating, if you can avoid it, just that nice constant drive sets the attitude of the bike a little bit towards the rear wheel. Take some weight off the front wheel. Good vision, light on the handlebars, you're not worrying too much about where the front wheel goes.
01:03:47
The difference with like your deep gravel or your sand is you don't Want that front wheel to dig in too much. So then you use the back brake a little bit more for the slowing down. Because when you slow down with the back brake you pull the rear of the bike down rather than pulling the front down with the front brake. So it's kind of the one difference. When you go to like a deep gravel or or a sand over like a hard pack Ground, you don't want to load the front wheel because it'll just tuck, it's not. You can't use the front brake, it's just that the back brake becomes important for holding that attitude of the bike. So even if you're gonna use the front brake, if you use the back brake slightly before it, you pull the back of the bike down first, you don't get that weight transfer and then you look like prime Dakar, prime Jeffrey Hurlings, just absolutely rip in through Tarn Horses.
01:04:34 - Clive (Host)
Now you're having a big day out there, thank you. Thank you for that last one. You're having a big day out because you've decided you've done your loop in the in the Lake District. You've decided you're gonna cross back over Windermere and you're gonna go and do breast high. It has been raining, as we all know. To get to breast high there's a fairly big river crossing you have to do and it's quite bouldery, it's quite slippy, it's quite deep. What's the best way to approach a water crossing.
01:04:58 - LLel (Guest)
I generally find the faster you hit that, the it's gonna go for you. Just make sure your mate is there with a and and a bottle of oil.
01:05:10 - Clive (Host)
I think he's joking again, folks.
01:05:11 - LLel (Guest)
Yeah, I am, and I would say that that's the most common mistake I see with anyone who's new to off-road riding is that there's a connection between water, where humans seem to think of the moment they can't see. They should go faster, but I think with rivers I don't know if either of you ever drowned a bike.
01:05:28 - Clive (Host)
No, of course not no, no, idiots Ouch.
01:05:34 - LLel (Guest)
My suggestion would be if you can make it through your entire riding career without you or one of your mates drowning a bike in the Middle of nowhere, I would do that because it is shit like there is no better word for it is a crap Experience. First of you need to make sure that the river is actually rideable. So if you know it or someone with you knows it, great. If you don't know it, walk it 100%, even if you're gonna get wet feet. If you pick a fast-flowing river that's knee deep, that can be a really bad situation, like you doesn't need to be particularly deep for it to be really dangerous To really mess your day up. I drowned a bike in a river that was just over knee deep once and it was a really shit day in my life.
01:06:09 - Noel (Co-host)
It was a really long ride home and it was cold and wet. Do you absolutely stick to that? Do you do that every time?
01:06:13 - LLel (Guest)
If I look at a river and I'm like I can see the bottom of it and I'm pretty confident I can ride across it, then no. But if I get to a river and I don't know it and it looks quick or it looks deep, I will 100% check. It just is not worth the risk, especially you know it's not so bad in the UK. But if you are adventure riding somewhere in one of the remote parts of the country or somewhere else in the world, it can be hours and hours to get help. It's not a situation you want to find yourself in. It seems funny. But then also when the big ends go on your bike six months later, yeah, that's also not particularly funny. So it's a bit of a killjoy because rivers are wicked, but you've got me a bit careful with them.
Once you know that you can ride across it, the first rule is deciding whether you're going to do it stood up or sat down. I think this comes down a little bit to your, your own skill level and knowing whether you can Get your feet down if you make a mistake. Say, you ride over a boulder and it moves under the front wheel. That's a very difficult situation for anyone to ride out without having a dab. So you need to know in yourself that you're confident You're gonna get that foot down and even if it's a bit loose under foot, you're gonna be able to stop and kind of solve the problem. If you're five foot two, that is definitely gonna be harder for you than if you're six foot two. So you've got to take that into consideration a little bit.
Noel (Co-host)
You're saying there's no hard and fast rule on this. You're saying no, I think it's like you're on what the river crossings line?
LLel (Guest)
Yeah, yeah a hundred percent, yeah, because I think you have to take into like account, though, those real-world situations. When would you say?
down when the river is on the limit of my ability. So if I'm unsure of what's in the bottom, if I can see it super loose and rocky, then I will paddle through and again that's a whole nother little can of worms. But like learning to paddle a bike super well, is is another skill that is so worth learning, especially if you're not as tall. You have to learn that a little bit quicker because you can't get away with it. And then I'd say the last rule is really learning to just ride at a pace where you can deal with the consequences of what's going on. If you're going through in second year with some throttle, it's probably too quick. If the bottom of it is like loose and rocky, because you just won't have the ability to like, I wouldn't have the ability to deal with the consequences of riding over a big boulder. I didn't see. You know. If I can see it coming, it's a different story, but if you can't see it coming, that's a. It's a really difficult skill to have. So you're carrying too much speed. It's just it's a recipe for you to be swimming. Ride slowly, choose carefully whether you stand up or you paddle, and don't don't be afraid if it is a big river To have someone help you walk it across. You know to walk with you.
We did a video in Iceland a few years ago with my girlfriend and there was a group of ten of us. It did like an organized trip with a friend of mine in that video, like there's not a single river crossing. We didn't all have people in the rivers to get those bikes across and you always had one person riding. Those rivers are they're not very deep, but they're super, super fast and quite regularly there's a 50 foot waterfall just around the corner. The consequence of it's really high. So you just don't take that risk. And it looks kind of goofy because there's five. You stood in a river Helping each other across by guarantee this. Some of those rivers I never would have got across without those five people. I got no problem being like we need to help each other across here and solve that problem. Now you go and watch a video of Chris Birch riding through a river if it's real sketchy, he'll be sat down as well and walking. He did one. I think it's called see to summit and there's a there's a clip in that of him and his mate helping each other across the river. This is Chris Birch. Like the man knows how to ride a motorbike. When the river gets janky, he's not afraid to ask for a bit of help to get himself across it.
Clive (Host)
Yeah, and he won the award, didn't he? At the trailer and adventure motorbike awards last year for the best instructional video series.
LLel (Guest)
Nice yeah, Well, you know we'll fix it next year.
Clive (Host)
Don't worry that you win something.
LLel (Guest)
Oh, my ego just so much.
Clive (Host)
I just wanted to finish with one of your tips I use almost every time I'm out on my motorbike, and that's the one is how to push your bike. And it's so simple and so fucking obvious, and yet I've never done it before until I watched one of your videos. And that's basically if you need to push your bike, leave it in, tick over and just use the clutch To ride it along so much easier, I think in that video.
LLel (Guest)
I actually do a forward crossing in that video as well. It's a good example. Like you know, we're talking about big people and small people. But if you're a little person and you have a hard time paddling and you're on a big bike, there's nothing wrong with getting off that bike and walking it across that river and using that technique of I think yeah, absolutely, yeah. And if you need someone else to just be there to check that they're going to catch you on the other side if you lose your balance or whatever, then do it. But the more you practice it, the better you get at it. Then, like, I think you mentioned math earlier, but he uses that all the time because he's not such a tall guy and he rides Like one of the tallest adventure bikes ever made. So like he has to use that a lot and I think he's got quite good at it because of that.
