When I watch riders at trail centres, the most common technique problem I see is not on drops or jumps or rock gardens. It's in corners. Specifically: riders who are surviving corners rather than attacking them. Upright body position, stiff arms, braking in the corner, looking at the ground immediately in front of the wheel. It costs enormous amounts of time, confidence, and enjoyment — and it's completely fixable.
Good cornering technique is learnable. Not just theoretically learnable — practically, consciously learnable on your next ride if you focus on the right things. This guide gives you the four key changes that transform cornering.
The 4 Mistakes Riders Make in Corners
Inside foot is down / both pedals level
If your inside foot (the foot on the inside of the corner) is down, you're dramatically reducing the cornering traction available to you. The outside pedal should be dropped to 6 o'clock (pointing straight down) and weighted — push your weight through that outside pedal. This lowers your centre of gravity, increases rear wheel traction, and allows you to lean the bike more aggressively without your pedal hitting the ground. This single change will immediately feel different and better.
Looking at the ground in front of the wheel
Your bike goes where your eyes go. If you're looking at the ground 2 metres ahead, you're reacting to the corner rather than riding it. Look through the corner — fix your eyes on the exit point before you reach the apex. Your body will naturally follow your gaze and guide the bike through the correct line. This sounds simple and takes real conscious effort to change. It will feel unnatural for the first few rides. After that it becomes automatic and corners feel completely different.
Braking in the middle of the corner
Braking while cornering causes the tyre to lose its lateral grip — the grip it needs to change direction. Trail bikes have finite traction available, and when you ask tyres to both slow down and change direction simultaneously, you often exceed that traction and the wheel skids or washes out. Brake before the corner to your desired cornering speed, release the brakes (or use only very gentle trailing pressure), and corner clean. This is fundamentally how every motorsport discipline handles corners: slow in, fast out.
Leaning body and bike together like a roadie
Road cyclists lean their entire body and bike as one unit through corners. Mountain bike cornering is different — you lean the bike more than your body, keeping your body relatively upright while the bike leans in. Your outside pedal weighted, outside elbow slightly raised, hips pushed towards the inside. This technique — sometimes called "bike-body separation" — keeps your centre of gravity over the contact patch and gives you far more traction and control than the road bike lean style.
Putting It Together: The Perfect Corner
- Spot the corner: Look ahead to identify the corner and its exit point before you arrive at it
- Brake: Apply brakes before the corner to your target speed. Release brakes as you reach the entry
- Drop the outside pedal: Outside foot to 6 o'clock, weight through it
- Look through: Eyes to the exit of the corner, not the ground in front of your wheel
- Lean the bike: Push the bike into the corner while your body stays relatively upright — bike leans, body less so
- Drive the exit: As you see the exit open up, look further ahead and drive your pedalling
Berms vs Flat Corners
Berms (banked corners): The easiest type of corner to learn on. The banking does a lot of the work for you — enter with speed, trust the berm, drive through the corner, exit on the gas. The biggest mistake in berms is braking mid-corner. Enter fast and trust it.
Off-camber corners: The hardest. The trail slopes away from the inside of the corner (towards the outside drop), which means any loss of traction on the rear wheel sends you immediately over the edge. Outside pedal weighted, smooth not jerky inputs, look through, and don't grab brakes suddenly. Ride these smoothly or not at all.
Loose over hard / dry corners: Common in summer. The dry dust over hard dirt underneath has almost no lateral grip. Enter these slower than you think you need to, weight that outside pedal hard, look through, and let the bike find its own line through the loose material rather than forcing a specific path. Forcing causes washouts; smooth weight distribution lets the tyre clear the loose surface and find grip on the hard layer underneath.
Practice Drill — One Corner, 20 Times
Find a corner on your local trail that you ride regularly. A medium-speed sweeper is ideal. Ride it 20 times in a row, deliberately applying each technique element:
- First 5 times: Only focus on outside pedal. Don't think about anything else. Drop the pedal, weight it.
- Next 5 times: Only focus on looking through the corner. Eyes to the exit.
- Next 5 times: Focus on braking before, not during. Enter the corner with clean speed and no brake input.
- Final 5 times: Put all elements together. Combine everything.
This takes 10–15 minutes. After those 20 repetitions the techniques will be noticeably more automatic. Do this on a different corner next ride. After a month of this kind of focused practice, your cornering will be transformed.
When you ride a corner badly, don't just move on. Go back and ride it again — but slowly. At very slow speed in a corner you can feel exactly where your weight is, whether the outside pedal is down, and whether you're looking through. Slow practice builds the neural pathways that fast practice reinforces. The coaches at bike camps do this with every rider: walk the corner, slow roll it, build speed gradually. It works.
Combined with the drops guide and rock garden guide, mastering cornering gives you the three core skills of trail riding. See all davidmtb technique guides in the blog section.