Straight ARMS FOR LEVERAGE

This is a concept that comes up often as you begin to develop more control in braking and cornering. You may have heard the idea that “getting low” on the bike adds more weight to the front wheel.

Yes or No?

In practice, it’s NOT quite that simple.

Adding weight—and therefore grip—to the tyres isn’t really about getting low. It’s about how effectively you transfer your body weight into the bike.

 

How Weight Is Transferred

A simple way to understand this is to step off the bike for a moment.

Lean against a table, or get into a press-up position with your arms straight. You’ll immediately feel a large amount of your body weight pressing through your hands. Your boney skeleton is doing most of the work, allowing that weight to transfer efficiently into the ground.

Now bend your arms and lower your chest.

You’ll notice two things:

Less weight is pressing into your hands
Your arms are working much harder

Instead of transferring weight into the ground, your arms are now absorbing it.

 

How This Applies on the Bike

The same principle applies when you’re riding.

- When your arms are relatively straight, you can transfer weight through your hands, into the handlebars, through the fork, and into the front tyre.

- When your arms are bent, less weight reaches the handlebars. More of your weight stays over your feet, and your arms begin to absorb rather than transfer force.

 

Resisting vs Absorbing

This leads to a key idea:

You cannot brace, push, and absorb at the same time.

You are always doing one or the other.

Strong, extended limbs = driving or resisting forces
Bent limbs = absorbing forces

Both are essential—but they serve different purposes.

You resist when braking
You drive when pushing into a corner
You drive when pumping terrain
You absorb when skipping across rough terrain

Good riding is about knowing when to switch between them.

 

Why This Matters in Cornering

To create grip in a turn, you need to apply pressure into the tyres—particularly the front tyre. One of the most effective ways to do this is by standing taller on the bike with more extended arms. 

This gives you forward leverage.

 

Understanding Leverage

Think of a simple lever.

The further away you apply force from the pivot point, the more leverage you have. That’s why you pull a brake lever from the end, not near the hinge. It is the same on the bike, a higher centre of mass gives you more leverage over the tyre and improves steering, grip, and confidence—especially as you initiate the turn.

When you ride very low with bent arms, more of your effort goes into holding your position and absorbing movement, rather than driving pressure into the bike.

So while getting low is useful for absorbing terrain, a slightly taller position gives you better leverage to create grip. Note, there are exceptions to this rule! IN rough corners it may be necessary to stay lower to absorb the holes/bumps, and in high speed corners a lower C.O.M will aid in feeling more stable.

 

Adding Side-to-Side Leverage

Up to now, we’ve been talking about front-to-back leverage—how you load the front tyre.

In corners, there is also side-to-side leverage.

As you lean the bike—using a question mark and counter-steering—you begin to load the tyres from the side as well as vertically.

When your feet are level in a corner, your high C.O.M is shared between both feet and sits higher above the bike. This creates a dynamic system that allows quick adjustments and smooth direction changes, but with less direct pressure into one side of the tyre.

 

When you learn to drop the outside foot later in the series, your C.OM sits lower and toward the outside of the bike. Instead of balancing over the tyres, you are now driving your weight directly into the outside contact patch.

This creates stronger leverage into the ground and allows the bike to lean further underneath you, engaging the side knobs more effectively and increasing grip—especially in flat or loose turns.

You can think of it like this:

Forward position = leverage into the front tyre
Outside foot = leverage into the side of the tyre

When combined, they give you maximum control and traction.

 

Bringing It Together

So while getting low has its place—particularly for absorbing rough terrain—a slightly taller, more extended position allows you to transfer weight into the bike more effectively.

As you progress, you begin to combine:

Forward pressure through your hands
Side-to-side leverage through your feet
Correct line choice and timing through counter-steering

This is what creates grip and control through a corner and we work through it piece by piece as we move through the series. It is recommended you refer back regularly to the The MTB Skills™ Method Pathway to see which skills ou feel you have mastered and if you are ready to jump into the next skill.