How to Descend with Confidence on a Road Bike

Cycling Training
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@gosimrr bringing your question about descending here as a new topic. See below for some helpful resources of how to work on descending:

One thing to keep in mind through corners is your center of gravity. You want to lean the bike, but keep your body perpendicular to the ground:

I used the body position shown in the Cinch video last April while descending long and steep mountains and it was great. As you know, I don’t even have hills/climbs at home and therefore am not used to them, but descending was a no brainer.

Give these a try and let us know how it goes.

PS - I have disc brakes and feel more confident with them than rim brakes

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Thank you. These were great visuals. The GCN one was showing descents I don’t think I’ll ever do! :rofl::rofl:. Thank you so much.
Not sure I could get disc breaks on my bike but maybe that’s a reason to get another one? :rofl::thinking:

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Thank you @Coach_Theia! I am terrible at descending especially if it’s rainy or the road looks messy - i will totally check this out!!

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Today I was trying to implement some of the techniques in the videos.
I need to look for videos of descending a straight downhill. The ones here aren’t switchbacks.

I also figured out that I can’t get disc brakes on my current bike as it’s too old. “Oh well”. New bike maybe?

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I’m a very slow, skittish descender. Part of my issue is that my depth perception isn’t great so I can’t always read the road well. I’ve tried some of these tips, and I sit up on the bike when descending to try and catch more wind. A friend told me to look through the turn instead of at the turn and that helps. Disc brakes also help a lot. Pedaling through a descent does help me feel more stable.

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Talk about descending skills, has everyone seen the video of Tom Pidcock in stage 12 of the Tour? Talk about mad skills!

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Oh. My. Good. Did you see how he passed the other rider on the descent? Holy cow!

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I know @gosimrr! It’s bonkers!

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Did you see the TdF today? One rider misjudged the descent. Oooof.

And the road was soooo narrow!

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Oh yeah @gosimrr, saw it and cringed watching him slide across the pavement. That’s got to hurt.

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Oh my about where? I’ve been heads down with work since getting home :confounded: and just now finally watching the end of S11 - I’m ok with spoilers just want to know about where to FF to in order to see it

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You can see it in the stage 16 highlights @PaleGail, but I think it happens on the last long descent of the day, steep, narrow, sharp winding road. The really amazing thing is he gets up, shakes himself off and gets back on his bike to keep going.