The cornering foot position controversy: opinons abound

I’ve been doing my best to draw attention to and foster discussion about the differing opinions among mountain bike instructors about cornering foot position.

It started last Monday with BetterRide Gene Hamilton’s blog post: Mountain Bike Cornering Foot Position Part 1 in which he harshly criticized IMBA ICP co-founder Shaums March’s approach.

Last Friday, IMBA’s ICP Director Tammy Donahue publish a blog post titled: Shaums March Talks About Cornering Technique in response to Gene Hamilton’s criticism.

And today, MTB Strength Training Systems’ James Wilson pointed people to two blog posts he wrote last fall titled More movement tips to help your cornering technique – the importance of switching your feet and not just “dropping your cranks”; and Top 5 Movement Tips to Help Your Cornering Technique.

I started a discussion about it in the MORC forum where it’s generated a very good discussion that’s still going on.   I started two discussions on Facebook, one on my timeline here and another on my Thick Skull MTB Skills page here that drew a response from Shaums March.

 

Griff Wigley, cornering, pedals level Griff Wigley, cornering, outside pedal down

On Saturday, I took a few runs on one of the practice berms at the Lebanon Hills MTB Trails Skills Park, experimenting. My experimentation has me thinking that, given my current level of development, it’s best for me to focus on the lateral hip movement (hip flexion). James Wilson wrote in another post to his blog last fall:

When all else fails focus on shifting the hips laterally and not squatting down or leaning over with the shoulders. When you are doing it right you’ll feel your ribs laying down one by one on top of your inside thigh. Your hips are the driving force behind cornering. When they are moving well then you will corner well, if you’re not cornering well then odds are they are not moving well. Focus on improving how you use them to stay balanced in corners and all the other parts of the technique will come much easier.

And for more on my development, see my MTB Geezer blog post about cornering back in December last year which generated over 100 comments.