It seems inevitable on a mountain bike that you are going to crash. Let's face it, if you go off-road you need to be prepared to hit the road. Most of us learned early on that crashing hurts. This happened because when we were kids we pulled some braindead stunt and ended up contacting an immovable object.
My parents had this stupid rule when I was a kid that I could not ride my bike when my parents were not home. This is stupid to a 13 year old that has to ride his bike to school everyday. Believe me, I was the king-BMX- wanna-be star of my own mental universe and I wanted nothing more than to bike my life away.
Wouldn't you know it, the one time I ignored my Mom, I crashed into a parked car and needed stitches in my jaw. I was 50 feet from my house. I had been riding to school for about 5 years and had never incurred a scratch. There I was laying on the ground crying because I knew I had messed up big-time.
After I recovered from the incident (and the damn stitches), my brain somehow decided that crashing wasn't as bad as I had heard it was. Hey, it was a mere 48 hours later and I was on the bike again hammering down the street with the other membdrs of the Future Criminals of America! >From that point on, if I was not on pavement I was not thinking about crashing.
My mother forgot to tell me that crashing would hurt.

Crashing does hurt, but humans learn best from thieir mistakes. Believe it or not, you will learn to handle something that makes you crash a lot faster than if you try to learn something without crashing. (unless you happen to be a professional at which point you "used to" crash) There is more wisdom here than just saying "go break your freakin' neck." You need to learn how to fall.

All those who have landed with thier arms fully extended when launched from a mountian bike, please raise your gravel-filled palms!

When you go down now, you will reflexively assume a position which will certainly break something in the long run. By reflex, we tend to want to push the ground away from us. This is not what we actually do, but we use our arms to handle the ground as it speeds towards our body. To think one can slow the force of a good fall with ones hands and arms is totally silly if you look at it with hindsight. If you were to some way "plan" a fall, you most certainly would want to be relaxed and "roll with it" to get out unscathed. Well, to actually get out of a nasty fall, you need to practice your landings just like you would if flying an airplane.

Proof in your pudding

Step 1: Let yourself fall - do not fight it, do not tense up.

Step 2: Notice what is going on around you:

• What happens to your head? Try to consider where it is. You will find you can fall and "place" it on the ground without whiplash (Actually, I have not been too successful at this.)
• What happens to your arms? Are you trying to stop the fall with extended arms? Try to fall and roll off the bike and into the fall. The roll will give you a fairly safe way to slow down.
• Where are your legs? You need to know when you are going to bail and get off the bike pro-actively. This is where you can make the most mistakes in a corner. You may think the bike is going to go away from you, so you stiffen up, overcompensate, and start to bail when all you had to do was relax and see the thing through. Once you decide to bail, get the hell off. You want to have some control over where you go. This can save rendezvous with trees from occuring.
• Where is the bike? If you are going to bail you do not want to be in the same 3 dimensional space as the bike that tossed you. This can result in a bar in the chest or some other such thrilling impalement. Once you decide to go, get off and get away from the bike. More often than not your chances will be better on your own.
• What is around you? Ever take a crappy line through a turn to avoid a tree? Sometimes the fast line has no room for error. If you slide or miss the exit you may go somewhere where the human body was not intended to go. Know your surroundings. If you see no place to bail, then make sure you are not in a situation that will make you bail. I ride on rock a lot, and I keep the speed down becuase I cannot fall without serious bodily carnage. If you have run-off to each side of the trail, you can take on some speed knowing that you have room to stop after a bail.

Step 3: Learn from your falls

Step 4: Get on the horse that threw you with no emotion.

Four steps to crashing? Is this serious?
Absolutely. Most of the reasons we crash are related to fear. Because we get in some situation and do not have the confidence to deal with it, we 'clutch up' when things go wrong.

Epilogue

Well, what are you really afraid of?
You're not afraid of crashing are you?
My mother forgot to tell me that crashing would hurt.

Flyin Al

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