Static Balance

Balancing at a standstill turns chaos into time. It buys you seconds to choose a line, reset, or help a friend.

Without it, you're forced to keep moving. A Cross Training Enduro video puts the cost plainly: every time you stop and put a foot down, it takes at least a few metres before you're back on the pegs and balanced. Every hesitation becomes a dab, and a dab on a rock step or a steep root section often means the bike falls over, the line is lost and you're pushing. With it, you can stop on top of a rock, look at what's next, and carry on with your feet still on the pegs.

Dirt Bike Magazine's balance feature makes this point about the trials "stuff", where the rider holds the bike still against an obstacle: "This allows you to balance and analyze the obstacle versus being in too much of a hurry and jumping into something over your head." Upshift's Trials School feature says the same about balance generally: it helps with everything from "needing to take a pause on the trail for a second to read an obstacle" to cornering.

Static balance also underpins the harder skills. The Trials Training Center's advice before learning to hop the bike: "If you cannot balance the bike, then you will first need to learn this technique before you even consider trying to learn to hop."

A moving bike balances itself, mostly. A stopped one doesn't. You have to keep your combined weight, and the bike's, over the tyres' contact points, and you do it with tiny corrections.

Bars at full lock. Turning the bars puts the front tyre at an angle to the rear. Now a small movement of the bars moves the front of the bike under you, left or right, so you can catch a lean. Dirt Bike Magazine's instruction for the drill starts with it: "lock your bars and apply pressure to your outside peg, which is the opposite one from the direction you're turning your bars."

Weight on the outside peg. With the bars turned right, weight the left peg, and the reverse. Keep your weight centred front to back over the pegs.

Knees and hips do the work. Stand with your knees bent and apart. Correct a lean with your hips and knees before you reach for the bars. Dirt Bike Magazine: "A quick adjustment of your hips and waist can be all you need." Trials riders exaggerate this: a Dirt Bike Magazine writer at a trials day heard "Knees out!" shouted from the sidelines again and again.

Front brake holds the bike. One finger on the front brake stops the bike rolling. Your right foot can cover the rear brake, unless you may need it off the peg. With the engine running, the clutch and rear brake add another tool. If the bike starts to fall towards the side the bars are turned, a tiny bit of drive against the brake rolls the front wheel back under it. If it falls the other way, drive makes it worse: correct with your hips and knees.

When it starts to go, escalate. Cross Training Enduro's summary gives an order. First, tiny turns of the bars. Then small body movements. Then a leg out as an outrigger. Then slip the clutch to roll forward until you're balanced again, or rock the bike slightly back and forth. Holding the revs up a little adds gyroscopic stability, and low tyre pressures make all of it easier. The outrigger is why Tim Coleman, in a PrimalEnduro lesson, holds the bike with the front brake, not the rear: he may need his right foot off the peg.

Eyes up, breathe. Look at a fixed point a few metres ahead, not down at the front wheel. A relaxed upper body and steady breathing make the corrections smaller. Tense arms turn every correction into a jerk of the bars.

On the trail you rarely balance on flat ground. You balance with the front tyre against a rock or log, or with the bike perched on a ledge. The trials term for pressing the front tyre into an obstacle to hold still is the "stuff".

Dirt Bike Magazine describes it: "I move my weight forward into the front forks while also using the clutch and brakes to hold pressure on the front tire." The fork compresses, the front tyre is pushed into the obstacle and the bike is much more stable than on flat ground. From there the rider can look, choose and go.

Pressure is the key word. The engine pushes the bike forward through the clutch; the brakes stop it moving. As long as that pressure is held, the bike stays put. The rear brake lesson and clutch control teach the two halves.

Wear your boots and riding gear. The first two drills can be done at home, engine off. Upshift's Trials School feature points out that you don't even need to run the bike for them, and that "20 minutes doing this a few times a week will pay dividends in short order".

Short and often beats long and rare. This works at home engine-off for the first half, and anywhere flat for the second.