MTB Strategies to Deal with Limited Processing Speed and/or Limited Band Width.
Regardless of your skill level, 2 of the biggest limiters you have as a rider are PROCESSING SPEED and BANDWIDTH. A lot is going on that you need to pay attention to – trail surface, speed, what’s about to happen, where you are going, the skill/s you are going to use to get there, etc.
If you can’t process the trail info quick enough or one task takes up a lot of bandwidth, it limits you (by overwhelming you). When bandwidth or processing speed gets overloaded, it creates anxiety, stiffens you up, wastes energy, and causes you to ride at less than your best.
While riding have you ever felt that things were happening too fast? Been overwhelmed on the trail?
Why do some riders descend much faster than you with more control? More skill!
But what skill/s is it that the faster rider possesses? He/she has better processing skills and better bandwidth management.
These are two big skills that allow you to ride faster while feeling the same or less fear!
Wow, that sounds awesome! Riding faster with less fear? Tell me more!
Remember the 100 units of traction concept from my previous article on how traction limits you? MTB Strategies to Deal with Things That Limit You On Trail.
Well, we can apply the same concept to BANDWIDTH. If setting up your braking points and entering into a corner is taking up 90 units of bandwidth you only have 10 units left for the rest of the corner.
If you can improve your processing skills you may be able to only use 50 units of bandwidth setting up that corner giving you another 50 units to process the corner itself and your exit of the corner.
Strategies to help with limited processing speed and limited bandwidth involve improving your RIDING VISION, something I spend a lot of time teaching in my skills courses.
- Limit the amount of bandwidth required. Often you are paying attention to too much. You’re basically riding in a 6” path. Even through a 12-foot wide rock garden, your path doesn’t suddenly change 90 degrees.
So, do your best to focus on the line you want to take and discard/don’t pay attention to things on either side of your path. That cliff 18” to the left sure is dangerous but paying attention to it isn’t going to help you!
Pro tip: If you can’t stop paying attention to that cliff 18 inches to your left, get off your bike and walk. You aren’t confident enough to ride this section of trail to the best of your ability, yet! Make a baby step plan to work your way up to riding a trail with that much exposure, or decide the risk/reward isn’t worth it and always walk that exposed section so you can enjoy your ride and worry less.
- Look much further ahead. Most riders feel that they are doing a good job looking ahead but they simply aren’t. You should be looking a minimum of 3 seconds ahead but 4-8 seconds is optimal – depending on speed and trail conditions.
Looking 4 seconds ahead you have 33% more processing time than when looking 3 seconds ahead and 100% more processing time than looking 2 seconds ahead.
As I age and my processing speed is slowing down this has become even more important.
- Train your eyes/brain what to pay attention to and what to discard. When you are new to mountain biking, your eyes pick up every possible obstacle, even the ones your bike will easily roll over. As you learn what your bike is capable of (and what you are capable of as you improve) you start focusing less on every trail imperfection. Focus only on where you want to go and anything big enough to stop you. Those little rocks don’t matter anymore.
Your full-suspension 27.5 or 29er will easily roll over rocks that might have slowed you down or stopped you on your old 26” wheeled hardtail. Plus, you’ve probably gotten quite a bit smoother over the years, have you updated your line choice to reflect those improvements?
- Stop and practice line choice so you can make decisions quicker. Is it faster and/or more economical to go straight, up and over those three rocks or to go around them?
The more you experiment the better you’ll understand how to “pick a line” and less bandwidth will be required to pick a line on the fly.
Can you see how all of this ties into my previous article on traction limiters? The better you get at braking, power modulation, weight shifts, and timing in general, the less bandwidth needs freeing up. That bandwidth can be used for more important things like line selection and what is going to happen next.
This is a great way to analyze your riding. What is limiting you? Play a little video in your head of your last ride. Where did you make mistakes? Well did you feel that things didn’t “flow” as they should have?
What limited your corner speed? Vision? Cornering technique? Poor line choice? Breaking too late?
Use that analysis to create better strategies and have more fun and success on the trail.
Please share this article with anyone you think may benefit and feel free to call or e-mail with any questions.
Thanks and create your best ride yet,
Gene
I relaxed, saw the line I wanted to take, found my balance and went through the section very controlled – it was great!
Hi Gene. Do you reckon watching pov footage could help with practicing any visual skills?
Hi Simon,
Yes, it could help you. The way I like to use pov footage is to check my imagery (visualization) of a race track. I’ll visualize my run and time my visualization and then compare it to my pov. Did I get every section right? Did I miss anything? Was I faster or slower in my imagery?
Or, if you were talking about vision skills, as looking ahead, looking where you should be looking you can use pov for that too. Watch the pov and ask yourself if you remember seeing the reference points in the pov during your run. Pov cameras are so wide angled that they aren’t great for checking if you were looking ahead where you should of been. You can be looking down but the camera will make it appear that you are looking further ahead of where you actually were looking. And vice versa, there was an urban downhill video where the racers camera was pointing down and it made the track look much scarier than it actually was (because it looked like he had only milliseconds to react. It was a great video to show someone what looking down while riding does to you though!
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Gene