New to EMTB - Riding Tips

[Coedwig]

I’m new to EMTB having ridden normal MTB for years. Any riding tips from those who have made the switch?

In particular tips for handling the extra weight and different riding characteristics.

Cheers.

 

[Plummet]

Get out there and ride.

Ebiking offroad takes more total body fitness and less cardio. You do far more laps. Maybe 2 to 3 times the distance in half the time so you are working your body harder. Also uphill that used to be about cardio and not working the bike becomes a combo of both.

The answer is to ride and build total body fitness.

Then open your mind to what is possible going up. You now can ride impossible climbs and it no longer mattered how inefficient the uphill downhill combo is. You can change up your ride route considerably. After 30 years of riding the meat bike plotting routes to get the most efficient ups and the best bang for buck downs it takes a while to figure out you can throw that all away and decidantly ride where the f$%k you want.

For technical uphilling look for uphill burms to smash. Use speed and momentum. To ride up and over tech features. Start or on lower power levels when climbing tech trsil then work your way into turbo.

Lastly. Open your mind and try the impossible. I ride up a dried up river bed full of baby head rocks for 2km one time.it was just nuts.

 

[Paulquattro]

Welcome
as above get out and ride you will soon get into the flow .

 

[Coedwig]

Cheers both for the replies. Do you do any other forms of exercise to build body fitness? I find it works my upper body a lot more than I’m used to.

Do you find the riding techniques are different for EMTB?

 

[steve_sordy]

............

Do you find the riding techniques are different for EMTB?

The first one that comes to mind right now is to use mode shifting instead of gear shifting. Steady on, let me explain, I am not talking about becoming a lazy bastard!

When I am climbing and need to change gear to an easier one, but I'm already putting full pressure through the cranks; I will not/cannot shift whilst on full power. I absolutely must back of the pressure a fraction. But if I do that, I just know that I will lose momentum and risk stalling. The answer is to shift to a higher mode. The shift does not require any clashing or crunching of gears and is really smooth. A few seconds later, after I have used the extra torque to accelerate slightly, I can shift to the easier gear and down shift the mode. It takes seconds and becomes second nature very quickly.

 

[Ridescaper]

Get out there and ride.

Ebiking offroad takes more total body fitness and less cardio. You do far more laps. Maybe 2 to 3 times the distance in half the time so you are working your body harder. Also uphill that used to be about cardio and not working the bike becomes a combo of both.

The answer is to ride and build total body fitness.

Then open your mind to what is possible going up. You now can ride impossible climbs and it no longer mattered how inefficient the uphill downhill combo is. You can change up your ride route considerably. After 30 years of riding the meat bike plotting routes to get the most efficient ups and the best bang for buck downs it takes a while to figure out you can throw that all away and decidantly ride where the f$%k you want.

For technical uphilling look for uphill burms to smash. Use speed and momentum. To ride up and over tech features. Start or on lower power levels when climbing tech trsil then work your way into turbo.

Lastly. Open your mind and try the impossible. I ride up a dried up river bed full of baby head rocks for 2km one time.it was just nuts. View attachment 123475

I second that - I feel the lower back doing more work. This summer I did my first group run in Finale with my Turbo Kenevo Expert while the other guys (and the guide) were on Pivot Firebirds. My lower back was "done" by the afternoon.

 

[Plummet]

Cheers both for the replies. Do you do any other forms of exercise to build body fitness? I find it works my upper body a lot more than I’m used to.

Do you find the riding techniques are different for EMTB?

I kitesurf, mountain bike and ebike. I cannot be bothered with gymwork. I just ride. The best form of exercise to improve ebiking is ebiking!

Regarding technique. I use more body english to move the bike around. There's a tone of climbing techniques to learn to get better at technical climbs to time motor power up over the roots etc. Manualling is pretty hard on emtbs so motor induced wheelies replace extended manuals.