The Top Three Essential Bike-Handling Skills
This post continues our series on A Beginner’s Guide to Bike Safety. Today we cover three essential bike handling skills that will keep you safe, and enhance your enjoyment of riding.
These bike handling skills are essential whether you are riding on a multi-use path with other bicyclists, or on a road with cars. After you know how to balance and steer, these top three bike handling skills will serve you well.
Essential Bike Handling Skill #1: Starting and Stopping
It sounds simple, but do you know the best way to start and stop on your bike? Many people don’t.
If you’re only starting out from in front of your house and rolling through stop signs in your neighborhood, not knowing the best way to start and stop might not be a problem. But what about when you get out on a trail and interact with others, or when you get to a stop sign and actually must stop for a motorist who got there first?
If you’re on the road at a red light, knowing the best way to start lets you move out faster when the light turns green. Confidence in your stopping and starting is an essential first step.
The commonly recommended start is the “power pedal” start, which CyclingSavvy Instructor and author John Allen describes in this post. Besides being the most stable way to start, it’s the only method I know of that works on an uphill grade.
Best Way to Start
Stand over your bike. On most bikes, if you can sit on the saddle while standing over your bike, the saddle is too low. If you create or have a free Savvy Cyclist membership, look for the excellent one-minute video on starting and stopping, which includes a visual demonstration of proper saddle height.
You must create an account at CyclingSavvy — at the “Free” level or higher — to watch this video, and all the useful videos in the free Essentials Short Course.
While you are standing over your bike, use the top of your foot to move one pedal to a “two-o’clock” position — but no higher than your bike’s down tube. This is the “Power Pedal” position.
With one foot in the “Power Pedal” position, your hands will be lightly holding your brakes. When you’re ready to start, you’ll perform three maneuvers at the same time. As you release the brakes, you’ll use your foot to start your “Power Pedal,” and you’ll lift your butt gently onto the saddle.
Best Way to Stop
Take one foot off the pedal, put the other pedal down to the lowest “6 -clock” position, brake gently, and slide forward off the saddle, landing on the foot you took off the pedal.
Once you’re logged in to CyclingSavvy (with your free Savvy Cyclist or any membership), watch the one-minute video titled “Starting and Stopping.” This visual demonstration will speak a thousand words.
For a deep dive on this subject, see this article on Sheldon Brown’s website.
Essential Bike Handling Skill #2: Riding in a Straight Line
Do you wobble? You can practice holding a straight line in a lined parking lot, following a parking line. You’ll find it’s actually easier the faster you go.
Why is this important? Riding in a straight line is more predictable. Wobbling around makes it harder for you to control your bike. It also makes others on the road or path with you nervous, because they don’t know what you’re going to do.
Once you are okay with straight-line riding, practice riding with one hand, using the other to make a hand signal, maybe ring your bell or pick up and put back your water bottle, if you have those things.
Essential Bike Handling Skill #3: Turning Your Head
This is key to your safety and confidence, because obviously you must be able to see what’s going on behind you before you change your line of travel. Even with a mirror, a head turn is essential, for a couple of reasons.
Mirrors have blind spots. Also, looking over your shoulder serves as communication. A shoulder check allows you to confirm that you have the attention of drivers (or path users) behind you. You let them know that you are aware of them, and alert them that you may be about to do something different.
Whether on a road or on a path, look back. Don’t rely on a mirror.
Turning your head without swerving can be hard to do. Maybe that’s a reason many cyclists don’t do it. Practice makes perfect!
Different people look back in different ways. It also depends on the geometry of the bike. Like most physical actions, looking back is hard to describe, and it mostly just takes practice. Here are some ways you can practice, to see what works best for you:
- Keep both hands on the handlebar, and attend to keeping your arms straight.
- Mentally counteract the temptation to swerve left by imagining steering slightly to the right, without actually doing it.
- Whichever shoulder you are looking over, take your hand off that handlebar and place it on your thigh. (If you are looking over your left shoulder, you’d take your left hand off the handlebar.)
- Instead of simply rotating your head left, lean it a bit forward and down while looking back. This works especially well with road bike geometry, when you’re already leaning forward. Some road cyclists riding in an extreme aerodynamic position even look under their armpits!
- However you do it, you’ll be more stable and perhaps able to concentrate better if you stop pedaling momentarily.
As with other straight-line riding, you can practice this in a parking lot, riding along the lines. In class, we make it fun by having pairs of students ride one behind the other. The one in back holds up a certain number of fingers, and the one in front has to look back and tell the other how many fingers. Try it with a friend!
You’ll usually be looking behind to the left, but you may sometimes also need to look to the right, so practice that, too.
And onward…
Next: we’ll move on to a couple of skills which build on the basics: braking and cornering.
Excellent article John! Since I have more of a mountain bike background, I have never used a mirror. While I’m fine with road riders who use mirrors, I constantly scan my surroundings and know where I am positioned in relation to pedestrians, traffic, and other riders. I develop a sense of where I am and where others are around me. Scan your surroundings regularly. As a mountain biker, I know the importance of looking ahead also.
Having a motorcycling background as well, when changing lanes I’ll check my mirrors, turn my head and look in the direction I want to move, check my mirrors again, and execute the lane change if it’s safe to do so. I never rely on mirrors alone.
When on a road bike, I’ll first scan the road ahead to make sure I won’t run into debris or anything that may upset my stability, and then turn my head as you described. I’ll do this even on fast descents when I hear approaching traffic. The only exception is when I’m riding in a paceline; I am laser focused on the riders ahead of me who are literally inches apart. If I’m out front and want to change lanes, I’ll signal my intention and wait for the “all clear” from the last rider in the line before making the lane change. We cover this in CS.
Bottom line: as cyclists we have virtually 360° visibility if we just turn and look behind us occasionally. Scan your surroundings and look behind and ahead!
Different types of mirrors have different advantages and drawbacks. A helmet mirror has the most flexibility in direction of view, because it can scan with a turn of the head. In my experience, that works very well to look in slightly different directions to the rear. For angles farther from directly back, the helmet mirror requires turning the head far enough to the opposite side from the one in which the mirror is looking that turning the head to take a direct look is, in my opinion, preferable — and that also carries the right message to other road users. A rider in a low racing crouch will find it heard to tilt the head back far enough so the mirror can see over the rider’s shoulder, and may have to sit up, though this is not a problem with a more moderate touring posture. . John Brooking’s article in this series about mirrors goes into more detail – https://cyclingsavvy.org/2020/10/rear-view-mirrors/
I’d offer an alternate perspective on mirrors. I think you can see very well in mirrors, but that most of us don’t use them well, cyclists and motorists. There really is no blind spot, except perhaps immediately to the right and just behind the driver of a truck or bus. Slight body movements left/right allow for a wide peripheral view, and slight up/down movements allow for closer/distant views. Doing this, you can scan anywhere behind you that you want, while still keeping your eyes mostly forward. I personally find this much safer than taking my eyes away from what’s in front of me as I turn around. I suppose everyone can figure what works for themselves, but I’d encourage you to try moving around in relation to your mirror. You really can see a lot.
Great article.
A couple of comments about looking back.
First: We (Cycle Kingston, Kingston, Ontario) stopped using the term “shoulder check” many years ago. Shoulder check is what you do for dandruff. We call it ‘glance back” because that is exactly what it is. It’s looking behind, and it’s just a glance. We give students a “one-two” count. In that time they need to glance behind and face front again. I stand behind and they tell which arm I’m holding out – right, left, both, or none (with kids we sometimes hold two different stuffed animals). As my Can-Bike instructor told me many years ago, don’t fixate on what’s behind; get back to seeing what’s ahead.
The second: We teach “loose elbows”. Holding your arms stiffly guarantees a swerve to one side. Emphasizing relaxed arms ensures a straighter line.
Good info in the article and good comments. Looking forward to the next.
Good advice. I always look back when changing lanes in traffic and I’ve never had a mirror but these are good tips for improving how I look back. I’m going to try putting my hand on my thigh also (at least when I’m sitting and pedaling – when standing and pedaling I need both hands on the bars). It never occurred to me that looking back also communicates to other members of traffic that I might be planning something but that makes total sense.