Product Description

Increase your speed, control, and versatility on the bike. Mastering Mountain Bike Skills provides detailed technical instruction for all mountain biking disciplines:

Cross-country
Downhill
Mountain cross
Free riding
Dirt jumping
Urban terrain

With top pro mountain biker Brian Lopes as your teacher, you’ll learn how to handle the bike better than ever, in any conditions, across all types of terrain. Key tips and special photo sequences throughout the book add insight to Lopes’ world-class instruction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13288 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

About the Author
Brian Lopes has been a prevailing force on the professional mountain biking scene for more than a decade and is now recognized as the winningest professional mountain bike racer in the United States. He has earned nine National Off-Road Bicycle Association (NORBA) Championships, five World Cup Championships, and four World Championships.

Lopes started riding at age 4 and graduated to pro status at 17. Since then, he has dominated BMX, downhill, dual slalom, dual, and most recently bikercross racing. He is the most successful active racer on the NORBA circuit, regardless of discipline, and has held world records in bunny hopping and distance jumping. Lopes has appeared on the Outdoor Life Network, has graced the covers of every major mountain biking magazine, including Bike, Dirt, Bicycling, VeloNews, and Mountain Biking, and has received coverage in such mainstream media as Men's Health, Rolling Stone, and USA Today.

Featured in numerous riding videos, Lopes even has a signature tire--the Maxxis Brian Lopes Bling Bling Dual. He also stars in the mountain bike video game Downhill Domination for PlayStation. Other career highlights include being nominated as ESPYs Extreme Athlete of the Year and serving as a stunt rider for the USA Network show Pacific Blue.

Lopes resides in Laguna Beach, California, with his wife, Paula.

Lee McCormack is an experienced journalist who has written for Bike, Mountain Bike Action, Twentysix, Flow, and Mountain Biking. He also publishes Leelikesbikes.com, a mountain biking Web site frequented by thousands of readers worldwide.

McCormack has won numerous writing and informational graphics awards at the state and regional levels and was part of the team that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He enjoys all riding disciplines from singletrack to road to dirt jumps. McCormack has been an expert-level downhill and slalom racer for several years, and his riding has dramatically improved since working with Lopes on this book. In 2004 McCormack won several major events and finished the year ranked No. 1 among expert downhillers within his age class. He is now positioned to turn semipro in 2005.

McCormack lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Tracy.

Customer Reviews

Good wide coverage of bike skills
I'm a rider of intermediate skill and wanted to better understand some of the more intricate dynamics of mountain bike riding to further improve my riding techniques - this book does it in spade loads.

The book is well laid out and gives good step by step instructions as well as the reasoning behind why things are done.

Tips I found particularly useful are the various weightings applied to wheels, pedals and handlebars to load tyres for better grip, etc in certain situations such as cornering climbing. A lot of these things you can pick up with experience but if you know why in the first place some of these things become self evident before you pick up bad habits.

The language is a bit weird in places as some of the other reviewers have noted but this should not deter buyers looking for a good quality manual as the content is there and is really good. If you were a straight beginner some of the terms may be a bit alien but I think the book is more aimed at people like myself who have done a bit of riding and have a basic understanding of the terminology being used.

Go buy and enjoy...

great info
I found all the information very constructive and useful and the instructions were easy to follow.

I wish so much I could edit this book....
I'm a former amateur road cyclist/USCF, etc., who hates cars & discovered serious mountain biking 7 years ago. I'm addicted to agressive, technical, cross-country single-track & ride 10-20 hours/week. I have taught myself over the years by asking questions and observing, reading, etc. I did learn several things from this book, and reread parts just to renew my consciousness and allow key points to settle into my subconscious, and it does and has helped my riding, indeed, but nowhere near as much as I'd like. Still, I would recommend purchasing it.
Just that I would love to sit down with Lopes and edit each sentence, each diagram and photo, detailing in very clear, understandable language as to what is really meant to be conveyed, so that a mostly self-taught enthusiast who is into mountain biking purely for the personal thrill, and doesn't care about the lingo or keeping track of the "stars" or racing, could more easily incorporate these skills into his/her passion. The book makes some good points, a lot of them in fact, but it's just not well-written, and is frequently bereft of true definition. Both descriptions and terminology are lacking in definitive substance just where they are needed, and as good as the photos and sequencing might appear to someone flipping through, they too are often frustrating: when a very detailed, point-by-point explanation or diagram is needed, much is left to the imagination to finish.
One simple example, for example, lies in the use of words like "preload" and "load" in different places, when they mean the exact same thing: compress the fork and prepare to unload it. 'Preload' should only be used to indicate a static shock, as in its position when the bike is at rest in order to adjust air pressure/inspect a fork/ measure, etc. Similarly, "pump" might sound obvious to the writers, but 'pump' is what my father would yell when I was 4-years old, meaning pedal hard. Defining terms and actions accurately and precisely, in a scientific sense and in relationship to similar words, for the benefit of the reader-student, seems to have been rarely taken into consideration. Many sentences and paragraphs are left open-ended (& often filled with puns - not that there's not a place for humor at times, but it's often distracting and leaves me wondering what the hell are they talking about). In addition to wanting to sit down with Lopes and help rewrite this book, which could be so much better than it is, an artist of the technical ability of say, the late illustrator Oscar Ratti (see _Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere_), could do a much better job than many of the photos. As with any good first textbook, hopefully this one will evolve into a 2nd edition, and edited for clarity by someone outside of the "industry'.