Crash Formation: B&M
With the news that Red Bull Formation is making a come back this year, it makes sense to check in with pioneering freerider, Hannah Bergmann. Fortunately, the Downtime Pod did just this.
They touch on many an interesting subject from visualisation to the future of women’s freeride, but the bit about learning how to crash stuck in my ‘little grey cells’. As Hannah mentions, being able to fall well (a lovely juxtaposition) is a crucial part of riding and I think it’s often overlooked. This may be down the the tricky subject of how you practice it, but humour me – for now at least.
With this in mind, I thought I’d cut out the middle man and utilise all my years of experience crashing to produce a Bangers and Mash Certified Guide to Crashing (Endorsed by absolutely no one).
- Avoid it if you can – yes this sounds obvious but the old saying ‘if you’re not crashing you’re not trying hard enough’ isn’t all that water tight under closer examination. Follow this step and you’ll never have to think about crashing in the correct manner (it’s that easy!)
- If you do crash it’s all about energy dissipation – hitting a tree hurts because all your kinetic energy is transferred from you moving forward into the tree and the tree pushes back against you. The old ‘every force has an equal and opposite force’ classic. If you find yourself flying off line, don’t panic, try and control it and aim for glancing blows, therefore dissipating more energy (easier said than done)
- Laugh at your friends when they crash ONCE you’ve checked they are okay.
So what have we learnt? Not much I hear you cry! Yep well this is the internet after all….
HG
