Kapusta

Who are these experts saying people should not use the rear brake?

wolfchild

Reading articles on internet isn't a very effective way to learn bike handling skills.

njkayaker

???

Listening to you is much less effective.

You can’t practice techniques just by reading articles (on the internet or not) for reputable sources but you can certainly learn about what to practice.

Figuring it all by yourself isn’t going to be effective.

wolfchild

I don't need experts on internet to tell me how to use my brakes, when to use my brakes or if I should be using one or two brakes to stop. I learned all that stuff by going out and riding.

Daniel4

I tried to post an MP4 video of me falling off my bike yesterday but at 360KB for 1min 34sec, it's too big and I don't have a Youtube channel to link to.

njkayaker

No one has any reason to expect don’t suck at it.

Anyway, you are telling people to ignore everything you write here. And you aren’t reputable either. Bizarre.

koala logs

Back in the early 90's without internet, I figured out many things about bike handling by experimentation. That included braking in the shortest distance possible and how fast can you ride across a speed bump riding one handed without falling.

Now that I'm older, it wouldn't be advisable to take deliberate risks that will likely result in a crash and so far, internet seems good enough.

njkayaker

No one said you couldn’t figure it out by yourself. It should be quicker to learn by reading stuff first.

There were places to read about this stuff before the internet existed.

Many people are scared to use their front brake. Does it really make sense for all of them to figure this out by themselves?

wolfchild

It was an absurd statement to make and say that using only front brake is just as effective at stopping as using both front and rear brakes. Whatever internet articles he got that from is BS.

njkayaker

Who knows what he read or whether he read it properly.

You aren’t any sort of expert. So there’s even less reason to believe anything you say.

genejockey 

Maybe he's the Grand Galactic Inquisitor?

LarrySellerz

sheldon brown is ridiculously legendary and he says only using the front is fastest, because the rear gets unweighted so any braking force applied to the rear will cause it to skid

mschwett 

and yet, all you have to do is roll down a hill and apply the rear brake (only) gradually to discover that the above isn’t true. yes - some amount of force will break traction. but “any braking force?” no, absolutely not. depends on a complex mix of speed, weight, weight balance (position on the bike), grade, type/size of tire, road surface…

wolfchild

Sheldon is a useful source of technical info on bike maintenance and tinkering, bike parts info etc...however when it comes to bike handling I will go with my own experience over what somebody else has said.

wolfchild

Hey, there are other posters here who are far more skilled at interrogating other posters than I am.

Kapusta

He is legendary for his Bicycle mechanical knowledge and how he shared it.

He is not legendary for his bike handling skills or coaching. He's more like Grant Peterson talking about how to ride: a guy with opinions.

And frankly, his article on this is pretty weak. His arguments are mainly based on a false dichotomy of "Only Front" vs "Only Rear"

Also, I have no idea on what he is basing his assertion that "skilled cyclists only use the front brake 95% of the time". I don't know anyone who almost never touches the rear brake. Its a bit of a True Scotsman argument he has there.

livedarklions

The more I think about this unweight the back wheel stuff, the less sense it makes. Taken to its extreme, putting the rear wheel in the air puts the frame and rider in the air with a lot of god only knows what lateral momentum while all of the weight is on the fork and front wheel. That sounds like the bike could actually jack knife like a semi.

koala logs

GCN or probably GMBN did a few segments on endo where they forced their bikes to endo with hilarious results.

It's real. The lateral momentum is also real. In fact, you can get catapulted up and laterally at the same time.

genejockey 

Not surprising - when I've skidded the rear wheel the whole back end of the bike kicked out to one side.

njkayaker

You are definitely not understanding the basic argument.

No one is claiming that the rear brake alone (or with a front brake not used heavily) has no "braking force".

Using the rear brake alone doesn't have the front-weighting issues that occurs with using the front brake hard.

mschwett 

that’s not how i interpreted larry’s statement, which didn’t specify whether the rear brake was being used alone or in tandem with the front. i agree that the dynamics are different when both brakes are used, but if there was no load whatsoever on the rear wheel, you’d have other problems than slowing down. at least i would. my example holds if you add a small amount of front brake before gradually applying the rear. it does NOT (at least in my universe of bikes and hills) result in any kind of instantaneous skid/lockup. in fact it slows the bike down faster.

njkayaker

You don't have to rely on Sheldon Brown.

https://www.renehersecycles.com/how-...-on-a-bicycle/

smd4

I have two brake levers, and will continue to use both brakes at the same time, regardless of what some guy I never heard of named Sheldon or Larry or anyone else says.

njkayaker

This is confusing.

No one says using the "gradually applying" the rear brake always result in "any kind of instantaneous skid/lockup".

https://www.renehersecycles.com/how-...-on-a-bicycle/

It seems more than likely that very few people are braking at the limits. For those people, also using the rear brake is going to be faster.

The problem is that the "armchair experts" here think because they don't brake at the limit, whatever their technique is (and it could be terrible) must be faster.

mschwett 

good article. but it seems based on the premise that the goal is always to stop as fast as possible or something:

in my world, it’s a clear sign that i’m decelerating gently and safely 😂