How to Start Gravel Riding as a Beginner?

Question

I've just recently started cycling and would like to focus on gravel rides. For novices such as myself, are there any additional suggestions that would assist in working on bike gravel handling techniques?

Answer 1

For beginners, gravel riding poses an effective and efficient choice. If you want to improve your bike handling, you should practice and become more comfortable riding the bike. Begin working on your body position, especially if you’re going downhill on a more technical course, as you will need to shift your body more compared to riding a road bike. Keep your hands on the drops and your pedals at 3 and 9 o’clock so you can practice using your body as suspension. Keep your body loose, as tensing up increases the bumpiness and effort for the ride. Get comfortable with the gravel bike; ride it around, mess with it and have fun.

Comments

Thank you, Manon. As a cyclist new to gravel and off-road trails, these were really helpful.

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Great tips.  I’m a newb to gravel biking, moving over from mountain biking as I get older.  Just picked up a Canyon Grail CF SL Di2 two weeks ago and already put 200 miles on it.  Figured I knew it all from my mountain bike experience.  I was wrong.  I’m so enjoying the longer rides, getting beat up less and the speed … addictive.  So much fun discovering new ways to bike and your tips are great.  Can’t wait to try them out this weekend.

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This is great stuff! I will mention that many of the skills from mountain biking cross over well to gravel riding.

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Mixing it up is what it's all about. Going on mountain bike rides, road rides, city riding, gravel rides, anything with cranks and pedals, and many of these skills will come naturally.

By the way, out of all these, gravel rides are the absolute best!

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I started to practise offroad stuff on my shitty city bike because I was too afraid to demage my carbon gravel :D it helped a lot

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Look at those mountain bike, I mean gravel bike skills!

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Tips 1 threw 7 get a mountain bike. Nuff sed

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Gravel equals pretentious nonsense.  Forty years ago I was bumping over rougher tracks and doing 2 foot drop offs on 26 x 1 3/8" shopping bikes, albeit I bent a few pairs of forks.  We just called it cycling and fun, without claiming a new pretentious genre.