Pedalling technique

Today my developement team was learning how to pedal.
We had Sakari Lehtinen with us to give some pointers as he has plenty of experience about efficient pedalling.Sakari is one of the best cross country riders in Finland and always specific about technique.
Efficient pedalling isn't as simple as you would think on a downhill bike. Difference might not be obvious on short tracks as you are able to lay all the power down all the way down but when you go to longer tracks it becomes more and more important.

Let's begin from bodyposition. If speed is high, low bodyposition becomes more important. You might not be able to keep it low all the way down as it might cause more fatique, especially if your strength isn't good. The most important thing is to keep your back straight same time you try to keep it as horizontal as possible.
THIS is why you have to have good mobility! If the back of your legs are tight (you are not able to reach your toes with straight legs) you are not able to stay low with your back straight. This causes worse aerodynamic position, loss of power and not as efficient breathing!

Second thing is to keep your bike straight. If the prints of your tires are going from left to right, you are loosing power and creating more friction! Try to keep your wheels heading straight to where you want to go.
Also, you don't want to lean your bike from left to right, try to keep your bike as vertical as you can. This requires good coordination and bodycontrol.

Third thing is to keep your body vertically steady. You don't want to bounce up and down as you will be compressing suspension constantly. You will be spending your energy to useless movement that is not going to push you forward. This requires strength as well as bodycontrol, especially in your legs.

Fourth thing is important specifically in downhill. You want to keep you heel down.
This means you don't want to let your toes point downwards. In any point of spin. This is safer and efficient way to pedal. When i say safer i mean that any rock won't catch your toes and bend them under you pedal. Is not nice.
This is something especially clipless riders do.

When riding long track where you have to save your energy it might be useful to focus on acceleration points. You want to accelerate as quick as possible, just after the turn, when heading to long straight. Faster you accelerate the longer time you will be travelling with high speed (= takes less time). When you reach the "top speed" you want to only maintain it. This is important. You want to maintain the speed, not to accelerate. Acceleration takes more energy than keeping speed up. You don't want to accelerate the whole straight easily and "save energy" because you will not. Sharp acceleration and then maintain the speed.

Remeber to pedal to go as fast forward as you can, not to pedal just to pedal as hard as you can!