"I feel a little sorry for them as they steer into the hairpin bend in front of me. Tensely, they lift the rear wheel a few centimetres off the ground and try to master the tight bend "riding". "Offsetting the rear wheel" is the name of this trendy technique that so many people are now trying to use - but hardly anyone has mastered it properly. In the Alps, most of these hairpin bends could be mastered by rolling without any problems - assuming a clever choice of line. But instead of honing their cornering technique, today's modern trail pro wants to shift the rear wheel. And when they then speed through the bends in a flippant manner and then make a mini-skip several times over the entire radius, it doesn't just look unfortunate. It's also dangerous because it's almost completely uncontrolled.

I don't do that! Instead, I try to improve my cornering technique again, and if that's not enough, I just get off my bike and tackle the section by pushing. That still looks better than this cramped jumping. And I've never had a stone fall out of my crown. That was my attitude when I was out riding with Tom Oehler some time ago. And there was one of these hairpin bends ahead of us on the singletrail descent. Two meters before the bend, Oehler's rear end was already hovering in the air and he turned around the bend on the front wheel with almost no loss of flow. Whoosh, and around he went. So that's how it works! Elegance instead of cramp. Tom Oehler showed me how to offset correctly. It makes sense and is the only way to carry the flow through the bend.

Nevertheless, I still find this trendy "rear wheel offset" unnecessary. But I now know why: because I can't do it. This technique only makes sense to me when I can do it at the level of Tom Oehler. So never for us trail normals. Until then, I'd rather continue to hone my rolling cornering technique than enter the trendy lowlands of cramped corner hopping."
 

Shifting the rear wheel is embarrassing except...