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Front vs Rear Brake... Which Do You Use Most?

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Which Brake Do You Use Most?

  • Front Brake

    Votes: 29 50%

  • Rear Brake

    Votes: 11 19%

  • Both Evenly

    Votes: 18 31%
  • Total voters
    58
1 - 20 of 94 Posts
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PoorInRichfield

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
In reading Sheldon Brown's article on "Braking and Turning Your Bicycle", he pretty much states that if you're not using your front brake for 90% of your braking, you must be a "newb".

I've been road and mountain biking for ~30 years (yikes) and was into BMX freestyle before that, so I think I know how to handle a bike pretty well... yet I rarely ever just use the front brake as suggested in the article. Am I a "braking newb"!?!?

While the suggestions in the article make sense, I wonder if they still apply in the age of disc brakes. I have two bikes with disc brakes and if I have my weight over the rear wheel when braking, it's pretty hard to lock-up the rear wheel. Hence I don't see why I wouldn't apply both the front and rear brakes most of the time.

In addition, I know what it's like to apply the front brake and have the front tire slip out from underneath me. (It sucks.) As such, unless I'm riding in a straight line in perfect conditions, using the front brake solely seems like a recipe for disaster... even a little bit of sand or unseen gravel could land you on your doompa.

Thoughts? Am I the only one on the planet who is still a "braking newb" after 30 years of riding?
 
#2 · (Edited)
There is only one correct answer if you take the question literally. In certain situations you'll use more rear brake or use them evenly but on the whole the front brake should be used more. All you have to do is look at car and moto brake systems. It will become instantly obvious which brake should be used more.


ETA: 3...2...1 til @waspinator shows up asking why anyone would ever use the front brake.
 
#3 ·
cxwrench said:
There is only one correct answer if you take the question literally. In certain situations you'll use more rear brake or use them evenly but on the whole the front brake should be used more. All you have to do is look at car and moto brake systems. It will become instantly obvious which brake should be used more.

ETA: 3...2...1 til @waspinator shows up asking why anyone would ever use the front brake.
Click to expand...
Agreed.
 
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#4 ·
Pretty much as the others have said. It's not that you wouldn't use the rear brake, just that you don't ONLY use the rear brake line many people do. The front brake is what stops you, the rear brake is used for control.

Road biking, I use the brakes pretty evenly most of the time. Mountain biking, I use a whole lot more front brake.
 
#5 ·
PoorInRichfield said:
In reading Sheldon Brown's article on "Braking and Turning Your Bicycle", he pretty much states that if you're not using your front brake for 90% of your braking, you must be a "newb".

I've been road and mountain biking for ~30 years (yikes) and was into BMX freestyle before that, so I think I know how to handle a bike pretty well... yet I rarely ever just use the front brake as suggested in the article. Am I a "braking newb"!?!?

While the suggestions in the article make sense, I wonder if they still apply in the age of disc brakes. I have two bikes with disc brakes and if I have my weight over the rear wheel when braking, it's pretty hard to lock-up the rear wheel. Hence I don't see why I wouldn't apply both the front and rear brakes most of the time.

In addition, I know what it's like to apply the front brake and have the front tire slip out from underneath me. (It sucks.) As such, unless I'm riding in a straight line in perfect conditions, using the front brake solely seems like a recipe for disaster... even a little bit of sand or unseen gravel could land you on your doompa.

Thoughts? Am I the only one on the planet who is still a "braking newb" after 30 years of riding?
Click to expand...
First, It's hard to impossible to evenly distribute your weight on steep downhills and just hard to do so in nearly any braking situation since simple physics moves much of the load to the front wheel (all else remaining the same).

You can mitigate some of this by moving your ass as far behind the seat as possible but even on flat ground you'll be hard pressed to match the load on the front wheel on a road bike while braking hard.

If you could build a bike with very large wheels so you could keep you body mass centered below the front axle your theory would be mostly correct.
 
#6 ·
SwiftSolo said:
First, It's hard to impossible to evenly distribute your weight on steep downhills and just hard to do so in nearly any braking situation since simple physics moves much of the load to the front wheel (all else remaining the same).

You can mitigate some of this by moving your ass as far behind the seat as possible but even on flat ground you'll be hard pressed to match the load on the front wheel on a road bike while braking hard.

If you could build a bike with very large wheels so you could keep you body mass centered below the front axle your theory would be mostly correct.
Click to expand...
Well said, Swift! :thumbsup:

Braking the front wheel stops the bike very efficiently. So in hard braking, as you say, move way back, pressing the rear tire on the tarmac. The inertial mass of the bike and rider wants to flip over the handlebars. The rear tire lightens up considerably and loses its grip! This could happen at any time. Gotta be ready!

Sure, use the front brake 90% of the time and the rear mainly to keep the rear wheel on the tarmac and the bike on track. If I brake at the rear stronger than the front, the front wheel gets wishy-washy.
 
#7 ·
PoorInRichfield said:
While the suggestions in the article make sense, I wonder if they still apply in the age of disc brakes.
Click to expand...
Of course it still applies. Physics hasn't changed in the last 30yrs... or 30 million.



Thoughts? Am I the only one on the planet who is still a "braking newb" after 30 years of riding?
Click to expand...
Nope. I got a buddy riding longer than that and I can't get him to comprehend most of your braking comes from the front wheel.
 
#8 ·
Too many MTB riders base their braking preference on a skill they learned as a 10 year old, namely the lock-up skid. It may LOOK cool, but a sliding tire has less braking traction than a rolling tire.
 
#10 ·
Some beginner riders are inherently afraid to use the front brake for fear of flipping over the handlebars. And sure, if you use only the front brake and don't re-distribute your body weight to compensate, you can do this for sure.

But your rear brake in some situations will not have enough braking power to stop without skidding your rear tire. While doing an endo is no fun, neither is hitting a large object because you couldn't brake in time.

One of the advantages to hydraulic disc brakes is better predictability and even modulation. It is much more difficult to lock up your brakes by accident. Note that is is much easier to overheat your rear brake on a disc bike as you need more pressure to apply the same amount of braking than you do on your front.

I would say that generally, I apply my front and rear brakes almost equally and slightly favor the front brake.
 
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#11 ·
as a Harley rider would say: don't use the front brake or you'll flip!
lol that was a joke

Seriously, there is only 1 situation where you'd want to use more rear brake then front. And that 1 situation is where there is no traction on the front!! duh, makes sense right. As long as the front has more traction than the rear, then braking should be front bias.

look at the cars and motorcycles, their biggest brakes are on the front, not the rear. This should tell us that front braking is where braking takes place.

so what would be the situation that the front has less traction than the rear? Wet and muddy, gravely, snowy, icey. In these conditions, the front as little traction, the rear has more traction (because your weight is more on the rear wheel), thus you'd use more rear brakes in these situation. BUT... keep in mind that braking in these situations is still very very limited and it is no where near the same as braking in the dry on the front.

on the topic of mtb, i've seen so many mtbers who don't know jack about braking techniques. Many of them, even the experienced ones, would rather lock their rear wheel and slide around, seems like that's their go-to technique. And I don't blame them really, because worse this can happen is they slide out, and sliding out due to rear slippage is less painful than sliding out due to front slippage. But this is far from optimal. The correct braking technique in mtb is still to use the front brake more, however because mtb condition is on dirt and loose gravel, then these conditions do warrant the use of rear braking a little more then compared to braking on the road. However, this is not to say use only rear braking to the point of sliding out. The proper braking in mtb (as you come into a corner) is to brake using the front real hard when the bike is in a staightline and upright, then as you lean over and transition into the corner you still maintain the same brake pressure, then as your speed decrease as you go thru the corner you can ease up on brake pressure. All this happens really fast, within less than 1 seconds on short corner. What you don't want to do is while negotiating a corner to brake really hard (which compresses the fork) and then suddenly completely let off on the front brake, because letting off on the front drastically like that unloads the fork suspension and causes a change in front traction in a negative way, so let off slowly as you go around a corner.

Another issue that many mtbers don't get is that on full suspension bikes, using the rear brake has the effect of restricting the movement of the rear suspension, and this restriction will decrease bump absorption and thus decrease in traction at the rear. Rear suspension is more finicky than the front, so it's better to just use more braking at the front and let the fork handles the suspending.

Honestly I think learning to brake in the dirt is harder because you have to deal with suspension both at the front and rear so you'd always have to juggle between front and rear, but still the front should get more bias. But on the road bikes, where there is virtually no suspension movement to account for (except the little gives from skinny tires at 80-100 psi), the almost all braking should be done at the front unless road conditions are like those mentioned above.
 
#12 ·
In spring/summer/fall I use the front brake almost exclusively.

But in the winter I use my rear brake almost exclusively because it's nearly impossible to see when there is ice under the snow. I only use the front in the winter when I can clearly see that I'm on dry pavement.
 
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#14 ·
I used to use my rear brake more, as evidenced by the rear pads wearing down faster than the front. I may have changed my behavior because I'm trying to use the front brake more, but haven't checked the pads on my bike in a while. I usually brake lightly to control my speed. As such, it probably doesn't matter what brake I use more. I try not to brake in corners, but am pretty wary of giving too much front brake in a corner because a front wheel skid will usually result in a crash.
 
Discussion starter · #15 ·
davesupra said:
But in the winter I use my rear brake almost exclusively because it's nearly impossible to see when there is ice under the snow. I only use the front in the winter when I can clearly see that I'm on dry pavement.
Click to expand...
For this reason I typically favor a 50/50 split between front and rear braking (i.e., both at the same time). I don't want to have to think, "Hmm... is my front tire going to get proper traction on the surface I'm on?" before braking, I just default to hitting both brakes. That's not to say that front braking isn't more efficient, I just think that real-world riding makes it more difficult (and sometimes not safe) to depend so much on the front only. Unless you're traveling a straight line on fresh asphalt, there's a pretty good chance your front tire will lose traction on gravel, sand, etc., and down you go!
 
#18 ·
aclinjury said:
Seriously, there is only 1 situation where you'd want to use more rear brake then front. And that 1 situation is where there is no traction on the front!! duh, makes sense right. As long as the front has more traction than the rear, then braking should be front bias.

look at the cars and motorcycles, their biggest brakes are on the front, not the rear. This should tell us that front braking is where braking takes place.

so what would be the situation that the front has less traction than the rear? Wet and muddy, gravely, snowy, icey. In these conditions, the front as little traction, the rear has more traction (because your weight is more on the rear wheel), thus you'd use more rear brakes in these situation. BUT... keep in mind that braking in these situations is still very very limited and it is no where near the same as braking in the dry on the front.
Click to expand...

Actually weight is still biased towards the front even in the wet. Can't change weight transfer regardless of it being wet or dry.
 
#19 ·
frdfandc said:
Actually weight is still biased towards the front even in the wet. Can't change weight transfer regardless of it being wet or dry.
Click to expand...
i didn't say just wet, but wet and muddy.
But if it's just wet but pavement is relatively clean, then go for the front (but while keeping a watch for road lane painting and potential oily spots at intersection.)
 
#20 ·
cxwrench said:
There is only one correct answer if you take the question literally. In certain situations you'll use more rear brake or use them evenly but on the whole the front brake should be used more. All you have to do is look at car and moto brake systems. It will become instantly obvious which brake should be used more.
Click to expand...
I'm always confused by people who are apparently able to determine how much braking force they are developing in each wheel. And they are apparently able to determine this to the nearest 5%. Me, I nearly always use both brakes and modulate them depending on how fast I need to stop and what the road surface is like. While sliding off the back of the saddle is certainly the right technique for emergency stops, I would submit that if you need to use this often then there is something seriously wrong with your overall riding skill set.

When I used to commute year round, I had my road bike and my commuter set up with opposite brake levers - hitting the front brakes hard makes the most sense on dry roads but on snow/ice you want to rely on the rear brake much more.
 
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