 The most vital part of your bike to have working properly are your brakes and we'd thoroughly recommend checking them before you go out training. However, if you do go out and notice that there's a substandard braking performance then you'll have to do something about it and we suggest you stop straight away, that's if you can. We're going to go through a few of the main problems that you might encounter now and a few very easy ways in which you can rectify them. Some of which you'll need a tool for, the Allen keys that you've taken out with you of course, on your mulchy tool and other solutions you won't need a tool at all. Before you do anything, there's one thing that you should check straight away because if it's this problem then it can be solved in a matter of a second or so. Most calipers, especially SRAM and Shimano, have an adjustment here, pulls the brakes inwards and outwards, it's just a simple case and making it easier to get your tire out through the calipers when you want to take your wheel off. So if it's upwards like this, turn it back down and that might solve your problem. Now it doesn't matter what type of brakes you're using or how good quality they are, everybody's pads will wear down. If you're riding in particularly wetting muddy conditions that wear will accelerate even more and you'll notice that as they do where you'll have to pull your brake levers on a little bit further, pull more cable through before those pads actually meet the rim and there comes a point where you might find that the brake lever is pulled all the way back to the bar and the pads here haven't even reached the rim. At that point you'll need to do some adjustments. Now there is that one that you can do just with your hands, most brake calipers on road bikes will have barrel adjusters here, you simply need to unscrew them and that will gradually push the brake pads closer to the rim. Now whether or not this works depends on how far your pads are away from the rim and also whether or not the barrel adjuster was already unscrewed a little bit. This one was fully tight but as you can see it's now working okay. However if you do find that the barrel adjuster was already out or the still not contacting the rims here with the brake pads it has to actually adjust the cable itself. That's also quite a simple thing to do but you will need an Allen key generally a 5mm one. Make sure that this barrel adjusts it is all the way in and then I tend to unscrew it just a couple of turns to give me some adjustment either way. Now locate the bolts and do it. Right now we're going to push the pads manually into the rim then pull the cable through just gently we don't want it completely tight so pull that through. Let go of the brake just very slightly just to come away from the rim just a small tiny bit and do it back up as it happens I've got some beginners luck and that's absolutely perfect. If you do find that it's still too far away then you can just try the process again. If on the other hand you find there's slightly too close you can use this barrel adjuster again as I said I unwound it just slightly before I did the change to the cable so just turn it back in and that gave you a little bit more play about the brake lever before the pads engage. Another common reason for poorly performing brakes when you're out on the road is the actual pads not contacting the rim surface correctly. If the rim pad is too high it will be touching the tire will eventually wear through it and you'll have a puncture out training which you might not even be able to fix too low on the other hand and you'll start to gouge over a scratch or even the groove below the rim braking surface which is the last thing you want especially if you've got some expensive tires. So if you find you are in that situation grab your multi-tool out again four millimeter Allen key and you can undo the brake pad bolts here. Okay next thing to do is to pull your brake on with the other hand. Now adjust it so it's perfectly flat and in line against the rim here now whilst you hold it on do it up. Now once you've got it reasonably tight before you really wrench it round you can let the brake pad go now it's in the right position just hold the brake pad itself or the shoe here. Give it one last turn just to make sure it's completely tight. Check that it meets the rim brake surface properly and do the same on the other side. We've all had moments on our bikes where it feels like the brakes are rubbing and unfortunately the majority of the time they're not we've just got bad legs. However there are some situation where that actually is the case and again it's not something that's difficult to fix all we need to do just to make sure get off your bike. Spin your wheel if it's moving freely like that you haven't got any brake rub if however you spin it and it stops almost immediately then you have happy days you'll go faster when it's solved. Now it might just be the case that the caliper here isn't properly central but first things first I always check that the wheel is properly located into the dropouts make sure it's properly seated in there still rubbing though so it looks like this brake caliper has got moved somehow and make it so that the caliper is pretty central so you've got an even gap between the brake blocks and the rim on either side. If you've got any problems which you've encountered out training with your brakes that we haven't gone through here please let us know we've loved to hear from you and again if you've got any ingenious solutions that we've missed out on let us know in the comments section down below. For the best cycling mechanical videos in the entire it GCN channel click here or subscribe click on me.