- [Dan] Any of you who have watched our sister mountain bike channel,
GMBN, may have seen the video where they taught me how to jump,
rather successfully, I might add.
♪ [music] ♪
Well, today the ball is on the other foot. I'm going to attempt to teach Neil
Donoghue, The Don, how to wheelie. That lad doesn't pay for his tire.
Anyway, it's a vastly different skill on a road bike than it is on a mountain bike.
In fact, you need way more skill, and very, very few can master this trick.
Are you ready to go?
- [Neil] Come on Dan, I've borrowed this bike off Tom Last, it says here.
- Is that Lasty's?
- Let's give it a thrash.
- I told you as well, skids are for kids. We're doing wheelies today,
they're for adults.
♪ [music] ♪
- So Dan, I'm kitted up, but first things first, where do I hold onto the bars?
- Oh, yeah, I see you're kitted up. In baggy... You're not planning on doing any
fast wheelies? Just skillful wheelies?
- I think I look fine.
- Right. Well, you do see some riders at the Tour de France and things like
Alpe d'Huez, Robbie McEwen amongst them, Peter Sagan as well,
and they do hold on here.
- On the top.
- Like on a mountain bike but much narrower, of course, but I much prefer to
have my hands on the hoods, reason being that it's your back brake that's always
your friend when you're wheelie-ing. That's what's going to stop you tipping
over the balance point and falling on your backside, so I would recommend the hoods.
- Right.
- At that point, it's then a case of getting used to lifting that front wheel
up on the road bike. Now, you will find that you're much lower on the road bike at
the front end than you are normally on a mountain bike, and if you're new to this
at home and have never done a wheelie before, then you will want to just
gradually get used to picking that front wheel up. Now, to do that,
you'll want to get your strongest foot into round about the 2:00 position whilst
just cruising along at walking speed. Push down on the pedal whilst simultaneously
pulling up on the handlebars here at the hoods, only raising your front wheel up a
few inches at a time just to get used to how it feels.
- Well, this terrifies me. I can wheelie a mountain bike, but I've never tried on a
road bike, and how do these brakes actually work? Does that just clamp
onto the rim?
- Yeah, it's called a rim brake.
- Oh.
♪ [music] ♪
- Right. Well, as The Don practices, it is worth mentioning that gear selection is
quite crucial, so you don't want it in the big ring. In fact, you want it in one of
the easiest gears that you've got on your bike. That way it's going to make it much
easier for you to get some force through the pedals on the downstroke, which will,
in turn, almost lift your front wheel up, with hardly having to push or pull
on the handlebars per se at all. Now, the idea of this bit is that you get your
balance from side to side. You get to feel what the bike feels like
underneath you, and he's doing quite well, and that you're not going off to the left
or off to the right, rather than actually finding the balance point of the wheelie
itself. Right, once you've used to your front wheel being off the ground,
the next thing to get used to is what the back brake does when it's off the ground.
So, I shall show you now. Put the back brake on, front wheel immediately comes
back down to earth, and that is really important, because what we will find later
on in this video is it will stop you ever going backwards and landing on your bum.
♪ [music] ♪
It's also worth mentioning a couple of things about the equipment that you're
using as well. So, if you're just starting out, not very confident doing a wheelie,
which I presume you're not if you're watching this video, you might want to
skip using clipless pedals like you would do out riding. Put some flat ones on,
that way if the worst does come to the worst and you lose your balance,
you're going to be able to put your foot down very quickly. And the other thing is
saddle height. That is the main difference, Neil, that you're going to
find between the mountain bike and the road bike, but, again, if you're just
starting out, there's no reason that you can't just put the saddle
a bit further down, that way your weight will be further back
and you'll just be a lot more confident on the bike, and
ultimately you can put it back up again and get used to it in that position.
It's time now for the hardest step, but it's the step that once you master,
it will mean that you can wheelie properly, and that is finding the balance
point. This is effectively where you're up, you might be just about to fall back
but not quite. You might be just about to have your front wheel drop to the ground,
but not quite. It's the balance point in the middle, and eventually you'll be able
to ride along. First up, Donny, how have you been finding it on the road bike
compared to the mountain bike?
- It's good fun, actually. Actually, it surprises me. The balance point feels
really far back on this, because the bars feel so much further forward and lower,
so it feels quite scary. The front wheel feels really high in the air,
and it's a bit different trying to grab the brake rather than on the bar as on a
mountain bike, but it feels good.
- Well, as Donny mentioned, the brake is going to be really important at this
point, and that's why we learned it so much in the previous steps,
to make sure you repeat that over and over until it's dialed into your head,
because now we're going to go up to that balance point, and if you're doing it for
the first time, you will find that you are about to go backwards,
and that is when you want to slam the back brake on and come back down.
Then eventually, we're just going to feather the brake when we get very close
to that balance point and that's the point at which you'll have things dialed.
- I suspect tarmac's a little bit harder on your rear end should you leap out.
- It is, yeah.
♪ [music] ♪
Well, that is pretty much everything you need to know about wheelie-ing a road
bike, and Donny, as you might expect, has picked it up very quickly,
coming from a professional mountain bike background.
- How's this, Dan?
- Not bad. Just remember my pointers, and you'll be fine.
Don't worry if you can't get it straight away. Normally this is something
which can take days, or even weeks, to learn. In fact, it probably did for both
of us when we were younger.
- Yeah, thanks, Dan. I actually found it quite difficult on a road bike.
They're so sensitive to side-to-side movement and wind and things like that
that I think I need a bit more practice, actually.
- In fact, that is another thing worth mentioning before we finish with this
video. We did find that we have different techniques when it comes to balancing from
side to side. So I tend to move my bars a little bit just to distribute the weight
differently to counteract balancing one way or the other. You look like you're
using your knees.
- I find I'm using my knees a little bit, I find if I turn the bars I kind of lose
my balance, so, again, I think I need a bit more practice.
- Yeah, well, you better do some. Right. Well, if you'd like to see that video I
spoke about at the beginning of this one, then you can find it just up there.
It's Donny teaching me how to jump a mountain bike.
- If you click down there , that'll take you through to the video where I teach Dan
how to wheelie a mountain bike.
- Hmm. And if you click on the symbol somewhere on the screen,
it will allow you to subscribe. For free.
- To GMBN. It's ours.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
- Oh. Don't worry.
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