(upbeat music)
- Welcome back you beautiful people
and today's all about trial skills.
Taking them over to the trail
to help you get over certain obstacles.
And to be honest I'm not really good at trials,
so I bought Chris Smith in to help me
do such techniques out there on the trail.
- Yeah and it looks like you need
some work on those track stands, Blake.
So let's get into it, and get started on the track stands.
So the track stand is one of the basic skills from trials,
but a really important one.
What we try and do, is just find a nice uphill slope.
Basically that stops you using your brakes so much,
as well, and stops the bike falling away.
Basically I'm just pushing forward with my front foot,
turning into it with my upper body,
And if I feel my balance moving,
I correct it with my upper body.
So every time that front wheel moves,
just keep moving your upper body,
keeping that pressure through the cranks.
You can ease off just to let it roll back,
just to catch your balance again.
But yeah that's the easiest way, to keep looking ahead,
down at your front wheel, just see what works for you.
Another really important part
with the track stand, is to actually relax.
If you find yourself tensing up,
you're gonna be all over the place.
Just let yourself breathe, relax those muscles,
and it'll make it a hell of a lot easier.
- Right, track stands on the trial.
Well this is a perfect situation.
Look at this, it's a blind drop.
So you can come in with a walking speed,
and when you get right to the end you can track stand,
spot your line, look over to the cress.
Yep, I see my line, and then you can drop in slowly.
Nice and safe.
Alright the same applies when you come to a bit of a climb,
a technical climb, you can track stand before it,
spot your line, get comfortable and lean back,
and put the power in.
(grunts)
Damn it!
Oh.
Bloody hell!
Put the power down, for the fifth time.
Yes, yeah!
Alright this technique is the slap,
the splat, or the bump technique.
It kind of helps you out
when you come to an obstacle in the trial that is quite big,
and you can't really get over with a bunny hop.
So you what you wanna do is you come into it,
you're gonna lean back, you wanna get that front wheel
a bit lifted up a bit, splat it, slap it, or bump it,
to get that front wheel up into the air,
you're leaning back and you're gonna drive that back wheel
just over the obstacle, and through it,
so you don't have to get off your bike
in the middle of the trail.
Okay it's not all about speed when you're doing it.
You're gonna come and you're gonna lean back,
bump it, and get that whole bike over.
But it's all one fluid motion when you're doing it,
you don't wanna stop, you don't wanna,
right I gotta lift the front wheel,
right, now I gotta do this.
It's all fluid motion.
You're gonna bump it, slap it, or splat it.
Do that, get the front wheel over the log,
and when you're back wheel's coming
you're gonna pull up on the bars, pull up with your hips,
put your feet on those pedals,
to bring that back wheel over.
You don't have to do a bunny hop over it,
you can just let it go a little bit light,
so your wheel just rolls over that obstacle,
and so you can get through it.
And right the last and most important one,
is commitment, you gotta be super committed
through all stages of this slap, bump,
splat, attack thing over it.
Because if you're not, you're gonna
just drive the front wheel into it,
it's gonna send you into the bars.
Or you're gonna get your front wheel up,
and you're gonna drive the back wheel into it,
and it's just gonna stop you,
could end up having a puncture.
So you gotta be committed all the time
when you're doing the slap, pat, bump, attack.
- So here's a perfect chance
to get all trials in, on the trails.
The log across the track,
we're gonna use the splat technique.
Let's hit this hard, commit, get our weight back,
lift that front wheel up, fly across the log.
(upbeat music)
So we're gonna be taking a look at the front touch,
or the hook technique.
This is a really advanced technique,
especially on the trail bikes.
The trials guys can go up massive stuff on this,
I'm talking six, seven foot tall.
They basically hook their front wheel on the top of a wall,
bounce the back wheel off of it, in one fluid motion.
They get up on some incredibly high stuff.
This picnic table for our trail bike
is still pretty impressive.
So lets take a look at the technique for this one.
(upbeat music)
So lets take a look at the front touch.
Before we even get into this,
we need to be about two of three bike lengths away
from the obstacle that we're going up.
And I'm also going to switching,
I'm normally right foot forward.
So I'm gonna be switching my feet to my left foot forward,
so that's opposite foot forward.
What that's gonna do it allow big explosive drive
when I go to crank up onto that table.
So I've got my front foot forward,
as I'm lifting that front wheel up nice and high,
I fixated on a point where I wanna place
that front wheel on the bench.
So when I've got that front wheel on the bench,
I'm squashed down on the suspension,
and I've curled my feet around the pedals,
I've lifted that back wheel up,
whilst pushing forward with my handlebars,
driving that bike onto the bench as well.
You might find that your back wheel
sort of barely makes it up, but just keep pushing forward,
and pushing the weight and driving your hips forward,
and that bike will go up onto the table.
And once you're on there, it's easy,
this is the easiest part.
Roll to the edge, give it a quick stab on your pedals,
do a mini wheelie off of the bench,
keeping that front wheel nice and high.
Land, back wheel first, ride away, nice and smooth.
There's a few mistakes that when it comes to using
that front touch technique, that you can make quite easily.
One of the ones I see a lot,
is coming in with your cranks level.
Like I said, it's really important
to make sure you've got that good foot,
your wrong foot forward.
Just allows that drive that instant pfft
to lift the front wheel up.
If you're coming in, with your right foot forward,
or your strong foot forward,
you've got nothing to drive that bike,
you're purely trying to do it with your hips,
and your body, and it just won't happen.
You really need that rear wheel drive,
and the explosive technique to get your up onto there.
So for the front touch or the hook technique,
front wheel placement is crucial.
If you come underneath,
you don't lift that front wheel high enough,
basically you're just gonna go straight over the handlebars,
and probably slide across the bench,
which is gonna be pretty cool, and make your mates laugh.
But if you go too far,
you're not gonna get enough lift off that back wheel,
the bikes gonna hit sorta there
and your chain rings gonna bash into the table.
And again you won't get up on the table.
You really need that to be right on the first
little bit of the table.
As soon as that hits, drive that front wheel in,
and lifting the hips up, drive that bike onto the table.
- Now we are gonna use this hook.
Well this hook technique is perfect
when it comes to a step like this, a little ledge.
It's got a little bit of slope,
so when you're coming in,
you're coming in with a little bit of speed.
So what you're gonna do is lift your front wheel up,
as soon as your front wheel has tapped there,
like Chris has told you,
you're gonna force your body weight up,
pulling on your pedals,
curling your feet on those pedals to get that back wheel up,
land, and put the power down and continue down the trail.
(upbeat music)
Ah yes, logs, the log ride.
When you come to trail, if you're out in the carpark,
or you're out on the trail, it's a great time
to practice your balancing skills
when it comes to a log like this one,
'cause you can just get up onto this thing,
have a little bit of a hook, ride along.
This is a great place to start
building a confidence in your balancing skills.
Especially when you come to a bit
of a sticky situation out on the trail,
where there's a bit of a north shore, and it's a bit narrow,
and it's like six foot up in the sky.
You don't wanna be learning it straight away
and chuck yourself in the deep end.
(upbeat music)
(grunts)
(laughs)
Oh so close, damn it!
- So let's talk endos.
The basic endo is a trials move,
isn't much use to you out on the trail.
So basic endo is when you go along,
you pull that front brake on,
shift, squash that suspension,
and move your weight forward
whilst holding onto that front brake.
I'll just show you this maneuver now.
So we come in, pull that front brake, squash.
So that isn't much use out on the trail.
What we need to learn
is how to move that back end of the bike around.
So let's talk through a few techniques
on getting that back wheel all the way 'round.
Basically all we're doing, is just starting a technique
at our toes, so connecting to the bike,
so you're obviously pushing into those pedals,
whilst turning with your feet and your ankles.
And continue that motion up though your hips
and your upper body, whilst holding onto that front brake,
whilst looking as well.
You really need to look with your head.
If you do it whilst looking straight,
it will just go straight.
You actually need to turn and look
to where you want it to turn.
Basically that will let that whole bike
maneuver all the way around the corner.
- I've done this a lot,
and that's taking the wrong whole trail.
So the super stylish way to do this,
to turn around, is the endo.
Perfect way to turn around, head back down the trail,
and get back on the right trail.
Oh, I knew left was the right one, silly me.
Woo hoo.
Oh wow, this corner's quite tight.
This is where the endo is going to come into play.
Just to get your rear wheel 'round.
Come in slow, do that, and drop in the trail.
Right, without the endo, even slower, way more awkward.
Look at that, ha!
So the endo, in hindsight, is way better.
So that's definitely gonna help you.
You can come in, look at it, you got a turning circle,
lean on the front, lock up that front brake,
get your body weight over the front a little bit,
use your hips to get the rear wheel 'round,
drop down, and then you're pointing
directly down the trail, to more fun.
- Let's talk side hops.
The trials guys can do some massive stuff.
I'm talking six, seven foot high, shoulder height.
It's not problem for those guys on their special bikes.
But we can struggle on the trail bikes,
we've got all our suspension,
the bikes are obviously a lot heavier.
A side hop can get you out of a lot of grief on the trail.
Basically, it's just a hop up onto a ledge,
or a hop down sideways.
We're not going any momentum going forward, backwards,
it's all going sideways.
Be it on, or off.
Let's take a look at how to do the techniques now.
So again this is quite
an advanced maneuver out on the trail.
Before we even attempt this,
you need to know how to bunny hop.
So if you can't bunny hop, don't even give this a go.
This is a real explosive movement again,
the footwork is crucial.
You might notice I don't have my pedals totally flat,
I've actually raised them up, just a little tiny bit,
so we're kind of more in this position.
As I come into the explosive part of it,
I really squash down into the bike,
I almost try to touch my bum onto the back tire,
whilst loading up the suspension, mostly on the rear.
Keep your weight more off the front,
so get that weight right over the back,
and as that suspension squashes in, you look.
Make sure you look all the time, where you wanna land.
As that suspension comes up you drive down with your feet,
and hop, and turn all that energy sideways.
You do that, through your hips, and your upper body,
and tilting that bike up
and across and land it up on the ledge.
So you might be wondering
how on earth do we get that bike to even move sideways.
The way we do that is by starting with your head.
You're tilting that to the direction
that you actually want to travel.
Also a hell of a lot of that is actually upper body,
you see me drop back down into the bike.
I drop that inside shoulder so I'm leaned into the bike,
as I push on those cranks, loading that back wheel up,
and then explode it up into the air.
I'm doing the weight shift sideways,
looking at where I wanna land.
- Right so on the trail you've got three different lines.
You've got middle one, top one, and quite a low one.
Now, when you get stuck in a rut, it's horrible.
It's hard to get out of
'cause you can cross your things, you can slide out.
So this is where you bring in that side hop technique.
So when you're in a hole, you can go
right, I remember that technique, I remember the side hop.
Kind of come in with a gradual bit of power,
then you give it a kick on the pedals,
then you're gonna side hop out of it.
So you would wanna side hope to the top,
which is a little bit difficult,
but if you find yourself in the rut quite earlier on,
you can use this lower bit to hope up a bit easier.
But if you find yourself in there,
ah, you're stuck in the rut
and it's gonna be quite hard to get out of that.
Also when you're coming down the trail,
and you wanna go down that trail there,
you can kind of side hop across this,
because you don't wanna ride through that.
Especially because it's wet, it can grab your front wheel,
and just hook you and throw you off the bike.
So, using that side hop technique to hope across,
to get down that trail is key and it's perfect.
I'm gonna finish off this little video,
I've made this, well, I've found it, actually.
It's a figure of eight.
But there's obstacles in this figure of eight
that you're gonna bring some of those techniques
we've shown you within the video, into this here.
So, Chris and I are gonna move around this thing,
using every element just to get around this
without putting your feet down.
Are you ready, Chris?
This is quite tight, this one here.
And then over that log, that's big!
- Got it? - Think so.
Oh, that's close!
- [Chris] Good boy.
- Nice trials, trials to trails.
Hopefully this video's given ya' a little bit of a help
and understanding that you can use those trials skills
out there on the trail to help you
get through a trail safely.
- Or that tech stuff made it a lot easier
if you can learn these basic skills, for sure.
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