- Some of us getting air is a little bit alien.
We kind of like to keep both our wheels on the ground
where it's safe and when we're not in the air.
'Cause when you're in the air,
all panic stations.
You see red.
All alarm bells go firing off because you get,
you start to panic, you start to freeze up,
you start to make mistakes.
And that's not good.
So this video,
I'm gonna help you get a little bit more confidence,
equip you with those skills,
so when you do find yourself in the air,
you don't panic.
(folk music)
Okay, this is a common size jump
in a trail centre such like this one.
It's hard packed.
It's two rollers so you can actually roll it.
Or you can gap it.
With the right technique you can jump it.
Now, I'm gonna start off with a few mistakes
that some people tend to do
when they get in the air.
And I'm gonna start off with the misfire.
Wrong timing.
You get too excited.
You're coming in and you see the gap,
you're gonna gap it.
You're like, yeah.
And then you just, you hop just before the take off.
You're not letting the take off doing all the work.
Have you ever heard anyone say,
just pull on the bars to get up in the air?
Well,
it's a little bit more complex than that.
It's not just about pulling on the bars
because if you're just pulling on the bars
and you've got arms like Arnie,
you're just gonna go like that.
You're gonna send your front up too high.
You're gonna not use your legs.
You're just gonna be all bars in you.
And it's gonna be disastrous.
Don't pull on the bars too much.
You gotta let the lip to the talking.
And the opposite of that is when you've got
too much legs and not enough arms.
And you've got legs built like Sir Chris Hoye.
Too much legs brings that back wheel up into the air.
You leave the front wheel on the floor,
and that sends you into a nose dive.
Right, this one's the spud.
And this one's aimed at you clipped in riders.
So you've got those clipped shoes,
clipped pedals.
Basically you're relying on that clipped shoe
to bring up that rear bike.
To bring up the whole bike.
You're pulling, you're pulling on your legs.
You're getting in this position.
And you're probably arguing with me,
yes, you are jumping.
Yes, you're getting in the air.
But when it comes to pulling too much
on that rear wheel when those, relying on those clips,
it's gonna send you over the bars.
Basically you're putting yourself in a box as well.
And what I mean by this is,
you're pulling up because you're using those pedals.
You're pulling up.
You're travelling.
And you're landing.
The dead sailor.
Yes, just imagine a captain of a ship
stiffly saluting whilst the ship goes down.
(grunting)
That's the noise you're gonna make when
you go in the air.
You're stiffening up.
And you're gonna find yourself getting all stiff in the air,
panic stations are going.
You're gonna favour one side,
your strong side of your body.
You're gonna feel like you're pulling too much one side.
And you're gonna go all sideways in the air.
And you're gonna land in a mess.
And it's gonna fire you off the trail.
That's the dead sailor.
Okay, this one's called the stretch.
So you've got enough speed.
You're coming in.
And all you're gonna go is lean back.
And stretch out.
And thinking that the lip is just gonna
fire you off into the stratosphere.
But it's not.
Your bike's barely gonna even leave the ground.
And that's bad technique
because you could bust your bum on that.
That could get stopped.
And you can fling yourself over the bars.
That's not good.
Don't do the stretch.
So there's a few mistakes that we kind of tend to do
when it comes to jumping out on the trail.
Now before we hit the trail,
and we start learning that technique,
let me talk about body position
and a little bit of a bike setup.
Body position, you wanna adopt that attack position.
So what that is is you wanna keep level pedals on your bike.
You wanna have one foot down.
You wanna keep level pedals.
You wanna bend your elbows.
You wanna look ahead.
And you wanna bend your knees.
The other one is on your bike setup,
the only thing you gotta do
is when you wanna do some jumping
is lower that saddle.
All right, let's talk about technique
and let's break it down.
So you're riding the trail.
You're in that attack position.
When it comes to the jump in front of you,
it all starts way before it.
About a bike, a bike and half length
just before the takeoff.
And what that is, you wanna lower your body weight
down into your bike.
So bending your elbows and bending your knees.
But you don't wanna be above your saddle.
You wanna bring your hips a little bit behind it
because you don't want that to hit you in the bum.
So you've lowered your body weight down.
And whilst you're coming up to the lip
you're gonna find yourself leaning back.
And that's perfect.
You wanna be having that body weight
a little bit over the back wheel.
Just to help get that front wheel up into the air.
You're in that attack position
and you're letting that front wheel
drive into that take off.
And there's a key thing here is not to lean back
and stretch out those arms
because that's where you're gonna lose your pop.
And you're gonna find yourself with too much body weight
over that rear wheel and it's gonna be quite hard
for you to project yourself over the jump.
So you wanna keep those elbows bent.
And you're looking ahead.
And you're driving that front wheel up into the air.
And you'll feel a little tug
because you're keeping that body position.
You feel like you're pulling on the bars,
which is good because you want that little pop
from that front wheel to get that wheel
up into the air.
Okay, now your front wheel is in the air.
And I'm gonna just explain this a little bit.
It's not from doing that.
It's from your body weight being way behind your saddle.
So your body weight's leaning back
and you've got that nice stiff riding position
to keep that front wheel driving up the lip.
Now it's all about timing.
It's about getting that back wheel
to just feel a little bit light
and that's when you explode up.
And you bring the bike up into you with your hips.
So you're not just going like this.
You're bringing it up into you
like you're standing up.
Look at this slow mo.
I'm basically standing up off my pedals,
exploding up into the air, and forward.
We're in the air, woo hoo.
What do you do?
It's all about relaxing right now.
So what you wanna do is push out your arms
just to level out that bike.
And what that does essentially is when you're landing
it gives you more travel.
As much travel you got on the front of your bike
you got more in your arms
because when you land, you can do this.
Look how much travel that is.
That's like 400 millimetres of travel,
as well as your knees.
So you wanna stretch out your knees.
You wanna just relax and look at your landing.
Right, landing technique yes,
it's all about taking off.
It's all about getting in the air.
But it's all about getting a good landing.
And this comes with a lot of practise
because depending on what kind of terrain
or what kind of landing you've got,
like this one right here is quite short
so you wanna land your front wheel first
because if you tend to land back wheel,
you're gonna over jump it.
It's gonna suck up all your speed,
and you're not gonna have enough flow.
So it's key so when you're in the air,
you're gonna push forward a little bit more than you would.
You're gonna exaggerate pushing forward
so you can let that nose drop a little bit more.
Get your front wheel in.
And then let your back wheel follow.
All right, speed.
Some people tend to think you need a lot of speed
to clear a gap.
But having the right technique,
you can clear a gap.
Like this one right in front of me,
I can start from here, put a few cranks in,
and I can clear that jump with not a lot of speed.
So speed kind of gets outweighed by the technique.
Obviously when you get a bigger jump
you're gonna have to go faster.
But with the correct technique,
you don't tend to go really fast into a jump,
and make a mistake.
So a few cranks into this jump.
And I can clear it.
Here's another jump, but this one's a little bit bigger.
Bigger take off, bigger gap, bigger landing.
And the arch of it is gonna make you
a little bit higher as well on that jump.
But it's the same technique applies to this
as it would on a smaller jump.
It's just you're gonna be coming in
a little bit faster for this.
So there you go, a few tips on how to get your bike
up into the air.
But just stop there.
Just continue to practise that technique
on that jump that you're practising on.
Get that thing nailed.
Because when you get this technique nailed
you can find natural hits on the trail.
You find a log, you find a lump,
you find a rock you can hit that,
jump it, gap it to another piece of that trail.
Spice up that local trail of yours.
Talk about spicing up a trail,
click over here for this video here,
this is all about how to find natural hits on the trail.
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And I'll see you at the next one.