(explosions)
(glass shattering)
- This is episode three of Crash Course,
where we look at your crashes.
Not for entertainment purposes,
but to try and help you guys out.
I'm going to take a real detailed look at them,
look at them in slow motion, see if there's any reason why
you fell off, and hopefully to try and avoid them.
But, before we get into it, make sure
you subscribe and hit the bell notification,
so you know when we do an upload.
Right, who's the first person?
This one's from Callum, who is riding
in Coed y Brenin on a Lapierre Edge, I think.
It says he's got a big cut on his elbow,
got bruises everywhere.
So check out his crash.
It looks like Callum just hits that roller
and pulls up really hard and basically jumps flat.
So there's a time and place for jumping,
and making sure that you're going to land somewhere nice.
'Cause what Callum does, lands completely flat,
and has a big old crash on hard ground.
So that looks like it was painful.
So in that case, what I'd do is just soak that roller up.
'Cause, you know, you need somewhere nice to land.
And if you land in a hole or an upslope,
you can have a pretty bad crash.
Right, this one's from Bastiaan,
who's riding in Sleenerzand, which sounds cool.
This is his first ride after an injury and in for a new one.
Ooh, check this one out.
It's a lot of winded noises, and it sounds very painful.
(Bastiaan yelling)
It looks to me like he's going slow off that drop-off.
So the front wheel is going to drop,
so this is where you need a good...
Basically, get that front wheel unweighted.
So a nice manual, and it looks like you really pull.
If you slow-motion this, there's a big pop
as you go off that drop-off, and
you do go a little bit sideways,
and 'cause you sort of go off the edge
of the track as well, you see when
that front wheel lands a bit sideways, it just loses grip,
and down you go like a big sack of spuds.
That one looked like it was painful (inhales sharply).
So my advice would be to try and go
a little bit quicker if you can.
That means the front wheel isn't going to drop
as hard as it did, and also just try and learn
that manual technique so you're right
at the back of the bike when going off the drop-off.
The big difference with using a manual,
so you're using your weight to lift the front wheel,
is that when you go to the back of the bike,
basically your arms extend so they should stay straight.
And that means that the bars won't twist,
'cause your arms are straight.
If you've popped and pulled with your arms
then you can get that wrong sometimes,
and that's where things start to go sideways, 'cause
you don't always judge the pull, the arms, exactly the same.
But if you're doing a manual, front wheel
should stay straight and should keep your balance.
Check this one out, this is a biggie.
This is Mike, who's riding a Trek Remedy 8
at Wind Hill, our local bike park.
He's trying to boost a step-up.
I know the jump well, it's a big old jump.
He's fast into it, and he got bucked and landed on his face.
Injury is a bruised penis and sore ego.
Ow, that doesn't sound great.
So what you can see is actually Mike gets bucked.
We've talked about this quite a lot.
So hits the takeoff, and after it starts going forward.
That can happen with full suspension bikes.
There can be a few reasons for this.
Sometimes if you've got the rebound set up really fast
on your shock, and you don't pump
in hard enough, when you hit a takeoff,
it's then going to want to bounce you up and over.
In this case, I think it's 'cause Mike is pedaling
really close to the takeoff, which you have to do,
it's quite hard to clear those jumps.
You have to go really fast, but
I think Mike doesn't quite get the time to set up,
and push into takeoff, because
he's pedaling really close to it all the way,
then goes into the rear shock, and then boom, up and over.
And you can see, he tries to bail.
It's definitely something that's worth learning,
if you're getting into doing really big jumps.
I know when I was quite young, I used to ride dirt jumps,
or BMX trails all the time, and I learned how to bail.
So if you're jumping a double,
and you're not going to clear it,
to go over the bars is going to save you a lot of the times.
You see, Mike does it, but actually,
he gets his foot caught as he goes over.
So he doesn't let go of the bars early enough,
and that's what caused him the problems.
That's why he smashes into the bike.
I think once you know you're going up and over,
and you're likely to go over the bars, it's probably better
to just ditch the bike, jump up and over the bars.
It's not pretty, but you're probably going to get away
without smashing onto the bike,
and hopefully without hurting yourself.
This ones from Ben, who's riding a VooDoo Bizango in Leeds.
And he says, "That went well."
Well, it's a bit like the first video from Callum.
Just going too fast for the trail,
and when you really need to soak that jump up
to stay in control, you launch it.
I mean this is quite a good example.
It's a really fast roll into this jump and this side of it,
it's quite a small jump for the speed.
However, you have got a big nice landing,
so you can afford to overshoot this a little bit.
However, from that takeoff, if I jumped all the way
to the flat, then you're going to get into trouble.
So it's changing what you do to fit the trail.
And sometimes launching it is good,
sometimes it can cause you big trouble.
Also, you can see when you're launching it,
all the weight is going towards the front wheel,
so when you land on the flat, all
that weight is going boom, big old crash.
Check this one out from Harrison.
He's riding a CUBE Aim Hardtail, riding
in Danbury Bike Park.
Fair dos, absolutely launching it, when, if I'm honest,
you don't look supercomfortable on jumps.
It goes wrong straight from the takeoff.
Bike is going sideways, and the front wheel is so high
that when you come down to the landing,
obviously the angle of the bike isn't matched in landing.
So your front wheel's way up in the air, and sideways.
So it's a pretty decent face-plant and grinds.
Hopefully that wasn't too bad.
Yeah, I would say there's a few things going wrong here,
and it's trying to make sure your comfortable with jumps,
before you start sending it too much.
I mean, there's definitely an argument for
doing big jumps, just sending it to learn quick.
But if you're not quite comfortable, things can go wrong
like we saw there, and it can be pretty painful.
So get superconfident on smaller jumps first,
with making the bike go up into the air.
So it's sort of preloading the bike into the takeoff,
and getting a nice bit of air.
So you're actually promoting the bike up and into the air.
You're not just hitting the takeoff and hoping it works.
You've really got to get used
to making the bike go up into the air.
If you're doing that right, by sort of pumping
and then getting back, your weight should stay
in the middle of the bike, basically.
So that should mean it shouldn't go sideways like it is,
but definitely A plus for effort there.
But I would say take a backstep, get supercomfortable,
and then hopefully the big jumps will come easier.
Because, on a big jump, you're in the air for so much longer
if it goes wrong on the takeoff,
it's going to get worse and worse.
There you go, keep sending us your fails using the uploader.
The link to that is down below, super easy to do.
Stick it in the Fails & Bails, and we'll get to see them.
If you want to see the previous editions
of this series of videos, Crash Course,
episodes one and two are over there.
Give us a thumbs-up if you don't like crashing,
if you're trying to fix your problems.
Don't forget to subscribe, see you later!