(BMX noise)
- Today is gonna involve a lot of prepping, pushing,
hopping, hocking, sending, squashing,
and maybe the occasional plop.
It will also hopefully be the end of Friday fails
as we know it, because it's time to tell you
everything I can possibly think of about drops.
(Upbeat groove music)
Drops are one of the most accessible ways
to catch air
and give you that tasty adrenaline buzz.
Delicious, delicious.
ride fast enough at mellow drop
hold on to a bike that can handle it tight enough,
and chances are, you'll roll away with a big smile
on your face, but it doesn't always go that way,
and when you add together bicycles, speed, air time,
(junk crashing together) and mix them all together
you end up in tears, but we don't want that,
so allow me to try and convey the knowledge,
understanding and methods to tackle any drop
that you will come across.
First of all, what is a drop?
I mean,
I think most people would agree that
a drop is any feature that starts at higher elevation
and there's a downward portion
that's steep enough that catching air happens naturally
or without too much effort,
and a landing area that is lore in elevation
than the run in,
sounds pretty convincing, I think.
But what about a flat run in,
but suddenly pitches down,
for a long stretch and levels out
way at the bottom,
if you were to ride off this bit,
with any speeds,
you would take off, land on the slope,
reach the bottom you would explain
to your riding friends,
Yo, dropped so deep off that, but I mean,
isn't that just a steep slope, not a drop,
maybe a drop is actually just the action of dropping
elevation in the air,
and anything can be a drop
if you really want it to be
but ive built a feature where
you drop through the air, it's called a step down,
When you ride it, you would say jumped it.
but jump is not a drop.
I'll let you lot debate that in the comments,
get angry.
Drop definitions aside,
I'm sure everyone has a bad experience
with drops at some point,
one of the main things we see time and time again
in Friday fails is the classic,
nosedive on a drop.
There's a few different factors that can cause it,
but rotating forwards off a drop
is just a natural thing for your bike to do.
Normally when you're riding your bike,
both wheels are on the ground.
Gravity is pulling you down
towards the center of the earth
and everything's just peachy,
but then, when you ride off a drop with no technique,
gravity continues to pull you down,
towards that chewy center of the earth,
but the front wheel has nothing to hold it up,
as your center of mass is between the two wheels and the
back wheel is still being supported,
The bike and rider will naturally rotate forward
and that rotation will accelerate for
as long as that back wheel remains on the ground,
if the back wheel has left the ground,
that rotation will stop accelerating,
but the rider on bike will just keep rotating until
that bike touches down again.
And 'oh' boy, you better hope in that situation,
that your center of mass is behind the contact parts of that
front wheel, or you're going to have a bad time.
So if this rotation happens and accelerates,
as long as the back wheel is still in the ground,
that means if you go faster,
the back wheel will be on the ground
for less time, and there won't be as much rotation.
This is a viable tactic and going faster off drops and does
often make them easier,
but I still wouldn't call it controlled.
The goal with drops is to land balanced,
which usually means both wheels landing
about the same time.
The first bit of technique Raiders usually naturally develop
on drops to achieve this,
is to lessen the effect of their body weight
on that rotation equation,
This can be done by shifting the weight back and down as the
front wheel leaves the ground and keep that movement going
until the back wheel also leaves the ground.
This looks to the casual observer as
if the back wheel just comes up right to the riders bum,
this action moves the center of mass closer
to the back wheel,
which reduces the leverage that gravity has
when rotating that bike forward,
which slows down the acceleration of that rotation,
if you could move your mass even further and get over the
back axle, well,
then you'd remove all forward rotation
because that's a manual and it's sick,
And another way to do drops
without doing that quarter front flip onto your face,
probably get to that in the future though.
So, moving the weight back works nicely,
but why move the weight down as well?
This quick downward movement momentarily
unweights your body to a certain degree,
it's very hard to explain this effect,
but the act of vertically coiling up your body,
pulls your head and feet towards
your center of mass,
if you do this at the correct speed, for a moment,
you will be temporarily weightless,
as far as your bike is concerned.
Ever seen someone let go of a stretched out slinky,
and the bottom just sort of hovers there
as it coils up, it's kind of like that
if you are momentarily weightless,
there's no weight going down into the bike,
so there's no force to rotate you
and the bike forward,
Make sense? Yeah, pretty cool.
Don't do it like that, don't.
You can only maintain that weightless moment for however
much room you have available before you hit that back wheel
with your bum.
If this is your default dropping technique,
you will get to a drop discover you're going too slow
and you will run out of room before your
back wheel has cleared the drop at some point,
this is what causes some of the most violent crashes on
drops is when the back wheel makes contact
with those cheeks,
it's like locking up that back brake,
which throws your weight forward and usually sends you
out the front door,
and then you're going to get real friendly with the ground,
running out of room between the bum and the back wheel
happens a lot on drops,
and there's a super common mistake that a lot of people do
that needs to be highlighted,
Drops can be scary,
And the most common reaction to being scared and a bike is
to move away from that thing that scares you.
I mean, it makes sense,
scary thing there.
Well, I'm just going to be over here.
I'll be over here.
It's the worst thing you can do if you insist on doing that
previous technique, at least give yourself a chance,
be brave and begin to move from the boss stance.
And if you don't know what that is,
you should probably go watch
the other videos in the series, body positions,
It's a good one.
So if that previous technique isn't up to snuff because of
what happens when you're going slower, Well,
I mean what are the options?
Well, there's this little trick you can do that,
I see a lot of people using that unweights
both the wheels and the rider.
- Wait, wait, wait.
You're just going to explain this in minute detail
so that you can then go wrong
and feel all smug about yourself on you.
- Yeah.
- Ah, who's the douche bag now, it's you.
- I'm the douche bag
So yeah, a lot of riders will use
a two wheel unweight
or even a wheel English bunny hop,
lifting both wheels off the ground at
the same time to try and keep things level
as they flew off a drop,
and as my colleague graciously pointed out
this is not the ideal technique,
but it is a great move to have as a backup to get you off a
small steep drop when maybe you've made a mistake,
arrive with not enough speed,
but you can't stop and you need to do something to get
safely off of it.
This technique has the shortest preparation time for what it
can accomplish, but it shouldn't be your default.
There's two reasons,
i don't recommend it as a default technique,
when you hop or unweight the bike,
you lift your mass up higher,
the higher up you are before you drop the harder you're
going to come down, which is fine,
if there is a landing that you're trying to hit the sweet
spot of, but if it's a flat landing,
then it's just going to make the landing harsher.
The other reason is a two wheel unweight or hop has to
happen a full bike length before the drop,
this means you have to be sure your timing is right,
because you don't want the backfield to clip the edge of
that drop, causing any heart attacks.
Other solutions to this problem include a mellow manualing
technique or front wheel lift. I mentioned this before,
and it puts just enough energy to lift the front wheel up
for a bike length,
and then as the front wheel begins to drop back to what
would be the ground.
The back wheel also leaves the drop
and both wheels fall evenly together,
This can work well,
especially if you're trying to get a bit more heightened
distance off the drop to clear an obstacle or make it to a
landing, but in that situation,
we're getting closer to jumping techniques,
So we're going to save that for the next video.
If you ride trails,
there is another variation you'll have used to lift the
front wheel, which is similar to the manual,
but a bit more complicated, the good old pedal wheelie.
It performs the exact same job as the manual,
but it has a bit more inherent risk,
Generally speaking, you would only ever need to do this,
if you're going too slow for the other techniques to work,
and if you're not prepared by selecting the correct gear,
it might be too hard a gear
you ever tried to wheelie in a hard gear?
Yeah, well,
you ain't getting it up
and there's nothing worse than a floppy drop...
I was really pleased when I wrote that last night.
(Inaudible Speech)
Right, now we get to it the holy grail
of dropping techniques. So adaptable
and controlled, elegant and smooth,
the technique of choice is the push
let's break down the what, how and why?
So the method for doing
the exaggerated form of this technique,
firstly involves some preparation just before the drop,
you need to bend the arms and legs to lower yourself down
and forward into the bike,
this coils you up like a spring
and allows you to put plenty of movement
into that push.
Why push the bike forward? Well,
this action speeds the bike up for a moment which reduces
the time that the front wheel is unsupported,
where the back wheel is still on the ground,
which will limit how much forward rotation can be generated.
The farther forward you prepare,
the more energy you can put into the push,
but you only really need massively exaggerated pushes
when you're going really slow.
At speed, a small bit forward and a mellow push
is usually all this needed.
The takeoff technique isn't finished though,
as the push itself is just half of the equation
and mainly focuses on the arms,
the legs still have a little bit of work to do to unweight
the bike as the back wheel is coming off the drop.
Remember that first technique with the rider brings the bum
down towards the back wheel. Well,
you just add in a bit of that towards the end of the push,
by bending the legs a little just as the back wheels coming
off the drop.
Now that might seem very complicated and it's very hard to
practice a complicated move on a scary feature,
so I recommend you practice this on something well within
your comfort zone,
it's also good to peel from other skills that feel very
similar to help develop this new technique, easier.
This pushing technique is very similar
to absorbing a roller,
it feels like you're absorbing the edge of the drop,
and then instead of pushing the bike down
the backside of a roller,
you're pushing the bike forward to keep
the bike level in the air,
talking of pushing the bike forward,
i need to add a little asterix on that one,
You actually want to push the bike
at the angle of the ground that
you intend to land on,
that means if it's a flat landing, yes,
push the bike horizontally forward,
but if it's a steeper downward landing,
you want to push the bikes at the angle
of the landing slope so that the bike matches
the angle.
It's usually better to land both wheels
at the same time or sometimes front wheel first,
landing back wheel first can soften certain landings
and look cool in certain situations,
but that front wheel is your control wheel
and when it's not on the ground,
it's hard to fix any mistakes you might've made.
So hopefully at this point,
the push technique is making sense and you now
have a good idea of how to take off in a controlled manner.
That's the hard bit,
now we've got to get things ready for landing.
One of the benefits of this pushing technique is once you
are clear of the drop,
you should be in a low position on the bike
and from this position, you can extend your legs,
bring the bike back underneath you so that you land centered
in the bike and effectively place the bike smoothly
back in the ground,
this is something you can't do as effectively
with the other techniques and it really helps
to smooth out drops.
If you watch from the side and trace line
tracking close to the center of mass,
you should see that the lane traced by the push is so much
smoother than the other techniques.
Let's do some examples, point out the key things,
make you aware of any common mistakes and just make sure
that you're ready to take this to any feature.
You've got to approach drops with caution
because you just don't know,
you don't want a spooky.
Before me is I guess a roller,
because you can roll this, you can come in,
slow down and you can just roll on down that,
but once you go above a certain speed
you're taking off and at that point
it's a drop and you can use dropping technique to
get this really good, cause there's no landing for this,
there's no point cooling up, off of this
unless you're going to take a sneaky,
but we'll get to that in a second.
You want to absorb this, control the bike off it,
so you go off of it, nice and level,
and place that bike back down in the ground,
as best as you can.
So let's go through the steps for this drop,
so I'm going to come in, default body position
coming in nice and relaxed,
If I want to do any braking, i do so on the run-up
cause you don't want to break while
you're doing the movement. Because if you brake
as you're doing that,
it's probably going to pitch you forward,
another thing that can cause a big nosedive.
So I've done my break and I'm coming up to the edge,
then I want to do my prep work,
so I'm going to dip down and forward
and that's gonna allow me to then push the bike off of it,
so the timing for it, you don't want to do it
before the edge,
And the reason for that is if I start pushing,
like a foot or so before, I'm going to run out
of that movement before the bike is fully off of it,
you want to wait until just at the edge before a push-in,
so just as the front wheels coming off the edge,
that's when I'm going to push the bike forward
and slightly down, cause the run-out
isn't flat, it is slightly down,
I want to push the bike at the angle of it
and I actually personally prefer it to
get the front wheel down slightly earlier,
so I'm going to push down a little bit.
Push the bike forward and as I'm pushing
with the arms,
the legs are coming up and the back wheels coming
up towards my bum to like soak up the edge of that drop,
I'm off of it, I've done it, I'm in air,
Everything's looking good,
extending the bike out to the ground,
landing centered and actually for this one
I land with my weight a little bit back,
because I've get on the brakes cause it's another
spicy feature coming up.
So that's why you always have to adjust the techniques,
you've got understand the principles so you can tweak it for
what the trail's doing,
So when I land way back a little bit and on the bricks.
So the things you got to watch out for when trying to do
this technique, when I've tried to teach people in the past,
I'll say all right,
you want to get down and then
you want to push the bike forward and absorb it,
or what they sometimes do is when you're used to just
springing off of stuff is they'll go to push,
but they'll push themselves like up and back
and they'll still add a bit of spring,
So don't push down with the legs.
It should be all absorbing and pushing.
So if you feel yourself springing up or you get a person to
film you and you can see that happening,
really focus on as you're pushing where the arms,
the legs stay relaxed.
Other classic mistakes, forgetting to prepare before
or coming in a little bit tentative,
you've got to get right forward
and in terms of timing, when you're practicing this,
it can be good to prepare early,
just so you've got time to think of everything,
but for proper timing and you want to
be coming in quite tall and relaxed,
so you're able to really dip down through
the edge of the drop cause you want your body
to be going diagonally through the feature,
and that's what allows you to put the bike back
on the ground, nice and quick.
The amount that you prepare
will dictate how much you can
absorb the feature or how much
you can neutralize the feature or how early
you can get the bike back on the ground
because the more you absorb it, the lower
your torso is and the quicker you can push
the bike back on the ground,
but there's a lane here where you
can jump over the stump on the inside
cause it's really fast lane, and it looks sick
and it looks mint. If I was to fully absorb it,
like the way I would normally do,
so if i do that pushing technique,
I would hit the stump and have a bad time,
so you can actually use that absorbent technique,
but just dial it down,
just dip into the bike a little bit
and then give it a gentle push so that
you go a little bit farther, but
you are still making things controlled and smooth
so you can adjust the technique to kind of
fit exactly what you want to do.
And that's it, that's drops, That's the push,
push it real good.
Well,
that is absolutely everything I could possibly think
of about drops,
so I hope you found it interesting
and learned something new, if you did,
drop down into those comments,
let us know what you liked or what you didn't like,
and you might as well push one
of those thumb button icons while you're there.
Now it's up to you,
take your bicycle out into the wilderness,
practice the technique on a familiar drop,
get it as smooth and controlled as possible,
build up to bigger ones, challenge yourself,
don't panic, maintain the technique,
subscribe to the channel,
I'll see you in the next video,
its the big one, jumps, complicated subject,
hard to put into words, I'm trying though,
the script is almost there, really long,
jumps are good.
(Happy Upbeat Music)
I actually don't know who that is.
So I don't know if this is a meme,
we see in the comments all the time,
if you're on a hardtail, exactly the same.
It is.
If you're on a fat bike, exactly the same.
If you're on an e-bike,
I know you don't like them,
exactly the same, the techniques the same.
If it's a two wheeled vehicle,
you can do the same technique.
Actually,
if you're in Australia and you have to do everything
backwards, you know, like the Coriolis effect,
so it's like you, you don't absorb it.
The bike absorbs into yeah.