- We get sent your fail videos all the time,
and some of those crashes are absolutely unbelievable!
(gravel crunches)
Of course, some of them are complete accidents,
and unavoidable, but some can be avoided,
and in this video I'm going to try and show you how.
(loud crash)
First video comes from Charles who's riding his pivot.
UCSC Trails in Santa Cruz, so check this out.
(onlooker shouts loudly)
Charles says he was practicing jumps,
and took "One of the biggest I've done,
I was too focused on clearing it,
but I didn't pick the best line.
I realized I was heading to the tree but after landing,
my suspension was completely compressed,
and I just couldn't turn my bike.
Could have been worse though,
bike and body were completely unscathed."
So in the video you can hear,
just before it goes slow-mo,
you can hear a bit of a crunch.
(onlooker shouts loudly)
(loud crunch)
So I wonder if that was just a bit of a heavy gear change,
or maybe your gear's jumping around a little bit,
and then it goes slow-mo,
and it almost looks like your chain jams,
because your feet don't go level,
but you don't say anything about that
so I'll presume that doesn't happen.
So what I think actually,
the real cause of this going wrong on the jump,
is taking off without feet level.
So I'd always try and have cranks level,
so you get a nice takeoff
with your weight central over both pedals.
If you do it, or if you pedal too close to the jump,
and one pedal is lower than the other,
it's really easy to become unbalanced, takeoff,
and that's when your weight kind of twists a little bit.
I think that's the cause of going
a bit sideways in the air,
and then when you land, you can't straighten it out.
So, really it's about trying to pedal,
and then stop as soon as you can,
so you're set up for jump.
I've got a good example here,
I'll try and show you how to do it.
You have to go quite fast to clear this jump,
and you are pedaling round this berm,
so just check how I do it.
(upbeat guitar music)
The next video comes from Raphael,
riding in Cagayan De Oro.
(onlookers give encouragement)
(onlookers laugh)
Raphael says "I cleaned a part of our old trail,
and then (beep) happens."
(onlookers laugh)
So yeah, you can see you're dropping into,
what looks like a really steep section,
your body position looks good,
but then all hell breaks loose.
But actually if you look closely at the video,
in the bottom of the screen,
you can see there's something lying across the trail,
can't quite tell what it is,
could be a root, or a pipe or a bit of rock,
but it's lying at that horrible sort of
diagonally down across the trail,
and I'm sure everyone's hit some of that,
it pretty much just wiped your front wheel out.
(upbeat guitar music)
That's the slipperiest thing I've ever tried to ride across!
And that's what happens here.
Front wheel goes, super steep,
front wheel goes out of control,
lands in this big hole,
and then that's the end of it,
basically, you start rolling down the hill.
So situations like that,
it's really important that you,
sort of, take that thing out of the equation.
Even riding on flat, if you hit something that's slippy,
and it's diagonally going across the trail,
it's pretty much always going to wipe you out,
so this is where you really need to
sort of think about either bunny hopping over that thing,
which can be really steep and steep sections,
because if you bunny hop, you're going to drop a long way,
and also you got to set up for it, and you're on the brakes.
So sometimes it's just a case of just unweighting the bike,
and maybe just front wheel then back wheel,
but it's really, you know,
you got to take that thing out of the equation,
so if you hit that,
this is probably going to happen every time.
What is really difficult about this is
you probably got to try and do all that,
whilst not looking at it,
because you really got to see what's coming next,
because it's the thing that happens after that
slippy thing that's going to cause you the pain.
So do all that,
whilst you're seeing it in your peripheral vision down here,
but looking where you need to be on that trail.
If you're a bit dubious about practicing that
into a steep section,
then do it on the flat.
One wheel at a time, and then the proper bunny hop.
(upbeat guitar music)
The next crasher is Danny riding his
Trek Marlin Five in Cambridge, Wisconsin.
(wind whips past)
(Danny groans)
Danny himself says "Not much to see here,
but the sound of me getting the bars into my gut is great."
(Danny groans)
Uh yes, I've been there, done that.
I think this is all about timing Danny,
I'm pretty sure you know what happened here,
but it looks to me like
there's that tree on the right hand side,
probably got the bottom part of it,
like a root sticking out,
and you've slammed the pedal into it,
I've definitely been guilty of this.
I've actually separated my shoulder doing this,
following Steve Peat, riding along,
tried to pedal in a place I shouldn't have been,
smashed the pedal in,
straight over the bars unexpectedly,
and straight onto the shoulder.
So in this situation,
I mean you probably learnt your lesson of course,
but I would say, when you're riding through sections,
this is quite a good one actually,
where there's lot of obstacles on the ground,
you're never going to see every single one,
because there's hundreds of them,
I actually try and change down a gear
so I'm pushing a slower cadence,
so actually my feet don't get as
close to the ground as often,
and try and keep an eye out for things
in the corner of your eye,
like if there's a tree,
there probably is going to be a root next to it,
or even sometimes there's a, like, sniper stumps,
in bits of undergrowth,
so you should try and play it safe,
try and be slow with pedal strokes,
and stop pedaling if you think you really need to.
Another factor that could have
contributed to this crash is,
you can see in slow motion,
just as you hit that root,
your thumb has come off the bar to hit the shifter,
so you don't have a great grip if the thumb is over the bar,
so when you slam into that root,
probably your hand comes off the bar,
and then you're going over.
Could you have saved it if you weren't trying to shift?
Maybe but probably not in this situation,
but I've definitely been in that case where,
if you've got a good grip and you hit something,
you can sort of bench press your way out of it,
not always, sometimes you go over anyway,
but if your hand comes off the bar,
it's game over.
(upbeat guitar music)
Last, but definitely not least,
Landon, riding his GT Aggressor Pro,
on a backyard trail in Utah.
(upbeat guitar music)
(blows raspberry)
Ooooh (chuckles) I think we've probably-
Well many of us have probably done this
in the early days of riding bikes,
and I definitely have done this,
gone over the bars on a dropoff.
What you can see here is
there's a bit of an upslope coming to the drop,
so you're going to lose a lot of speed there,
which is going to make it harder,
but the real problem is the manual,
if you actually pause it
when you're moving back to lift the front wheel,
you're quite high above the saddle,
and compare that to how far you can get back on the bike,
you can see, really, the difference in where your hips are,
so it's really a case of trying to get further back,
practicing your manual so your hips are,
sort of, above your real axle,
so that if you get the speed or the timing wrong,
you're still right to the back of the bike,
you're not high up above the saddle,
because in this situation,
the front wheel drops, you're above the saddle,
there's pretty much only one way this is going to go,
and it's over the bars.
So this is really a perfect example of
why you should get back and not up.
One thing to remember is also try and keep your head up.
It sounds simple,
but actually can make a big difference to your body weight
and where it is on the bike.
Just by keeping your head up,
it sort of opens your chest up,
brings your weight behind the bike.
Probably not enough to save you in this case,
but sometimes it will.
(relaxed flamenco music)
Well hopefully there's some tips there that's going to help
at least a few of you stop crashing,
because some of those are really common ones
I used to see a lot when I was coaching.
If you like this video,
and you think I should carry on with this little series,
I can definitely do more.
You guys sent us thousands of fail videos,
so I can pick them out dead easily
and try and help you guys out,
so let us know in the comments
if you think I should do that.
If you want to see a previous video we've done
about how to stop going over the bars,
over there for that one.
If you want to watch me have a massive crash,
click down there for the Andes Pacifico video.
Thumbs up if you don't like crashing, and subscribe.