Better Manuals In 1 Day - How To Manual MTB

hey what's up guys my name is Kyle Warner and today I'm going to show you guys how to manual alright so manually is basically a wheelie but without having a pedal it's one of the foundations of mountain biking and it's a really useful tool to learn so you can kind of manual in between rollers to carry momentum you can use it to get up in over obstacles and also coming into drops knowing how to manual can help you how to drop a little bit slower in case it's like out of a turn or something and you don't have as much momentum so it's definitely one of the foundations of mountain biking and today I'm gonna use my girlfriend and kind of coach her through the proper technique and then hopefully it can help translate to you so I'm excited to this video let's get into it will bring April in and see how she does alright so this is my girlfriend April hey guys umm so today we're gonna try to get her to manual so let's see how it goes first thing we did is we set up some cones so we have cones kind of set up about six eight feet apart the reason that I like using cones or cracks in the sidewalk is basically it gives you a goal so having a goal is nice because then you can kind of like look ahead look where you're going and that will help you keep your front wheel up we're gonna basically have her do a full run-through on her own no advice at all see what it looks like and then I'll kind of give her some pointers on technique and then we'll see if we can get her doing this distance then maybe on the trailer on the pumptrack later all right sweet let's do it alright it sounds good all right April wanted me to do one for you guys to show you so here compress balance and that's Emanuel alrighty are you ready that was pretty good alright that was pretty good thank you how do you feel that went what do you think should be different or D even though I don't even know I feel like probably everything no I think you did really good there's a few little things I saw your body position okay so I'll grab the bike rack and we're gonna throw you in the bike rack and a little walkthrough techniques okay all right so to help her kind of walk through the technique I brought out a small little bike stand basically this is gonna help her stay side-to-side stable where I can kind of hold her in position she can figure out the body's position and work from there another really good tool for doing this is building like a manual trainer so I have a video I'll put the link in the description of how to build a manual trainer but that really helps get your body position right and get you comfortable kind of staying back on the bike so let's go ahead we're gonna get April to get on this thing and then we're gonna kind of walk through her body position and get her in the right spot alright hop on cool so when you're doing a manual the first thing you want to really make sure is that you have your feet level so she's doing a good job there when we're coming into the manual having a little bit more speed will help going slow on a manual is hard I know April likes to be in a little bit harder gear so she can kind of get a little more speed and a little bit more torque but number one thing is make sure your feet are level when you go to manual alright so from here what are you gonna do next yep so she's gonna get in a good standing position it kind of coasts into the manual and then from here what I always like to do is I like to drop my front heel slightly so that'll kind of shift your weight back a little bit and then head up a little bit and then she's basically her goal is to try to get her hip bone which is here she's gonna try to get that hip bone past the rear axle so the shorter you are the harder this is to do but if you watch when I bring the bike up the higher the bike gets the less she SV leaned back and the more her hip is passed to Axel but if we're down here and we're not getting very high and then it is once the drop so if you're tall you can get away with doing really low manuals if you're a little bit shorter you kind of have to get the front wheel high just so that that you know where your cranks are to where your rear axle is gets shortened up because it's rotating like this so let's do one more test so she'll pop boom and then right about there is her balance point right now so her front wheel is pretty high so things you can do if you're a little bit scared of your front wheel be in this high squat your legs a little bit more sub n and then push your butt back so so then that kind of brings your manual point down a little bit to here that's a good point so another thing that I see a lot of people do that I did a bad job explaining is I see a lot of people go into the manual and they pull like this and you kind of do the t-rex arms so you don't want t-rex arms you want your arms to be it's pretty much locked because that way they're even so that'll keep you from pulling harder on one side and getting that sideways angle if your arms are locked they're pretty even so that'll help you a lot so what I like to do is almost like a kettlebell swing where your arms are locked and you use your hips to initiate it versus like doing a pull and then another tip that I want to show you guys is we'll get back up in that manual position really quick okay so you're she's pretty balanced right here like I'm not doing much now put your head down so when she puts her head down it drops the front end so I see a lot of times people will be going towards their goal they look at it and then they look down and it drops the front end so sometimes you can even just look down with your eyeballs keep your head up so it'll keep your weight back or sometimes I'll look a little bit past my goal so say I'm trying to manual this cone maybe I'll look two feet past it that way when I get to it I'm still you know looking a little bit yeah all right so she had a question of if she feels like she's gonna go over the back and loop out what should you do and that's the biggest thing you can do for that is cover your rear brake with at least one finger and basically the rear brake will keep you from going any higher I like to cover my brake and have it slightly squeeze the whole time that way I can kind of modulate so if I'm mewling down a trail like a lot of times you'll see us jump and land in a manual I land with my finger slightly on the brake and not that way if I'm gonna loop out I can squeeze it really quick and if I'm not gonna get enough lift on the front wheel I let go of the brake and it'll bring me out so let's do it one more time so feet level heel down little compression and then pop back boom do you feel that yeah so that was perfect and now she's in a good balance point again this is a little bit scary but on a mountain bike and with a shorter person you have to get a little higher than you think if you really want to learn how to manual without having to get so high than a BMX bike or a dirt jumper helps a lot because the rear end is a lot shorter and basically like I said a manual starts when your hip bone here gets past the rear axle point you think you can remember all that she's doing pretty good already so I think with a little bit of these tips that will help her a lot and we're gonna see if she can manual through this little section you got it okay alright she said she wants a little bit more running and a little bit more distance yeah dude that was sick that was perfect honestly I think that if you just keep doing that you practice a little bit you're gonna like have it perfect don't do a couple more yeah all right let's see if we can get it dialed in she's basically doing everything perfect and she just needs a little bit more repetition she's gonna have it locked in but the technique is there she's dropping her front heel she's squatting down she has her arms locked like that's literally perfect so everything that she's doing technique wise is perfect and all she needs to do is just a little bit more practice and once you get more reps on it I mean I did so many reps like out in front of my house on the sidewalk just doing a million laps on just two cracks three cracks for cracks five cracks in the sidewalk and then eventually you can just go as long as you want so practice she's gonna have it perfect but I don't know about you but I think maybe we could try to apply this on the pumptrack a little bit all right so we came over here to the pump track you look nervous yeah so what we're gonna try to do because she's actually done it before but she had a pretty bad crash when your first look she's first learning how to ride yeah and you thought you're hot stuff for a minute right it was the first day on a dirt jumper yeah and yeah yeah so she has a little bit of PTSD on these rollers exactly so I think that now she has at the technique down we're gonna try to get her to go through it again but only if you want to be like no pressure okay but yeah I think you can do it I'll try okay I think you get over it yeah I want you to show me what I should do because I don't know what I'm doing okay I'm gonna I'll just show you I guess then the first one looks to be the flattest so it's a little bit longer but it's flat so that one could be good if you want to just like not have to worry about the bike dropping so much the second one which is over here has a little bit kind of more camels hump so that one's gonna kind of squirt your bike out in front a little bit faster so that one will be a little bit more aggressive and then the third one it's pretty steep but it's really short so kind of up to you but I'll just run through it and you can see which one looks more comfortable okay that's the first one second third I don't know I need to see again you see again okay I'll do another one about the camera then okay all right I don't know if that helped you at all but it did because now I understand what the goal is the goal is to get on the lip get your front wheel up and not touch the middle and then to drop on the backside all right you don't got to get crazy with it just do those nice little manuals yeah all right you got it so that was really good actually just to the first run what I see a lot of people do and kind of what you did too is you're trying to lift up before your tire goes off the end of the jump so just be patient okay it's scary I know it's it's scary and you're nervous and it's hard but when you're trying to manual roller like this you really have to just let your bike ride all the way off the roller before you try to set back because if you set back at the bottom of the roller then once your bike compresses it kicks you forward and you lose all your pop so just be patient is ride off a little bit longer okay all right you got it it's so good that was sick good job yeah yeah thank you for coming out and let me help you and I hope you guys can kind of relate to her struggles a little bit hopefully this video helps you guys out gonna go over like what you learn one time yeah okay okay my feet flat front wheel but front foot drops heel yep and then I need to look straight and then arms slightly bent locked to get the compression yeah and then compression and they need to go back with my hips and get it at least with my axle yep get your hip bone passed through axle and then when you do that your arms will be locked out and then yeah you did awesome thanks yeah so yeah it's really fun kind of watching her progress she's been scared of this for awhile and just wanted to kind of conquer that fear and with the right technique you can do anything so I've been wanting to do these videos for a little while and I'm just happy that she was able to help me and get it done for you guys so if you have any questions or comments or anything throw them in the comment section below and I'll try to get to those as much as I can and then if you could like and subscribe this video that'd be awesome I'd really appreciate it and I think we're gonna try to do what a few more in the future some drops and jumps so yeah I'll do like drops and jumps and all these other ones in the future so if you guys do want to see that definitely subscribe and stay tuned and we'll get that done so good job killed it alright see you guys later [Music]

Channel: Kyle & April - Ride MTB

Views: 1,008,841

Keywords: mountain biking, kyle warner, how to manual, mountain bike skills, how to do a manual, mountain bike manual, ride mtb, april zastrow, Kyle and April Mtb, How to mountain bike

Id: 2YQrXfH-U38

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/xeonrage]

overlaying the graphics really helped here.

and i have such a bad habit of putting toes down :(

[u/Okk1980]

Thx for sharing. One question I currently have is if I push with my arms after going down in the L shape or if I only push with my legs and my arms are straightened and pulling on the bars with my body weight?