- 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. Don't forget to subscribe. If you love this thing
give it a thumbs up like. And I'll see you at the next one.
as someone who just recently recovered from two broken arms after taking a jump poorly, I will definitely be taking this into consideration
Great video. It’s nice to see how little speed you need to get good air over even quite small jumps.
I'm a dead sailor myself, especially on sketchy takeoffs.
I recently switched from clipless to flats so I will be forced to using better technique. I have to make a mental note now to not pull up using my feet. It’ll be an adjustment but probably better for my skill set overall.