How to Lift the Front Wheel & Pivot Turn - MiniTip Monday

when you start doing more technical riding riding ruts and hills and getting stuck on your bike you reach a point where being able to hop the front wheel around and progress that into doing a pivot turn is really really helpful so today we're gonna learn to do pivot turns welcome back to mini tip monday [Music] pivot turns are a pretty technical skill set that starts with the baseline of being able to hop the front wheel from one side to the other a little bit essentially all a pivot turn is is being able to hop the front wheel really high get it towards the balance point and direct the bike in the other direction obviously that's a really technical skill so today we're going to learn to do this on a dirt bike mostly because doing it on an adventure bike is terrifying it's not something that i've ever really got to the point where i'm comfortable enough to try so we're gonna learn to do it on a dirt bike i'm gonna jump onto the bike now put the gopro on and talk you through the process of going from not being able to get the front wheel off the ground to doing a pivot turn it probably won't happen as quickly as i explain it in this video it might take a little bit of practice but hopefully you get the idea [Music] before we start doing any front wheel hops or pivot turns there's a few little things then theories that you need to go through the first one is to find a piece of ground that is fit for learning to do this once you get better at it you can do it in more complicated places but right now i have a relatively good grip environment we've got some mud with a bit of moisture in it that really helps to learn this learning on pea gravel not super easy secondly the ground isn't quite flat here it's nearly flat but i'm in a really shallow rut which makes the bike a bit lower and it gives me some high ground to put my foot on that allows me to create even more separation between myself and the bike it gives me a bit more height effectively and it makes learning this much easier the second part of that theory is understanding the processes that we're going to go through i made a video not that long ago which was about learning to rock the bike using the clutch and throttle backwards and forwards backwards and forwards that principle of feeding the clutch out and timing it with a little throttle and repeating that motion again and again is exactly what you need for doing a pivot turn or even hopping the front wheel a little bit left and right we're going to time those two things with a little bounce on the suspension when you do that the front wheel will come up and then it's a case of just getting comfortable with what's going on before we do anything involving the clutch throttle or engine we've got two more things to learn the first is to effectively bounce the suspension the forks so that we can use the rebound action of the fork so when you compress it it comes back up we can use that rebounding action and time that with the throttle and the clutch to get some lift that's the first step the second step is to create some separation between us and the bike exactly the same as we did when we did spin turns so that you can let the bike move and you can control your own balance so the first part of this is our nice effective bounce now you can do this without using a break but it's not as effective because you can see there the bike is moving forwards and backwards all the time you can do it against the back brake that works quite well or you can do it against the front brake which works extra well so ideally you would do it against the front brake but in some situations say if you're on an uphill and you're trying to do this against the back brake works nicer in some situations especially if you're trying to turn right you can't use the brakes as easily so you have to learn that process a little bit today we're going to do it against the front brake because that's the easiest way to learn to do this now bouncing the fork against the front brake is a relatively straightforward process i've got my one foot on the ground my other foot on the foot peg i'm gonna hold the front brake on and i'm gonna push on the forks but it's important when i go to this position that i lock my arms strong and use my body weight pushing the fork down rather than trying to just do it with strength my arms are quite strong and locked rather than pushing and my body weight is pushing into it and then i can get that nice rocking backwards motion and that rocking backwards motion is what allows the front wheel to come up the next part is to learn to do that same process but with my bum off the seat and my weight on the foot that's on the ground when we do the pivot term we're always going to turn around our foot that's on the ground the same as we did when we did a spin turn so front brake on bounce it bounce it perfect from there the process of hopping the front wheel is to start the bike up find the bite point with the clutch bounce and as the bounce comes back up you feed a little bit of clutch out give it a little turn of the throttle and when you're high enough you pull the clutch back in to basically take the situation back under control it's quite important when you do this process as well that the throttle rolls on if you start with quite a lot of revs you'll break traction at the rear wheel as you feed the clutch out and you won't get any lift you need it to grip to get the front wheel to pick up so we start with really low revs and you feed it out and roll the throttle on as the fork uncompresses let's start the bike up so i like to use one finger to do this so that i have a good grip on the handlebars i find the bite point with the clutch one finger on the front brake as well because again it allows me to be a bit more finessed with the throttle so bounce uncompress there's no strength involved in this that's kind of part of the point you can see and here hopefully that the revs are never very high the lower the revs are when you do this the more grip you're gonna get the easier it's gonna be [Music] a little addition to that that makes it a little bit safer and a little bit more precise that i personally really like to do and i think this comes into pivot turns a little bit more and wheelies and so on when you get more advanced i like to cover the back brake when i do this and use the brake to control the motion a little bit so as i come off and i pivot up if i need to stop it i'll just give it a little dab of the back brake it's not essential but it's something that's worth keeping in mind if you are taking this to more difficult places or trying to be a bit more precise with it once you start to get comfortable with hopping the front wheel from one place to another small hops the steps into a pivot turn are mostly about getting more comfortable with the front wheel being higher i tend to use my body going backwards to pull the front wheel up and use the separation between me and the seat to let the bike come up quite straight towards me once it's in that position the bike will quite naturally fall towards the side that your foot is on the ground so here i've got my left foot on the ground so when the front wheel comes up it will pivot towards the left and what makes it a good pivot turn is you keeping it up there at the balance point typically what i find is that as i initiate the pivot turn and i get the front wheel up i then feed the clutch out a little bit to keep it at the level that i want and it's a really gentle motion like when you find it up there near the balance point it doesn't take much to change that attitude so gently feeding the clutch out a little bit will keep the front wheel high and let it stay high and long enough to come all the way around i'll give you a quick demonstration of what that looks like hopefully it starts to explain it and you can get out there and get practicing so i hope you've enjoyed watching this video about how to do pivot turns as i said right back at the start learning to do a pivot turn is not a four minute exercise you're not going to do it as quickly as i explained in this video but hopefully it starts to give you the idea of the techniques you need to use to get the front wheel off the ground that process of using the clutch and the throttle to lift the front wheel is identical to doing this while moving but a few other things change if you've enjoyed this video and you want to see more mini tip mondays this is a series that we do first and foremost for our patreon members it comes out there a long long time before it comes out anywhere else if you want to see more of those click the link in the description below we also do a bunch of other really cool things the graphics kit that's on my bike is available for a few other models now we also sell the riding kit that we really believe in and other stuff in our online shop you can find the link to that in the description below as well and otherwise remember life's better when you're riding [Music] you

Channel: Brake Magazine

Views: 23,493

Rating: 4.9685864 out of 5

Keywords: MiniTip Monday, Gravel Road Technique, Adventure bike tips, dirt bike Skills, motorcycle dirt road skills, brake magazine, llel pavey, dual sport tips, Pivot turns, Dirt Bike Pivot Turn, Lift the front wheel, how to lift front wheel, enduro bike skills, enduro how to, How to spin turn dirt bike

Id: G3IEGNvNN3I

Length: 10min 20sec (620 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021