Top 5 Tips To Reduce Arm Pump

what's up everyone I am chase here at Rocky Mountain atv/mc and these are my top five tips to help reduce arm problems so I'm pretty sure that it's safe to say that just about every rider out there has had arm pump and we all know how bad it sucks it really sucks I hate it now if you're not sure what arm pump is or what causes it it's when you're riding in your forearms fill up with so much blood that it gets hard to hold on to the bike and the reason this happens is your forearm muscles just like any other muscle in the body you need oxygen you need blood to help them work but when you get a lot of blood pumping in your forearms and the old blood can't leave you get a lot of pressure buildup so think of it like a hose that gets kinked and when you get that pressure build up what happens you get a lot of pressure on the muscle and the muscles can no longer function properly and you get to that point where what we call arm pump where you literally just can't hold on in the motorcycle and then the next thing that kicks in we call whiskey throttle and I've seen a lot of riders fly off with burns if they'll have to trim the trees they literally can't hold on to the bike and they can't let off the throttle this is never a good thing so me personally I used to struggle with arm pump a lot but over the years I've learned a lot of tips and tricks a lot of it is technique things that have really helped me to reduce arm pump when I'm not riding so I'm gonna share those with you these are my top five tips to help reduce arm pump so my first tip is gonna be warming up and stretching this is absolutely crucial something I learned a long time ago and the reason you want to warm up and stretch because most riders struggle the most with arm pump right when they start riding or if you had a track that's during their first moto and the reason being is they start to go out and ride before you have circulation going through your forearms remember you want to get that fresh blood in and that old blood out if you're not warmed up properly and stretch it's gonna prevent that from happening the way it should so you want to make sure 15-20 minutes will warm up you can ride a stationary by you can do jumping jacks really whatever you want to do that's just going to get some blood pumping through your body and then as soon as you do your warmup if you want to stretch your forearms now you view Google's forearm stretches on the Internet there's a lot of different stretches you can do you see a lot of top level riders doing these one tool that I really really like is this for Armstrong I actually have one of these I take it to the track with me when it before I go riding I use it to stretch my forearms and it really does give me a better stretch than what I can get without having it just doing the stretches on my own but that's going to be my first as make sure you're doing a warm-up before you go ride and then really stretch out your forearms to get that circulation before you go out okay so my second tip it's gonna be with your levers and your grips now with your levers what I'm talking about is you want to make sure that your levers are at an angle so that when you're grabbing your levers you want to try and have a good straight line from your forearm all the way down the end of your fingers if your levers are too high you can have your fingers up like this and if they're too low you can force you to bend your wrist down now doing that you can actually restrict or cut off some of that circulation which you do not want so you want to try and have your levers at an angle that feels comfortable every one's gonna be a little bit different but you want to try and have that straight line that's going to help just give and promote really good circulation in the forearm another thing you want to be conscious of is gonna be your lever pull with your clutch I hear a lot of riders say man I just get to the point where I can't hold on I can't pull my clutch lever hand well a lot of that is due to the arm pump but there are tips and tricks that you can use to try and make your clutch pole a little bit easier one of them if you have a cable actuated clutch you want to be inspecting your clutch cable lubricate it if it's needed that's gonna help out also you want to be inspecting your clutch cable if it's frayed if it's worn it's a good idea to replace that that's gonna help out another thing you can do if you have an older clutch an older bike is you want to look at the condition of your actuator arm and your push rod we actually had a rider on an older yz250 and he complained a lot about how hard his clutch pull was so he inspected those realize that they were pretty worn out so we replaced those and immediately his clutch pole is much much easier another thing that you can do that a lot I see a lot of riders doing is going from a cable actuated clutch to a hydraulic clutch we offer these for a lot of different bikes on our website Magura actually says that their hydraulic clutch will make your clutch pull about 20% easier than most other clutches that are out there so that's another tip that riders like to do is go to a hydraulic clutch now going along with your levers being at that angle another important thing you want to focus on this give me more for riders that have smaller hands like myself is using a thinner grip like these ODI lock on these Emma grips or the ODI lock on v2 those are some of my favorites because they do feel thinner in my hand because a thicker grip especially have smaller hands it's gonna be a little bit harder to hold on to it forces you to grip the bike harder and when you grip the bike more that's gonna put more blood in your forearms which is what you don't want so that's another great tip that I have especially got smaller hands is try and find a grip that feels good but it's also a little bit thinner so for my third tip it is simple it's gonna be hydrate and breathe okay you want to make sure just drink plenty of liquids before during and after your ride we have a lot of great hydration bladders and hydration packs to choose from on our website now let's breathe e I know this sounds simple but this is something that some of your best motocross the Supercross riders in the world still struggle with in a tense situation if you're in a race or if you're on a single track trail and you have an obstacle coming up and we start to get a little bit nervous in our and our adrenaline gets going well in these situations a lot of times we stop breathing we hold our breath and when you hold your breath you're not getting fresh oxygen to your forearms and that can contribute to arm pump so it's very important when you're riding the bike look ahead focus on what's coming and just really concentrate on breathing while you ride now my fourth tip is going to be with your bike setup and what I'm referring to is your suspension I know a lot of riders don't really mess with their clickers and their suspension a whole lot but it can make a very big difference on how your bike feels and actually how much arm pump you're getting so don't be afraid when you're out riding if you're back in feel cuz it's really stiff and it's kicking you around or your Forks feel really harsh the initial part of the stroke you just get a lot of vibration don't be afraid to soften up your suspension on most of your bikes you're gonna have your clickers on the top of the forks or on your shock and what you're gonna do is you just gonna back that out say three to four clicks now it's really important look at your owners manual cuz they're gonna give recommendations it's also really important to start at your base setting if you're not sure where your settings are at look at your owners manual cuz it would tell you where you should be at for a base and then from there I would adjust my suspension so don't be afraid to soften that up now we actually do offer a couple of different handlebars on our website that are actually designed to absorb more vibration and whatever our most popular are the Flex handlebars from Fast Company these are actually really neat very popular the way they work is they have these elastomer dampers right here and they actually allow the handlebars to flex in the same plane as the suspension so you really don't even know that they're flexing but they help absorb a lot of the vibration a lot of the impact so it's less strain less vibration to the riders arms and I know a lot of riders talk about the making a big difference when it comes to arm fatigue and also helping to reduce arm pump alright so if my fifth and final tip it's gonna be the most important tip that I'm gonna give you this is something that I learned years ago and this is what has helped me the most when it comes to reducing arm pump and it's all about the legs you got to squeeze the bike with your legs whether you're sitting down or standing up this is huge and the reason I say this is when you're sitting down or standing up you're accelerating okay when you're accelerating the bike tends to want to pull away from you it's so you're holding on with that death grip so you want to squeeze and be up over the front of the bike this is what we call a lot of times a rider attack position so your chest is forward over the gas tank and you're really focusing on staying for so the bike rather than pulling you you're now riding the motorcycle and when you're squeezing and focusing on staying forward you can actually relax your hands a little but you'll notice that you don't have to give a death grip when you're in that correct position the same goes when you're standing up so when I'm standing up on the bike I am squeezing with my knees as hard as I can and now I'm not standing straight up and down because if you're doing this you're gonna get pulled away from the bike you want to have your knees squeezing you want your toes pointed in and you want your hips out you want to have a nice flat plane on your back you want your hips out and you want you again your chest forward for me a really good tip something I was taught is if I can see the numbers on my number plate that is a good indicator to me that I'm far enough forward on the bike so again don't want to be straight up and down don't want to be far back hips out you want your chest over your handlebars and again squeezing with your legs as hard as you can toes pointed in and again you want to relax your fingers and that's really gonna help out that's the biggest tool that I've learned that it's helped me with arm pump now a great accessory to have on your bike you can see we have these steak pegs installed these are actually really good especially if they've got a desert Rider you spend a lot of time standing up or a lot of time you know fourth fifth you're wide open what these do is they actually give us support to the back your boot so when you're standing up in that Attack Position they allow your feet your your back your calves to rest against those and it helps just prevent you from getting pulled off the motorcycle so those are actually really nice to have very popular for desert riders or writers I spend a lot of time standing up at higher speeds those are the Stags pegs but that's gonna be my fifth and final tip is make sure squeezing with your legs toes pointed in in that a tack position is stay far forward on the motorcycle alright guys so those are my top five tips to help you reduce arm pump now I'm sure a lot of you have some great suggestions things that you guys like to do so make sure you share those with us comment below this can help a lot of other riders out now I do have one bonus tip for you and that is ride ride ride a lot of your best riders in the world will tell you one of the best solutions the arm pump is just seat time the more you ride the more condition you're going to be and that's who's going to help reduce your arm pump now to pick up any of the parts that we talked about today click on the link or head over to our website or Rocky Mountain atv/mc com don't forget orders over $75 ship free if you haven't yet if you like this top 5 video you want to see more like it well make sure you click and subscribe I'm chase it Rocky Mountain and we'll see on the trails [Music] you

Channel: Rocky Mountain ATV MC

Views: 479,910

Rating: 4.9121952 out of 5

Keywords: Rocky Mountain ATV/MC, rmatv, rmatvmc, atv/mc, atvmc, rockymountain, dirt bike, utv, atv, motorcycle, parts, accessories, rocky, mountain, top 5, tips, to reduce arm pump, armpump, top 5 tips, reducing arm pump, avoid arm pump, how to reduce, how to reduce arm pump, tricks

Id: UaI7Auy7J1E

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2017