I've realised one of the things that has been annoying me about my Cotic for a while now: I can't really bunnyhop it.

Now, I ride BMX and can hop it about a metre give or take, and can 180 and 360 hop it too. I used to own an old aluminium Merlin, a DMR Trailstar, and a Kona full sus and I could hop those fine, obviously not as high as my BMX, but still not bad. But on my Cotic my bunnyhops are distinctly…meh.

I'm 5'8" tall, I ride a small, so 16" seat tube, 22.75" toptube, with 130mm Pikes, a 70mm zero rise stem and low rise 685mm bars.

What aspects of geometry/setup affect bunnyhops? What can I change to make my bike easier to hop?

You are using spds yes?

No, flats, with 5 Tens.

You are using spds yes?

only if your cheeting :p

Suspension/tyre pressure maybe???

Paul from AQR/Cotic certainly does not seem to have any problem bunnyhopping a small framed cotic.

FAOD I was kidding 😀

The feeling I have when hopping it is: pulling up, weight back, then I when I shift my weight forward, it feels jerky and often I land front wheel first.

you sound like a much better hopper than me already …. but, I do have a medium cotic

if I just throw my weight forward at the end I seem to land heavy on the front wheel

if i concentrate on pushing the bars up and away from me, the rear wheel seems to lift better and I'm more likely to land both wheels together (or maybe smack myself in the ass with the saddle)

Should be able to bunnyhop anything within reason – I often do little hops on my road bike to avoid potholes.

Definitely needs nailing with flats – SPDs encourage poor form and can lead to "mid air unclipping then nad crunching" as I have done before.

With flats you pretty much have to "American" bunnyhop which IMO is the correct way to do it. Hopping with both wheels level (as you leave the ground) is cr4p form and often done with SPDs.

Pre-compressing your forks helps a fair bit I find.

I'm not entirely sure how it translates into mountain bikes but with trials bikes a longer wheelbase makes bunnyhopping harder anything longer than 1050 ish becomes a pain to bunnyhop. A lower bottom bracket also helps as its easier to scoop the back end up. With mountainbikes you have the rebound of suspension forks to help too which complicates things. I don't see why your cotic should be that problematic to bunnyhop unless its a barge.

I don't think it's my technique so much – I can hop my mates bike and my bmx pretty well. Does bar height impact how well you can hop, like on a bmx with their short forks but big bars?

Paul is not normal.

So any other ideas why this bike is harder to hop for me than others?

I have a similar problem with my inbred. Someone once told me it was due to chainstay length, not sure how true that is though

I use flats too and find you have to time it just right. Brian Lopes and Lee McCormack have a really good book called 'Mastering Mountain Bike Techniques' which says you have to preload the suspension by pumping it then lift the front then shift weight forward and let the back come up. Something like that anyway. Lopes say's flats encourage good technique, that's why I use them. I find my full suss harder to hop than my hardtail and much harder to rear wheel lift to. I think because it's longer and is designed to stick to the ground.

I read in Dirt magazine that Cy reckoned that the low bottom bracket makes his bikes difficult to manual. Not sure whether that helps but just thought I'd add my two pence worth.