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agreed on this - you pump/push into the face of jumps/lips or the ground with a snappy forewards push. The instant rebound of the tyre is what gives you lift. Also, by generating lift through push instead of pull the bike and your body are being compressed together so if you ride flats you won't feel the bike drop away - a common problem with puller-uppers.
The old-skool approach is to pull up, but it's what we only coach as a coaster manual and only when we're either running bmx race training or people want to coast through rollers and doubles on their back wheel. Then you keep your upper body strong as your front wheel come up, lean back a little and kick forwards with your feet to keep the back wheel tracking on the ground.
Chris@CycleActive
Skills course is my recommendation. Videos, reading etc give you the theory but what you need is the experience and muscle memory of the technique.
I've done a couple of days with Rich at Cycleactive and went from scared of ever getting my wheels off the ground to 2 foot drops to flat. It's amazing how easy it really is - mainly just a head thing tbh and once you've got comfortable with it you'll wonder why such a fuss is made of drops. Can highly recommend Cycleactive for being patient, encouraging and supportive!
Struth! Anyone reading this as a drop off beginner could be a bit confuddled.
Start small see how it feels and adjust accordingly - move to bigger gradually. (May come unstuck some time soon 8O)
Tracknicko - am liking that 😆
Most important thing in my experience is to stay relaxed and loose, tensing up normally leads to pain 😕
The thing to remember about all this 'pushing' malarky is this:
[b]You weight much more than the bike, therefore any movement you make (by terms of physics) will move the bike much more than your body of mass.[/b]
Try it stationary - brakes off, just balancing there. If you suddenly thrust [b]yourself backwards[/b]/the bike forwards, in actual terms you only move back a little bit, and the bike moves forwards the majority (of course, this is limited by the length of your arms!). This is the tecnique Jedi is on about - at the lip of a drop, if you thrust the bike forwards (or yourself backwards for that matter) the bike will be 'pushed' over the lip, and you'll end up behind the BB, thus shifting the COG (centre of gravity) rearward.
If you remember the idea that rather than moving yourself, you are moving the bike around you, you can be a lot smoother over lots of stuff. Picture a point in the centre of your chest, and when coming to a technical section you always want that point to remain 'level' (i.e. similar to the things coming out the chest in Donnie Darko!). Rather than force your body up and down over undulations/roots/rocks etc which saps speed, keep the body level and [b]move the bike up/down/forward under you[/b].
Try it - you'll fly over roots/rocks/drops without losing much speed at all!
Ten pounds please.
DrP
Shift your weight (your core) back, keep your arms straight and push down and forward with your feet. As long as you have reasonable speed, this will keep the bike level. As the back wheel passes the lip of the drop, the bike will fall to the ground, landing evenly on both wheels. You will need to absorb the force of the impact with your arms and legs.
Simples
That works if your dropping onto a non-flat landing.
Ten pounds please.
£10 but only if you explain the 'speed is the last skill to leave you' rule!
🙂
Hey Jedi
So Ok pushing it is. but the push does become a pull as your weight moves rearward and your arms become straight 😉
Especially the slower your going.
It's what i've always done but hadn't broken it down in the same way, but the description of pushing is way betterer IMO. But you already knew that 🙂
Thanks Jedi
so-long and thanks for all the fish
its a push never a pull. your arms dont stretch so they lock as the shoulders move back and the wheel unwieghts. its not a pull
ask lyons, i met him at corby and showed him how the bunny hop isnt a pull as he thought
Oh the bunny hop is for sure a push in a rotary kind way