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Bunnyhopping on the road bike can be useful but can't bring myself to attempt it on the fixed. I can see a world of pain there.
i've only recently put my pomp fixed and hopping's ok, you just have to get used to doing it when your feet aren't in your normal position and are turning all the way!
When I was younger me and some mates used to have BMX bunny hop competition (they was more holly/delays than bunny hops, i.e. the front wheel lifts before the rear) at and old disused pipe factory. We built walls out of red house bricks and then tried to clear them, sometimes with painful and comedy endings [drifts of in to a nostalgic cloud] I think the highest we got up to was 9 house bricks.
I could bunny hop my 125cc Motorbike, I think I managed about an inch (extreme)
I can with both flats and spd's i can even do it with my spd pedals and normal shoes i think when out riding i do it often with out thinking in the course of riding (both off and on road).
bunny-hopping isnt essential but un-weighting the bike is. I saw a great tutorial by Hans Ray on an old video, he says to stand over your bike (on the floor) and with no brakes use your back foot on the pedal to lift the rear end of the bike up - you can then feel the muscles needed to un-weight the rear end of the bike. helped me learn to hop back in the day.
[url=
mo bunny hop.[/url]
Is this how you do it? How do you get the front end up without getting too far back?
I once bunnyhopped an exercise bike in the gym at college. Got told off for that as it made a hell of a noise!
2ft is a hell of a bunny hop on a mountain bike. I can do 1ft but 2ft would take a bit of practice.
A little story which may put some of the older chaps from attempting to look RAD.
I was at mabie with a few mates ready to ride the red. The guys in the shop had built themselves a facny bunnyhop rig with dowls for moving the stick up to different heights. While i was waiting for my mates i fancied a go and cleared the 1ft one with ease. Moved it up to 2ft and failed. Found another stick, failed again. Last time i put extra effort in. Pulled up as hard as i could. Pulled up so hard i slipped of the pedals, smashed through the entire bunny hop rig and landed hard enough on my £100 xc saddle to snap it whilst running head first into a parked camper. The guys from the shop didnt look amused.
I rode off in pain and embarrassed.
[i]Is this how you do it? How do you get the front end up without getting too far back? [/i]
yeah but he makes a right old meal of that, probably because he's not moving forwards. Just lighten the front end with a smooth pull and backwards shift of weight. You're only going to be putting your weight back for a short period before you push forward on the bars and hook the back end up.
watch this vid - it may be from mbuk 😯 but it's very well explained and is pretty much guaranteed to show anyone the technique required.
[url=
to Bunny Hop[/url]
About 1:50 in...
watch this vid - it may be from mbuk but it's very well explained and is pretty much guaranteed to show anyone the technique required.How to Bunny Hop
Quite like that.
Just to add to the willy-waving, yes I can do a proper bunny-hop! Not something I'd ever really made any serious effort with, but it's part of the SMBL course, so you have to be able to do them and to teach them.
I'd heard through the grapevine that the guy doing my assessment was really big on bunny-hops and had set some ridiculous challenge, so I was freaking-out about it and worked really hard on it. In the end, I got asked to teach bunny-hops as part of my assessment, so I got to set the "challenges" (clearing a pile of 3 rolled-up inner-tubes!). 😀
2 things that worked really well for me:
1. The pre-compression is really important, especially on a big full-susser. I learned on a Heckler - you really have to bang down and bottom-out the suspension. Once you're getting the hang of it, you can smooth that out a bit.
2. Once the front end is up, think about moving the bars "up and over" in an arc (the shape they'd naturally describe in a perfect bunny-hop) then match that with the back end.
I often bunnyhop (not very high) my road bike over nasty pot holes that appear at the last second - now that is tricky but fun!
I don't think two feet is all that ridiculous but it's not a "practical" height - to get that much hop I need to be going fairly slowly and really launch it - if I tried at high speed I think I'd come off.
If it makes any difference, I did used to practise them a lot.
Doddy did a great demo vid a while back but can't find it - nice and smooth too.