coffeeking – Member

saying i disagree with something is as stupid statement to make?

Disagree all you like, doesn't stop it being stupid. Your disagreement was suggesting you thought it was impossible to MTB without bunnyhopping skills , which has been completely and utterly disproven.

wow, it gets better and better – good to have different view points, eh? and i obviously missed the bit where it was "completely and utterly disproven"! 😆

ononeorange – no probs, mate – that's the same vid my friend used, though i imagine they're all pretty similar, and he was hopping all over the place in a few hours practice.

🙂 The bit where it was disproven was the point where many people pointed out that they MTB without using bunnyhops. It's not a viewpoint thing, its right or wrong. Some people don't bunnyhop while MTBing, so it isnt *essential*. Simple as that! You might like it, you might use it, but it's not essential. A bike is essential for MTBing. The ability to pedal helps and could be argued to be essential, but hopping isn't.

ah i see. yes, i accept you can go riding offroad without being able to do basic skills such as little hops etc. but we have a different perspective on their importance and value to anything vaguely technical.

Last Friday as I was heading down the last long hill before home after a pleasantly brisk cycle through the woods when a car timidly overtook me. Two minutes later I caught up with the car as it was stopped in the middle of the (singletrack) road with hazard lights on. Approaching with caution I was to find that the lady driver had got out of the car and was moving a dead badger to the side of the road! She must have identified my lack of bunnyhopability in the passing. This actually happened btw!

I too could hop and wheelie in my yoof, but on a break from biking from 16 to 36, the beer seems to have taken its toll!

coffeeking…

you can hop onto a picnic bench table? then 180 and hop onto the next one?

backwards?

As a kid I loved bmx- utterly crap at it and I distinctly remember always hitting my nuts.

Doesnt mean I cant enjoy mountain biking now though does it?

hora – Member

As a kid I loved bmx- utterly crap at it and I distinctly remember always hitting my nuts.

Doesnt mean I cant enjoy mountain biking now though does it?

no, i don't think anyone's said or implied that… 😕

I think I see the problem here – understanding the meaning of the word "essential".

–adjective
1. absolutely necessary; indispensable

We actually have a lesson in our starter session which is negotiating a log laying on the track. The point of this exercise is to get trust for the equipment up and undue respect for the bump down in the mind of the rider. The purpose being to get them looking through the trail and carrying their flow rather than looking down at the trail looking for stuff that doesn't need anything doing to it.

If there are two bumps (or three, or four) at inconvenient spacing along the singletrack – if your normal MO is to insist on hopping over things you will very often jump over one and into the next. When you could have just ridden over them all and carried you attention through the trail. Not only is bunnyhopping rarely essential, it can actually be a bad thing because you end up never realising that a few tree roots can just be ignored and ridden over.

bigdonx – Member

the lady driver had got out of the car and was moving a dead badger…

She must have identified my lack of bunnyhopability in the passing.

you're confusing bunnyhopping with badgerhopping there. 😀

glenp – Member

I think I see the problem here – understanding the meaning of the word "essential".

not quite. as a different example, a small bridge over a stream with two steps to get onto it.

some would suggest that you could simply stop, carry the bike onto the bridge and carry on. my view would be that that is unacceptably disruptive to the ride so it is essential to learn how to hop neatly onto it and carry on without stopping.

different opinions, as i've already stated. i really wasn't trying to get into an argument about this, either, as you're clearly entitled to your view that i have no interest in changing.

Yep – I can imagine some scenarios where a bunnyhop will enable you to ride rather than push for a second or two. But they are few and far between compared with building a positive mentality and confidence that you can ride through things and not scour the ground for hoppy opportunities.

It is hundreds of times more useful to learn good looking skills and carrying flow through a trail than to think you need to hop over everything. Bunnyhopping can be learned later.

theflatboy – or just ride up it? I have a similar sounding obstacle ( two steps onto a bridge) on a couple of my normal routes and I can get both the solo and the tandem up them without bunnyhopping. Lift / unweight the front and let momentum bring the rear up perhaps with a little unweighting of the rear. Infact I did 4 steps onto a bridge like that on a solo and regularly do two without hopping

I cannot think of any obstacle I cannot get over without bunny hopping that you could by bunnyhopping – you might be able to carry more speed with a hop – water bars for example

yes, so you've said. several times.

(edit – not you, TJ)

yep, TJ – quite possibly. i would consider the need to slow down prohibitive, in favour of just learning to hop up, but i guess you could roll up over anything where your back wheel will hit before your chainrings do!

riding up steps sounds like short cut to pinch flats.

Alright. You've gone on about it as well!

Maybe you're saying that there are essential skills, but some are more essential than others. (ie if you can't ride to the bridge in the first place it hardly matters that you can't bunnyhop on to it). Which means nothing other than you don't know what essential means.

i'm only "going on about it" because, rather than agreeing to disagree you are persisting in either trying to convince me/somebody that i'm wrong or suggest that i don't understand the words that i'm saying, which is fairly patronising.

i think it's essential, and thankfully am sufficiently educated to know what that means, you don't.

riding up steps sounds like short cut to pinch flats.

Absolutely, so you need to slow down to a suitable speed, which is easier to teach beginners than anything else. If you took the "essential" (sic) view then you would have to advise beginners not to go out mountain biking until they learned to bunnyhop.

Thedflatboy – its clearly isn't essential as many of us don't use it and you cannot detail a situation where a bunnyhop will allow you to clear and obstacle that cannot be cleared without.

once again, TJ, i view having to slow down because you don't have a skill a reason to acquire it. you don't.

hold tight mate, im not suggesting for a second that it is essential to learn how to hop up two stairs…

i appreciate you are perhaps getting a bit shirty as people are questioning your views and as an instructor you have to be fairly infallible, but try not to fly off the handle…

all im saying is if you ride up stairs, you are quite likely to pinch puncture, the more stairs the more likely if you ask me…

Rumour has it that some ramblers manage to walk off-road without even mastering the basics of a roll or speed vault.
What are they going to do when they hit a bit of technical trail without a firm foundation of parkour?
Nutters!

i think it's essential, and thankfully am sufficiently educated to know what that means, you don't.

This is great fun flatboy! If essential meant what you think it means then all the people who have said they don't much bother with bunnyhopping would have to not go mountain biking at all until they sorted that problem out. But they do go mountain biking. So it can't be essential.

I can certainly agree to disagree over riding style. That's everyone's perogative. I may even hop over a thing or two myself from time to time.

Can't see how we can differ over the definition of essential though, since that part isn't down to me or you. Unless you have you have your own language that is almost like English but not quite.

tracknico – I'm not shirty – just having fun.

i think it's essential, and thankfully am sufficiently educated to know what that means, you don't.

Well I'm working from the normal definition :

absolutely necessary; vitally necessary;

Not the "nice oils" sort of defnition:

containing, or having the properties of, a concentrated extract of a plant, drug, food, etc.

🙂 Your call.

With apologies for the teasing.

Of course it is essential for some styles of riding. But there are other styles, which are still mountain biking, where it is nice but not exactly essential.

How's that? 🙂

despite my moniker, i'm not as good as the real Hans Rey. On the XC bike, i can't wheelie or trackstand for toffee, but the trials bike (and dh bike) i'm pretty adept. That said, i don't tend to wheelie, manual, bunnyhop or trackstand out in the peaks, unless i'm messing about in a carpark or waiting for the pootlers and bimblers behind!

The flat boy – I can bunny hop – I just don't have a use for it out on the trail – and the 4 steps one was nearly 3 ft high – I'd love to see you bunnyhop that one. No one I have ridden the two step one with and that includes folk a lot faster than me bunnyhop it.

The only place I have ever seen anyone bunnyhop is water bars.

TJ, i bunnyhop alot. Side hops from one line to another, over roots, logs, once a badger :D, intos downslopes etc as i allready said. You have to remember that you dont have to clear an obstacle by inches to bunnyhop, say there is a log thats 1ft high, yeah sure i could clear it by 6 inches (or more), but the smoothest most controlled way is to only just clear it, I oftne actually skim it with the tyres… I know this takes practice and ive been able to hop for years but It benefits everyone beaing able to hop and i think once you are truly comfortable with doing it, its an invaluable skill. Especially for riding a hardtail.

It also teaches you how to unweight better for going over roots, as pumping little downslopes etc.

Oh, I cant wheelie more than 3 or 4 meters if i'm lucky, and i'm still learning long manuals…

The flat boy – I can bunny hop – I just don't have a use for it out on the trail – and the 4 steps one was nearly 3 ft high – I'd love to see you bunnyhop that one.

no doubt. similarly, i would love to see you get up a flight of 4 x 23cm steps by lifting/unweighting the front and letting momentum bring the rear up perhaps with a little unweighting of the rear.

in fact i'd love to see anybody do such a move. 😆

in fact i'd love to see anybody do such a move.

Give me a week or so to re-build my old longer-travel full sus and I'll gladly show you that, wouldn't attempt it on my NRS as it would probably snap a wheel, but my coyote was a damn sight softer in the rear region, 5/6" of travel and a set of steps like that becomes nothing more than a takeoff ramp! But that is getting close to a bunnyhop anyway, and I'd hate to have to consider 4x23cm steps part of my mountainbiking trail!

There was a group of us out that day and we all rode it. Perhaps it wasn't 3 ft but deffo over 2 and 4 steps. Not hard to do at all. Maybe I have more skills than I thought

Edit pondering further actually we might be doing the same move as you say you skim your wheels over it and I say I am unweighting the wheels. Is it just semantics?

A true bunny hop reamains something that I have never seen anyone even the good riders I know use out on the trail