So as I seem to have a job building pumptracks these days, I feel I should learn to ride the things. I’ve rebuilt my old BFe (a dinky one from the days when hardtails were supposed to be “chuckable”) 120mm forks pumped up pretty hard, singlespeed, DMR Motos (tubed) at 50psi.

I’m pretty active on the bike as a trail rider, but I’m really struggling to generate any speed at all without pedalling on the pump track I pass on the way home from work currently (Charnock in Sheff)

As I understand it, you pump with your legs through the bottom of the dip and then absorb over the crest? This just seems to slow me down? If I can bunnyhop onto the backside of the first of a set of rollers (popping the front wheel a good few feet before hand), that accelerates me, but there’s no way I can continue that – the back wheel is barely back on the ground before I’d need to be popping the front again and I just can’t move that fast.

On the steeper tabletops (more approaching proper dirt jump proportions) I’m ending up fighting the bike. I can jump OK in the “DH” long/fast sense of the word, where there’s plenty of time to set myself up, but here I feel like I’m haemorraging momentum all the way through and can barely get the front wheel airborne off the lips, let alone the back. I just seem to have no way of popping.

As someone who reckons they’re a pretty decent rider (esp on a hardtail), it’s getting to me how much my arse is getting kicked by 50m of non-tech trail and 3 tarmac corners. I’m very much built for endurance not speed or strength, but I’m a confident technical bike handler and there’s very little I can’t make a good attempt at riding. It feels like there’s something pretty basic I’m doing wrong!

Tips?

Thanks…

Pump down a slope, absorb up it. Your timing is probably off but difficult to diagnose without seeing it.

As I understand it, you pump with your legs through the bottom of the dip and then absorb over the crest?

It’s the slopes where you generate the power. Ah, dc1988 beat me to it, push the bike down the back of the slope with arms and legs, unweight it as you come up the front. When you get gong fast, you’re pretty much bunny hopping over and landing on the back side.

@tthew, you shouldn’t be “bunny hopping” the up slope, watch a vert bmx rider, they’re not bunny hopping up the transition.

Actually watching a vert rider is a really good way of actually seeing “pump”, go and do it.

You pump on both the way up and way down, it is essentially just the timing of squatting then standing up force all your weight through your feet, timining being the difficult bit. Really easy to feel if its right.

Also you do say you’re maybe not the “strongest” rider, the lump track will definitely highlight that.

Don’t get disheartened, just keep on trying and trying and trying.

I can’t comment on Charnock but not all pump tracks are built equal.

As has been said, you need to unweight the bike on the upslopes, then weight/push the bike down the downslope.
Unless they’re big rollers, one way to visualise it, is you want to keep you chest/head at the same height all the way through the rollers. Your legs/arms should be doing all the movement, with the bike moving backwards/forwards under you as you push it over each roller.

By the sounds of it, you need to work on your timing, and keeping the bike on the ground. On a pumptrack, unless you’re deliberately trying to get a wheel of the ground (such as manualling through or jumping rollers), the wheels should remain in contact with the ground.

If your front wheel is lifting over rollers, you need to get your weight further forward so you can push it over the lip.

If your rear wheel is lifting over rollers, you’ve got your weight too far forward.

Pump with your arms as well as legs. There is a point one the create where you will be ok pushing down with you arms as they front wheel is on the downslope and still sucking up with the legs as the rear wheel is still on the up slope.

Basically flow with the track mirror its shape.

Pump down a slope, absorb up it.

Ah. That’ll be why hopping into it works then as the landing impact is pushing the bike into it. The problem is that I don’t understand how to generate any force into a downslope when the bike is moving away from me? To absorb up it is basically what I’m doing when I hop over it, but I can’t react fast enough to unweight the bike in the space available – I need to start the process another 6′ back!

Its fair to say I’m not a “springy” person. Noticeable in the gym – I can do full depth bodyweight squats at a controlled pace all day without breaking sweat. Ask me to turn them into jumps and I’m shocking – Can barely get 6″ off the ground and blow up in seconds.

This is the track

As you can see it’s kinda half pumpy, half jumpy. Feels like most of the rollers are supposed to be paired up as doubles, but I can’t get enough speed up to start with, then lose it on every transition.

Its fair to say I’m not a “springy” person. Noticeable in the gym – I can do full depth bodyweight squats at a controlled pace all day without breaking sweat. Ask me to turn them into jumps and I’m shocking – Can barely get 6″ off the ground and blow up in seconds.

If you can get past that it will really help to train those movements off the bike as well.

If you can get past that

I’ve been trying for about 6 years! I’m strongly ectomorphic, so any gains I do make get lost in days or weeks. No proper gym sessions since lockdown v1, so any “snappy” gains I had made upped and went months ago.

I can clear 18” bunnyhopping on my hard tail, but it’s a very “lazy” process that occupies quite a distance at any speed.

Don’t think it about it too much just let your body go floppy and that will teach you how ut moves.

As DeanFBM says, you pump both up and down the transitions.

Ha ha, I popped by there the other day and did even worse, on my regular hardtail. Couple of folk there were absolutely flying round it. Plus I smelled like the back end of a pig as I’d spent the previous hour in the Moss Valley on freshly muckspread bridleways. Thought this video had some good tips, must admit I’m tempted to build up a pumptrack/goofing around bike with quick tyres and have more of a go:

Charnock is a harder than average track I think. Very tight and nowhere to speed up. You have to really nail every backside to keep moving.

I’ve got a DJ bike and can manage all of the jumps but I don’t think I’ve ever strung a full lap together.

Don’t think I’ve been there this year actually. I might check it out this weekend.

I’m not sure I agree about pumping up a transition, it’s about unweighting as much as possible. Although you don’t bunny hop up a roller you should be unweighting almost as if your are, any weight getting pushed into an upslope will slow you down. You will sometimes see BMX racers doing a pre manual into a roller so they only have to unweight their rear wheel over and then pump the backside.

Try telling that to a bmxer (who tend to be pretty quick on pump tracks).

It’s not dissimilar to using a swing – where you “pump” on both the up and down strokes, but the timing/technique is different. Only pumping down will help, but pumping up and down successfully is faster.

What Trumpton said….. why don’t you try a few laps of ‘not trying’. Be really floppy and gentle and see how much small amounts of pump at differing points on the transitions, affect your speed. You can lose a lot of power through isometric tension derived from stress. Your motor skills get hindered by the tightness of your muscles. Pumping is all about well timed compression and release. The timing is the key… you need to relax enough to get to know yourself on the track. You may literally be trying too hard. That said, there are some tracks that suck energy up a lot more than others.

I guess the pumping up is also roller size relevant, on a smaller roller hit at speed you can’t pump up but on a much bigger one you can.

Not sure where you are based but if it is anywhere near Southampton come on down to the Bike PArk. We have a pump track with three options lines on it. My record is 34 lap without pedalling but one guy did 250 to raise money for children of Chernobyl. I would set your expectations at 5 – 10 for day 1 though

You still “pump up” regardless of the size of the up. Timing is key on a pump track and once that clicks you’re away, it’ll feel relatively effortless.

Pretty much as above – use the upslopes to allow the bike to come up to you and to preset the bike ready to be pushed down and away from your body on the downslope – it’s really a forceful whole body thing. Try and bend the bars in half and twist the cranks off it as you push it into the downslope! Then allow the bike to become helium filled light and rise up into you on the upslopes.
Later techniques are to pre manual the roller to get the front wheel artificially higher to allow more downpump or to pre hop the whole roller to land into the downslope and increase the pump.
Manually rolling whole sets is faster as you use the upslopes to stop the bike looping out*

These are skills that are transferable to the trail – some sections at Llangdegla are a trail pumping delight, BPW Sixtapod on my old Evil Sovereign a few years ago was epic!

Ex old school BMX racer!

Not sure if the technique changes with clips but i assume OP you are riding flats. When I raced old school bmx I was always last. Still loved it.

That pump track the op visited looks ace – wish I had one like that near me (that isn’t in a dodgy area). The best one I’ve found in Bristol is in Hillfields and surrounded by chavs most of the time.

You need to have smooth aggression to build speed and momentum I’ve found. As the ground drops away try to push the front wheel actively down the slope with your arms and as you hit the bottom pretty much you need to drive forward with your legs through the pedals. This propels you up the next slope and repeat.

I can do that bit fine but I very rarely can clear the jumps / rollers on a pump track but that’s mostly lack of jumping technique rather than lack of speed. I tend to try and manual through rollers if I can clear them so I don’t lose too much momentum.

Try to imagine how it feels to bounce on a trampoline. Strengthening the push through your legs as you go down, pushing off hard, unweighting then pushing down and off again.

One of those tips that doesn’t work for everyone, but it helped the movement click with me, and when I told my wife after she’d been struggling, she asked me why I’d not told her that to start with.