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Daughters ability is now outstripping my knowledge. Could someone point me in the direction of good educational/instructional text or videos on how to negotiate drop offs that are too high to be rolled? I normally find a way around these features but she is now tackling drops that are much higher than her front wheel. (650B). She is managing but I've witnessed a couple of close OTB moments. Luckily wears a full face helmet but I'd still prefer she didn't stack. If times were normal we would be getting lessons for her, which we after currently trying to find. (Edinburgh area if anybody knows good instructors). Instructional videos other than her watching reruns of Danny Hart Champery run for technique may help her in the meantime though. Thanks.
If they've got a downhill or flat run in, you need to practice short manuals,if after an uphill it's wheelies.
Practice those first, then you can start to work on timing to use them on drops.
first things first, you don't need to progress to drops as high as your front wheel to practise the technique with the risk that entails....you can practice off a kerb even, for timing and technique.
I'm not good enough to explain how to do it as it's a feeling thing and an argument will soon break out on here about whether you're supposed to push, pull, compress, unweight, or whatever else. But if you can do it off a kerb, or a foot high, you can do it off 3 foot, 5 foot, - it's just the flight time gets longer.
Bones mend, press send.
These guys videos are pretty good.
Sorry, my earlier comment wasn’t helpful, although it is true. Loads of vids on youtube, just ride off it fast enough. No front wheel lifts, manual or wheelies or bunnyhops. Right at the last second (right at the end of the drop) move your weight backwards slightly. Lots of people move weight back way to early. Good luck young sender!
You snooze you lose.
@snooze and @tails. Thank you. They look like good instructional videos. With the plethora available on you tube and me not fully understanding what I'm looking at it is good/bad/indifferent it is nice to get an idea of what others have used to gain results.
Just get her to watch lots of PB Friday Fails, and do the opposite.
Jedi did a video for STW a while back which I can't seem to find...
Key bit for me was "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" so, applying that to drops, you push down immediately prior to the drop, the pressure of your push down being proportional to the size of the drop, the action of that being that the front wheel lifts.... I think....
Oh, and don't have your mates watching you from the bottom of the drop, it'll distract you from where you need to be looking.
This, there's no need to be obsessively throwing weight back like you see lots of folk doing, just puts your body in the wrong place to land it.
Sorry, my earlier comment wasn’t helpful, although it is true. Loads of vids on youtube, just ride off it fast enough. No front wheel lifts, manual or wheelies or bunnyhops. Right at the last second (right at the end of the drop) move your weight backwards slightly. Lots of people move weight back way to early. Good luck young sender!
As above, learn to manual (dip heels and wrists, pull back on bars and push forward on pedals - but gently, and smoothly). Learn to get it perfect off a kerb first, then the technique is the same off anything bigger, it's just confidence. No need to hang off the back of the bike, when you land you want to be able to draw a vertical long through the bottom bracket and your centre of gravity.
I've been relearning drops / hops / manuals on a BMX which really makes you focus on the technique, but makes the MTB feel really cumbersome.
Just get her to watch lots of PB Friday Fails, and do the opposite.
Ha ha, I was thinking exactly the same!
My 2p; it’s all about legs and body position, if she’s using her arms she’s doing it wrong.
With a ‘proper’ technique she’ll be able to drop off quite slowly, rather than relying on speed-is-your-friend and hope for the best techniques.
Little hop can be good too. Quiet good for giving you more control on where you land
don't know if it's in the vids, but one thing you see people doing a lot is trying to look over their front wheel to see where it's going, this naturally pulls your body weight forward and you end up nose diving. If you're not doing a blind drop, then spot your landing early, but importantly as you leave the plateau, look forward, head up (level), look at your exit path and relax.
I've been guilty, especially when trying new features, of using speed to get me out of trouble, and this is fine on some things, but most drops only ever require a small punch and not to let the front drop too early. Sometimes it also helps to pre-empt the lip with a small hop, but i only ever find this helps if the feature has a small kick in it.
By the time you get to doing blind drops, a good techinique combined with enough speed will compensate for the "o shiv, that's bigger than i thought" moment..
Ridelines are back working so you could look at getting some lessons from them, a lesson with Jess Stone would be great for your daughter.
[very slight] hijack - I'd love to get better at drops; I'm comfortable up to a point but is there anywhere within an hour or so of Leeds where there's a set of increasingly big ones (like in the vid above) I could go and practise on for a few hours ?
Another vote for the April and Kyle video above. I just had coaching at the weekend and this was the techniques we were taught for drop offs. It looks easier than it is I found, but then my old brain can’t cope with more than 1 thing at a time these days!
Don’t manual, pop!
Manuals are more difficult to execute right, and put your weight too far back for the landing, so you have to correct in mid air.
You can practise the technique on kerbs at low speed - if you can land both wheels together going super slow off a tiny drop then you can do it faster off a bigger drop.
Little hop can be good too. Quiet good for giving you more control on where you land
negative ghostrider
[very slight] hijack – I’d love to get better at drops; I’m comfortable up to a point but is there anywhere within an hour or so of Leeds where there’s a set of increasingly big ones (like in the vid above) I could go and practise on for a few hours ?
Stainburn has some, albeit not huge. The bigger one also has a slightly off-putting ‘land into a berm’ aspect...
I would hesitate to take advice from most of us (including myself in this), but something I've found useful is to just think of the movements required as similar to if I wasn't on a bike.
So bend your knees a bit as you pop off the drop, push them down as you fall and absorb the impact by bending knees again as you land.
I thought this recent Pinkbike video was good:
As said above, most of us here are riders not teachers so take everyone's views with a pinch of salt, except @jedi who teaches people for a living and having had a few lessons I can safely say he talks sense. Maybe have a look at one of his videos here
I've found it's just as much the mental side that stops you from doing larger jumps and drops.
Mmm, interesting. You can't argue with the outcome in the American couple's video, but he's basically just telling her to ride off at the correct speed.
I've always been told, including by Jedi, to give that push or pop at the end of the take off and look up. Definitely needed at slower speeds and on not-so-perfect drops outside of bike parks.
negative ghostrider
? Sorry didn't know what that means?
Got to be the right speed for a hop or a pedal kick if really slow. Front wheel pop if in-between speeds.
[very slight] hijack – I’d love to get better at drops; I’m comfortable up to a point but is there anywhere within an hour or so of Leeds where there’s a set of increasingly big ones (like in the vid above) I could go and practise on for a few hours
Assume you ridden Leeds UBP?
theres nice drop there, 2 of them actually iirc. dead easy to lap...
Yep; Leeds UBP is a (relatively) regular place to visit. That one is just a bit bigger than I'm comfortable with; I'm sure if I could muster up enough bravery I could do it; happy with all the other "black" lines in the quarry section ! But there's not much in the way of progression. A few small 2 - maybe 3 ft drops around the place then boom; 6ft drop with a steep launch / landing. Just want something 'in the middle' to gain confidence with less risk!
When jedi says push or pop what exactly does he mean? He's clearly not shifting back in that video.
Is it push down on the bars to pop the front wheel?
“Is it push down on the bars to pop the front wheel?”
No.
When he coaches you he just calls it a push and then watches what you do and gives you guidance until you’re doing it right. The direction and force changes with the drop, it’s quite intuitive once you get in the habit.
It’s not about keeping the front wheel up but about moving the whole bike dynamically. Moving like a human would off a drop rather than trying to balance a manual.
Stainburn has some, albeit not huge. The bigger one also has a slightly off-putting ‘land into a berm’ aspect…
Yep, not been there for a while after I landed badly and face planted into some rocks and knocked myself out!! Used to clear it regularly before then as well....
I daren't do the big one at LUBP either. 🙁
You know how as a kid you got on the bathroom scales and made the needle go crazy?
Yer??
Two things that helped me to do drops
1) The size of your pop or front wheel lift are nothing to do with the (vertical) size of the drop and everything to do with how fast you are going off the drop. A technique to land both wheels together off a kerb works just the same to land two wheels off a 6 footer!
2) Straight Arms = DANGER! If you have locked straight arms, and the front drops, you ARE going OTB, because you cannot in any way stop yourself being pulled forwards as the front drops (you can't make you arms longer than they are when they are straight out already!) Unfortunately, as novices and scaredy pusses (like me) our natural tendancy is to move right back on the bike, and that creates those straightlocked out arms, so when we get our timing wrong, and the front drops too early, OTB we go! Staying the "Middle" of the bike is a LOT safer, because you have room to adjust to what ever happens, going right back early, means you have set your destiny and cannot change it. But staying, broadly, in the middle is, ime, really quite difficult and feels counter intuitive to people like me, esp when you are nervous of the drop......
Avoid any use of a manual or 'wheelie' on a drop off unless you are going at no speed at all (wheelie is good), or you are slowish and going flat to flat, so need to get that front wheel up.
Bar those two extreme examples, it's as the video above states, get the speed for the drop, follow someone in as per the video, then it's just a case of learning to do the move at the right time, again as per the video.
The manual stuff looks great, but unless you can hold a manual for a good distance, you may well end up going too early, then having the front dip at the worst possible time, then it's OTB, same issue if you hit any type of lip on the exit, rear wheel will hang up, front will go down, OTB again.
I much prefer the technique in this video if going over larger drop offs, it removes the above issues with a manual but keeps the benefits Drop off Video
It took Gareth at "A line coaching
" quite a while to get me out of the "just pop off it" Jedi method. Now loads more confident and landing decent drops even blind one's.
Well I read this thread and particularly the pink bike vid and thought "I don't do it like that, do I?" So for shits and giggles and to a void work built a drop on the drive
Turns out I do do it like that!
First run
Bit more speed
Bit tail heavy, needs more "scoop"
https://youtu.be/tKJl7MIxdZE
Not entirely sure what the point of that was, other than pink bike lass talks sense, but I had fun doing it!
Found another pallet too so might be a part 2 later!
is that a beanie you're wearing ?
Yup, if I'd worn a helmet it'd have felt dangerous, psychology innit.
Re the pop thing I always think it's like you're going to start a manual just don't do the move all the way back or push through with the legs, just the initial compression and the more "right" the speed the less you have to do
@thestabiliser, that's a ramp, so more like a jump than a drop off to be fair, if you try any rear movement off the ramp you'll land rear wheel heavy if you do it right.
Yeah my bit of wood wasn't long enough for the slope really, will build the next bit flatter
I found this one quite useful, explaining the benefit of unweighting the rear as well as the front.
After @argee comment decided to go flatter before bigger so found a steeper bit of ground.
Back wheel heavy again
Better
Was a little more intimidating* and that shows in the more exaggerated movement, I think
*Two foot at the ramp, maybe four at the landing! Of course it's bigger than it looks!
Your grass needs cutting.
How......could you? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Nice elevation round your gaff @thestabiliser. I'm wondering if I can block up the steps down to the lawn for some practice 🙂
@thestabiliser, the reason for the comments is i fell for the manual/wheelie/etc at the beginning, it ends with some funky rear wheel landings, or hanging up your rear wheel on the drop (3 x broken ribs and a concussion for me on that one!).
If you look at the video above your post, that's what i tend to do for drops that i worry about, it can still be rear wheel heavy at times, but removes that hang up worry, it's pretty much more of a first half of the bunny hop rather than manual move though, which can end up with folk trying to do an english bunny hop off a drop, now that's a nightmare to watch!
The important fact is that no two drops are the same and it's probably not "one" technique, but a lot of different ones, which you needt to be able to apply to suit the drop your are, er, dropping!
So to say "don't manual off" or "don't pop" is really eronious, because it the drop is tight, tall and you can't drop off at any speed, then you are going to HAVE to manual off it!
In extremis, we have the trials style drop from a rear wheel stand, where the drop is left at zero speed, ie from a continuously held "manual" and is started with a pedal hop off. At the other end are those bike park drops, with 100 yards of straigth run in, 100 yards of straight run out, with the landing at just the right angle, in just the right place and a perfect take off ramp, smooth, flat, no lips, easy to judge, and sure, you can ride right off those at 100 mph without doing anything and it'll all be good.
The real world is probably somewhere in the middle..... 🙂
Which is why you need to get out a ride all sorts of drops, and not just practise the one you happen to have in your local bike park
That bigger drop in the Quarry at Leeds Urban Bike Park is responsible for a lot of ambulance visits...That in itself is quite off putting...
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Built this, don't have the stones to ride it 😂😂
Do it do it do it!...
Live stream it though just in case you don't make it...
What?
When you say built i was expecting a ladder drop
Any std 100kg all up rider will have that over before you can say ' call me an ambulance, i need to get this pallet out of my arse'
This thread has actually inspired me to try higher drops that I would normally skirt around.
That bigger drop in the Quarry at Leeds Urban Bike Park is responsible for a lot of ambulance visits…That in itself is quite off putting…
I haven't been to Leeds bike park but I bet the number of ambulance call outs is just due to its accessibility.
Having ridden it more than a few times (and casing it first time - too slow and had to lift the front wheel a lot and basically landed on the flat tabletop, though I stayed on) it is dangerous for a number of reasons, and it should be changed.
Firstly because the roll-in is steep, people get scared of taking too much speed, brake and then don't clear the flat top of the landing OR nosedive. Secondly, because they built the landing with a flat top that you need to clear, the drop itself doesn't help beginners. Thirdly, there is a tight blind entry point that turns a corner and the exit looks, feels and seems blind, so people get unnerved and go in slow if not confident. Fourthly the landing has no exist - it takes you straight into a very steep kicker that loads of people seem to just sit at the top of watching, so you have to be hard on the brakes or just jump into them. Fifthly, there is no progression into it - there aren't many drops in lubp - the other quarry lines are just steepish g-outs where you don't leave the ground. Sixthly, lubp is meant to be punter friendly and local - so punters go and hurt themselves
How old is she?
This is old now but this was Jnr coaching other kids on a drop. He's done MUCH bigger since. He's totally unqualifed (he's only 10 now so he just really helps friends) but he has coached lots of kids (and some of the parents).
This is exaggerated movement because he's demonstrating pushing the bike away for his mates Dad..
She rides track competitively. Her coach has always promoted other forms of cycling for peddle time basically. This year she and her friends have taken to MTB to supplement their training. I think that it is her cat like handling skills from track that are saving her blushes on the drops rather than any proper form. Hence the video coaching.
This might not be a popular post. Lol.
You an either following the advice (some good, some bad) given by others in this thread.
Or you an do the right thing and get her some proper coaching.
I got my son 2 hours of 1 on 1 coaching, and it turned out to be the best investment I've made, being safer on the bike, he learned more skills in that 2 hrs then i could have taught him in 2 months.