[Closed] Practicing and building up drops

Llandegla has a good selection of sizes

Most of them nowadays I'd have thought. Whereabouts are you based? Certainly Glentress in the Borders, Llandegla and Coed y Brenin in North Wales. Gisburn has a skills loop as well.

In Lancashire

Looking for 2ft to 5ft? Work up to the five of course

Sure I've seen a hill with various sizes drops along side one another but could be imagining it.

Lee quarry had a hill like you describe

5 foot?? Sounds massive to me!

Lee Quarry is a good call. Lots of areas where you can mess about and in the centre by the pump track there's a ridge with three progressively harder drops. Also the run down from Cragg has loads of drops built into it and there's various other bits that are fun, including a series of stepped drops that are harder than they look. Good luck with the 5 footers, will you be hucking it to flat..?

5 foot?? Sounds massive to me!

Chicksands has exactly what you're after, but it's a fair old trek from that North just to practise drops.

Lee Quarry has three drop offs but they then run directly onto another track.
Head to the pump track with the large metal sculpture in front. They are behind the track, uphill on the right.

No idea on where you can practice but if you can drop of a 6inch curb you can drop off a 6 foot wall. The two ways of doing it are the same. Either slow and controlled or fast(and controlled) I spent hours as a kid just riding round looking for walls and stuff to drop off. Sometimes it was the roof of a building or a flat bed Lorry with absolutely no run in so you had to do it trials style. Other times it was a retaining wall with a fast run in and plenty of off. I think what I'm trying to say is go out and play and experiment. No two drops are the same so go and practice on as many as you can and when you experience one on the trail you will instinctively know what to do.

I changed my commute last year from Brompton to MTB and went on the hunt for urban drops. I found tons of them, varying from 1' to 4' around an urban park, mostly to flat although one was a nicely into a downslope. Riding a load of drops like that multiple times a week has made a huge difference to how I treat them on the trail. All the smaller drops are retaining walls of various heights whilst the biggest involve clearing sets of steps. Bigger urban drops to flat tend to have safety rails unless they're loading bays.

I noticed the benefit when I was back at Llandegla a few months ago and cleared the skills drop section without even thinking about it. I can't do big stuff but it's enough to be able to flow on most trails in the UK bar proper DH bike stuff.

See what you can find locally - it's the frequent practice that gives the greatest benefit.

Gisburn has some nice drops on the down hill lines half way round the loop (just past the hope line by the 'leap of faith') that are good to play on and build up in severity

No idea on where you can practice but if you can drop of a 6inch curb you can drop off a 6 foot wall.

There are several things to do and working up to it is a great one, the start of Caddon Bank at inners (if it's still there) had the Small, Medium then Larger drops, make 1, do 2, make 2 do 3 etc. got you into the swing of it.

Drops with transitions are generally nicer and friendlier to learn on, drops to flat are the ones that although the technique still holds up can cause more problems as you need to get them right.

The trail cerntres with skills parks are a good place to go. Rather than just playing thought about doing a jumps and drops type course? Personally having fought to replace the bad technique learned from mucking about/mates ideas with stuff that is right I'd rather start with the right idea and go from there.

One other thing to remember is that when measuring drops an actual tape measure is not required 😉

There are a few about this size and slightly bigger at Gisburn...
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And you get a nice trail centre to ride around too.

There are some more pics and a little vid in this write-up I did from a skills day there...
http://unduro.co.uk/riding/pro-ride-guides-airtime-course/

Surprised no one mentioned just heading out into the local woods and building your own. Grounds so soft at the moment you can have a decent drop and run in built in less than an hour.

Building your own means you can just keep adding to the height as you get more confident.

The only problem after pissed off land owners is falling by yourself in the woods 😉
Edit

And that most people have no idea how to build a proper jump

If you fall in the woods and nobody hears you...?

And that most people have no idea how to build a proper [b]jump[/b]

Which is not what the OP asked for, Drops are super easy to build.