Body Position for Jumping a Bike

Being super comfortable on your bike is essential to learning to control it in the air. Even if you’re talented on a trampoline or similar sports, having a bike under you makes a big difference. When preparing to jump your bike, your pedals should be parallel to the ground with one foot in front of the other. Most riders have a preference of which foot should go forward. Your weight should be slightly back, but overall in a comfortable, upright position. Your knees and arms should be slightly bent. Approach the jump with an appropriate amount of speed, and follow someone in who has hit it before if you’re unsure of how fast to go. Most jumps are built in such a way that it’s easy to judge the speed required, but some are a bit tougher. Overshooting and undershooting jumps is no fun.

Hitting the Bike Jump

Now that you’re rolling into the jump with the correct body position and speed, let’s talk about the takeoff. Stay calm and controlled on the takeoff. Not much needs to be done. As you roll up the lip of the jump, you can bend your knees a little bit more and compress your rear shock. If you’re on a hardtail, the same concept applies. As your front wheel starts to roll off of the takeoff, you can begin to “pop” every so slightly by extending your knees just a little bit and allowing your fork and shock to extend. This is not an exaggerated motion, and doing too much of it will cause your bike to “buck” you off the lip. Controlled is the name of the game when jumping your bike. Start small and work up from there as you get this feeling down.

In the air, let your arms begin to bend even further as your bars rise towards your chest. Again, this is a small motion. Do not focus on pulling your bars, but rather letting your bike rise. You can also move your center of gravity slightly back. Be sure your knees are still bent and the bike feels controlled under you. If your legs have straightened, you popped far too hard off the takeoff and your control will be minimal. As you approach the landing, you want to both wheels to hit the ground simultaneously. If you have to pick a wheel to hit first, I’d recommend the back wheel. Landing with your front wheel first can be risky business if your weight is too far forward. If your arms are bent properly, you can alter the angle your bike hits the ground.

If your front wheel is too high, straighten your arms to push the front end down. If your front wheel is too low, try to bend your arms up even more to bring the front end up. This is much harder than bringing the front end down, and if you’re way too far forward there’s not much you can do. This is why you need to focus on a proper takeoff.

Other Bike Jumping Tips

When you’re jumping a bike, be loose. Tensing up with a bike under you is the worst thing you can do. The bike will take control of you instead of the other way around. Be calm and confident. Also, don’t jump in the wind. You might not think much of it, but wind can blow you feet to the side and throw your bike in ways you never thought imaginable. A light breeze is okay, but be weary of heavy crosswinds. Jumping a bike is incredibly fun once you’re comfortable with it, so get after it! Best of luck. Leave a comment below with questions or progress!

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There are two ways to bunny hop on a bike. One is the American method, where your front wheel leaves the ground first, followed by your rear wheel. The other is the English method, where both wheels leave the ground at the same time. In this tutorial, we’ll be talking about how to do a bunny hop the English way. Before learning to bunny hop, you should be able to lift your front wheel up and ride on and off of curbs, do track stands for at least a few seconds, and have an overall good control of your bike. Let’s get into it!

How to Bunny Hop

Bunny hops are incredibly useful to know how to do and do well. If you’re a mountain biker, bunny hops allow you to seamlessly hop over logs, roots, and obstacles in a trail. They’re also just fun and add style and smoothness to your riding. With the English bunny hop, your entire body initiates the hop, as opposed to an American bunny hop where the motion is initiated like a manual. When first starting, get yourself into a track stand. With both brakes pulled in so you so stay in place, bend your knees and arms. Pop up as if you were jumping without a bike beneath you. This means your legs should extend as you pop, and then bend as you rise. Your arms will follow a similar motion, although a small amount of pull on your bars will be necessary.

Essentially you want your front end to be weightless and let your arms and hands guide the front of the bike up as the rest of the bike rises with your body. It can be a tough concept to grasp at first, but think of it as jumping and bringing your bike with you – not so much jumping your bike directly. Once you manage to get a couple inches off the ground in a track stand, it’s time to learn it rolling.

Applying Your Skills with Movement

Now that you’ve hopped in place, start moving. You can do this in the street, on a dirt road, or wherever you’re comfortable – just start coasting with your pedals flat. As in the track stand, bend your knees and pop. As you rise, bend your knees to allow your bike to come with you. You don’t need to be clipped in for this – if you’ve ever ollied a skateboard it’s a similar concept. You have your handlebars to initiate some rise in your bike, and you just need to apply that through to the rear of the bike as well. Make your bike weightless and let it rise with you.

Closing Remarks

It’s a tricky one to explain for sure, so hopefully the videos on this tutorial page will help clear things up. I prefer the English bunny hop, but most of my friends prefer the American method. It’s all about what clicks best in your head! Best of luck with the trick, and I hope you’re hopping logs in the middle of trails in no time. The bunny hop is also a pretty fundamental part of learning to jump a bike. Comment below with questions or progress!

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A stoppie is a nose wheelie on a bike. It can be a little intimidating at first, but is super fun once you learn it. This tutorial assumes you have a front brake, so if you’re on a dirt jumper or a BMX bike, you may want to check our BMX section. Before doing this trick, you should have good control of your bike and be a comfortable rider. Let’s get into it!

Getting Your Back Wheel Up

A proper stoppie uses a combination of weight and front brake. If you just slam your front brake, you will have very little control and might end up over the bars. If you don’t use enough front brake, you’ll have a hard time bringing the rear wheel up more than a few inches. It’s a fine balance of the two. To do a stoppie, start rolling with your weight centered on the bike standing up. I’d recommend doing this on pavement so that your tire doesn’t skid. Slowly pull your front brake lever to slow you down.

As you roll to a stop, you can pop your weight slightly forward to help bring your wheel up. By now your front wheel should be locked and your back wheel should be rising. To slow your rise, you can pull your weight backwards to act as a counter balance. When you first learn, you’ll likely only get the back wheel a couple inches off the ground. That’s fine. Take the progression nice and easy. I have gone over the bars for taking stoppies too high, and I really wouldn’t recommend it. So how do you prevent that?

Keeping It Controlled

As you start to get your stoppies higher and higher, you’ll need to start being cautious of going too high. The balance point is a fun place to find and you can sit in a stoppie for seconds at a time, but going past the balance point is no fun at all. There are two ways to handle this. One is tossing your weight back as a counter balance as mentioned above. The second is releasing the brake lever. It sounds obvious, but if you’re worried about going over, it’s not always your first thought in a moment of panic.

Slowly and smoothly release the front brake to drop back down. If you immediately release your lever, your back end will slam down. It’s not terrible, but ideally you want to roll away smooth. Do this by slowly releasing the brake as you shift your weight. The back of the bike will drop slowly and smoothly and you can ride away clean. Overall, stoppies are not all that technical and just require commitment and practice.

Taking It Up A Notch

Have your stoppies dialed to the balance point? Great. There are lots of fun combos to take from there. One is whipping your weight to one side as you initiate a stoppie. This will cause the tail end of your bike to swing around in the stoppie, allowing you to turn 90 degrees or even a full 180. It’s really fun, and can actually be useful and awesome for tight turns. For example, on some of the trails we ride in Montana, the switchbacks are so tight it’s easier and more fun to stoppie around them than to try and ride them regularly.

Another option is the no footer. Instead of standing the entire time, do a stoppie until your seat hits your butt. Once you’re sitting in the stoppie, kick your feet off your pedals and bring them back before your wheel drops. Lastly is the rolling stoppie… This one’s tough and I still can’t do it. It deserves its own tutorial, and I’ll link it here once we have one up. Best up luck with your stoppies! Comment below with questions or progress. I look forward to seeing more rear wheels off the ground.

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Crankflip Baby Steps

To start learning proper crankflips, learn to flick your pedals a full rotation backwards while sitting down. This allows you to learn the motion with none of the risk. The motion does change a bit once standing, but not a lot. To make sure you learn with the proper technique when sitting, do not focus on pushing down on your back pedal. Instead, focus on pulling upwards on your front pedal. Weird concept, right? The reason you don’t want to focus on pushing is because once you’re standing up, pushing isn’t so much of an option. When sitting, pushing works because the seat is supporting you. When standing, you have nothing holding you up and pushing down on the pedal will move your entire body. That’s a no go.

To pull up on your front pedal and flip your cranks backwards, angle your toe  and the pedal down towards the ground. This will give you a bit of grip and leverage to yank the pedals. It doesn’t take much! Work on this motion sitting unitl you have the timing and pull required down. Standing is harder and higher risk, so make sure you’re comfortable flipping your cranks sitting and with the proper technique.

The Standing Crankflip

Alright, so you’ve got the sitting crankflip dialed. Now it’s time to try it for real. The immediate difference you’ll notice standing is that you need to just float there for a second as you wait for your cranks to come back around. You’ll also notice the pull is a little harder and a little less consistent. Your back foot is much less useful standing, which is why learning with proper technique is important. Focus on angle your front foot down, pulling the crank back, and supplying a little bit of push with your back foot as you jump off of the pedals to allow them to spin freely.

Timing can be difficult. When sitting, all you had to do was pull the cranks. Now, you need to bend your knees and then pull the cranks and pop at the same time. It’s like an ollie on a skateboard, if you’ve ever done that before. Focus on jumping up as you pull your crank so that you have the air time to let your cranks come around. You can put a lot of weight on your bars for support and to help you spend a little more time in the air.

You’ll find once you’ve done a few you learn how to bail pretty effectively – if you’re coming up short, you can widen your legs and land on the ground without smashing your shins. Of course, once you start becoming consistent, you’ll want to start doing them faster and in different terrain. That’s when they get tough… Good luck!

Fun Crankflip Variations

There are tons of different ways and places to do crankflips. One of my favorites is while in a wheelie. Get your wheelies dialed, get your crankflips dialed, and put the two together. It is super fun to see how many crankflips you can do and get your feet back to the pedals and ride away. So far I’ve gotten a triple in a wheelie and double standing – beat my record! It’s also fun to do a stoppie crankflip. Do a normal stoppie and then let the seat come up and hit your butt. Once you’re sitting in the stoppie, try to get a crankflip in before your tail drops. I’d be impressed to see this standing as well!

I’ve started trying to do them just before switchbacks when riding downhill – it’s a fun flair to the corner and doing them with speed and objects to avoid makes it so much harder – you can’t just stare at your feet the whole time! Riders better than me also tend to do them while jumping. Like I said, the possibilities are endless!

Leave me a comment below if you have any questions about the trick. Best of luck and have fun!

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A manual on a mountain bike is a wheelie without pedaling, where you use speed, weight, balance, and gravity to keep your front wheel off the ground. Manuals take some time and commitment to learn, but feel awesome when you finally start to get them dialed. Before learning to manual, make sure that your wheelies are dialed in. You should be able to ride at least a few blocks in a wheelie comfortably and have modulation of your rear brake dialed.

Bringing Your Front Wheel Up

To initiate a manual, push your feet forwards into your pedals as you toss your weight back. This will bring the front end of the bike up without pedaling. It’s a tough skill at first and you’ll likely have a hard time bringing that front wheel up very far. Really focus on pushing your feet into your pedals. It’s a bit of an odd concept but it really helps. As you push your feet into your pedals, you put your weight all the way back. You don’t just pull up with your arms – you use your whole body. Be sure to have a finger on the rear brake when practicing this, as once you figure it out, you have to be careful not to loop off the back.

Holding the Manual

Now that you’re up, keeping a manual going is all about speed and hip thrusts. I’m telling you – super, super weird concept at first. When you first learn, you’ll likely be on your rear brake too much and slow down quickly until you have to put the front wheel down. Doing these on a slight downhill is easiest, and doing them with some speed helps as well. While you should always have a finger ready to grab the rear brake, try to minimize brake use with manuals and instead control your wheel height with your hips and body position.

More Manual Tips

If your front wheel starts to drop, toss your weight back as if you were first bringing the manual up. If you start to get too high, move your hips forward to bring the wheel down a little bit. Try to be controlled with this motion. It will be jerky at first, but practice makes perfect. A perfect manual has very little noticeable movement and is controlled with small hip movements and an occasional very light squeeze of the rear brake if you absolutely need it. Manuals are a blast when you learn them and are a natural step up once you’ve got wheelies dialed in. Good luck!

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Initial Steps

First off, this isn’t a trick like many that you can watch a tutorial and learn in a day. It’s gonna take some time to dial. Many hours up and down the street. But they’ll be so worth it! Start off by learning to bring that front wheel up. Start with small pops, and then learn to start putting your weight into it and really yanking the front of the bike off the ground. As soon as you have a scary moment where you felt just a little too high, it’s time to learn to feather the brake.

Start doing those same high pops with your finger ready to go on the rear brake. Bring the tire up, and smoothly pull the rear brake to bring yourself down. Don’t slam it. Be smooth and controlled, as this is the key to the mile long wheelie. Without the rear brake, you’re going off the back or you have to go faster and faster to keep the front up until you eventually drop it. Feathering is key, so take your time with this step.

Getting Pedal Strokes In

Once you feel comfortable with that rear brake, start trying to get a few pedal strokes with that finger ready on the brake. Even if you’re not to the balance point yet that’s okay – just get the feel for floating that front wheel for a few seconds. To where you don’t really need your rear brake yet, but you’re ready for it. This is the step that once you get good at, you can start getting 10 or so second wheelies that aren’t really in control, but you’re stoked on. Dial this in, get the feel for it floating, and then commit to that balance point.

Maintaining the Balance Point

A proper wheelie sits in the balance point pretty much the whole time. By balance point, I mean lean any farther back and you’re going off the back of the bike. This is where those brake feathering skills are utilized. Pop it up high, use that brake, and ride your wheelie to the next state. Like I said – this really doesn’t come quick. I think it took me a year of casually trying to ride wheelies to campus to really have it dialed in. If you want it bad I bet you could learn in a few weeks with enough persistence. Best of luck!

Feel free to leave a comment with questions, or let us know

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