How to Jump a Mountain Bike - MTB Skills and Essentials

Whether you're a beginner or an expert, hopefully you'll learn a few things in this video and enjoy it too. From the basics of jumping, all the way up to race jumps, scrubs and whips. As the way you're leaning, and try and get the bike as flat as you can, pull back with your arms, pushing your feet into the floor, but don't lean forward hard or this will happen. So, hello everyone, welcome to the amazing Rogate Bike Park for episode one of our new four part how-to series on mountain bike skills and essentials. Hopefully you'll be able to learn something in this series, whether you're a complete beginner all the way up to being an expert. Hopefully you might be able to learn something too that will make you ride better, faster or just have a bit more fun at the bike parks and the trails. This series is made possible by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. So here we are then, episode one, which is all about one of my favourite things in mountain biking, jumping. And you don't have to be doing the biggest jumps in the world, like at Darkfest, to have fun. Ah, there you go, easy as that. So we're going to run through a few of the basics today and then work our way up to a few of the cooler things about jumping, doing whips and scrubs, and hopefully everyone can learn a thing or two. Not only is jumping fun, it's also quite an essential way to get down a lot of tracks, especially here at a bike park, like Roguet. For example, we've got this kind of rolled double here, where obviously if you don't jump it, you're going to have to slow right down, it's going to ruin your flow and probably ruin your day, when all the five-year-old kids come down and shred that jump and you can't. So, if you're a beginner, we'll give you a few tips now to get you up to speed. First things first, bike setup. I'm here on my NS Enduro bike, and to be honest, you don't really need to change your setup much, or actually at all for jumping. Just a few things to look out for. Make sure your suspension rebound is not too fast, obviously, if it's like a pogo stick, it might ping you over the bars, or it might ping your front up if your front's too fast. So just make sure you've got a nice, steady setup, to be honest, like you should have anyway. But yeah, nice slow rebound. Front and rear is only going to help, having our tyres not too soft as well, pretty much just as I'd ride them, about 30-35 psi. If you have them a bit too soft, sometimes they can fold on the take-off, so you don't want to have your tyres too soft for jumping. And obviously, you have to be comfortable on your bike, not leaning forward too much, not leaning back too much, so a good setup is important. I'm quite a tall rider, so I like quite a high stem and quite an upright riding position, but it's totally personal preference, but you don't want too long of a stem, so that you're over the front, and you don't want too high bars, because that might pitch you off the back. But like I said, totally rider preference. Just ride what feels comfortable for you. Of course, also, you've got to make sure your seat's down and out of the way. If it's up at that height, that's not going to be good for jumps, because that might hit you in the butt, and again, cause you to crash, so get that all the way down. So we've found our nice jump here that we're ready to send, and obviously, you don't want to choose the scariest, most dangerous one to practice. A tabletop is actually better, but this one has a nice rolled landing, so to be honest, if we go short or long, it's not going to be the end of the world, so always practice on a nice, safe one. And without such a steep take-off, because the steeper the take-off gets, the more difficult it gets as well. So we're starting off with a nice, mellow one, which we're going to jump. So the most important thing about a jump, really, is judging the right speed. So if you can follow someone into a brand new jump, that's always good, but if not, it just comes down to a bit of experience. That's why you've got to make sure you start off with a jump that you know, or even with a tabletop, so you can just roll over it and work up to it. So once you roll into the jump with a decent speed, basically, you've just got to make sure your arms and legs are pretty strong. You don't want to get kicked by the jump. You want to make sure you're in control. So I find it helps to push into the take-off a little bit, almost as if you're pumping. You don't need to pull back. You can to get more height, but we'll cover that later. But just for jumping basics, you almost don't need to do anything. Just make sure you've got strong arms, strong legs. Lean back slightly off the take-off, not too much, or you'll loop out. Don't lean forward too much, again, because you'll go too nose-heavy, which is worse. So here you can see in slow-mo then, we're rolling into the jump, compressing our suspension. As you go up into the air, everything will go light, but don't panic. Be confident. Make sure you're looking for where you're going to land, and be ready for the impact. Hopefully, if you've got it right, it shouldn't really be too harsh. So to recap the main points there, approach with the right speed, make sure you're strong and confident, and then look where you're going. Make sure you look ahead. Yeah, basically, you've just got to give it a go. Okay, so a few mistakes to go through that you want to avoid. I see a few people doing mainly is just to see people going a bit stiff and a bit wonky. If you're scared, not confident, stiff, you might pull off to the side or not fly straight, and that's when maybe you can land a bit sideways or a bit off-balance and have a bit of a crash. That's why looking forward and ahead on the run-out always helps with every kind of riding, and especially with jumps. When you're first learning, obviously, you don't really need to do a bunny hop. You kind of, like I said, just cruise off the top of it. When you become a bit more confident, then you can start hopping off the take-off to get more height. But if you're not confident, that can sometimes lead you to pull off to the side and crash into a bank, like CA did the other day. So anyways, once you've dialed in your jumping technique on smaller jumps or tabletops, it's time to find something a little bit more extreme, like this gap jump here, which, obviously, you have to jump. There's no rolling going on here. So let's talk a little bit about landing, how to land a jump, how you want to ideally be landing. I'd say for the first time when you're trying to jump, it's the same for me, even if we jump Darkfest or Audi nines or something, I'll always try and stay completely neutral in the air, rather than front wheel up or front wheel down. When you practice a jump a little bit more, you want to land kind of perfectly in line with the landing, maybe even a bit front wheel down, sort of like that in the landing angle. Maybe first try, just because there's a little more room for error, try and land a bit more flat like that. Once you've dialed in the speed a bit, then you can start to dip the nose in to where it should be in the landing, and that feels pretty sick, and you get a lot of speed, and it's really smooth. But, launching it flat was quite fun, so here's a good little tip, it's kind of like a trials landing or a motocross landing, if you've ever seen guys on motocross bikes, gas it to flat. If you land back wheel first, straighten your legs out, have your arms kind of up by your chest, you can use the bike to take a lot of the landing and still be pretty smooth, if you want to send it to flat for some reason, but you might want to, because it's quite fun. So yeah, legs straight, front wheel right up in the chest, extend your legs down in to the landing, suck it up with your feet, legs, when the front wheel comes down, hold on tight to the bars, because they'll get pulled out of you, it's actually the smoothest way to land flat. And there you go, not really useful, but cool, and that's what biking's all about. So once you've got a bit more control, and a bit more confidence, which is key, in jumping, then we can move on to something else you'll probably find in any kind of bike park or trail, it's called a hip, which is basically where the take off of the jump doesn't line up with the landing, so it goes left or right, in some kind of way, which obviously you have to kind of do your turning in the air, so it's quite tricky, but once you learn it, it's really cool, and it feels amazing, because you can get all sorts of shapes in the air. So we found one here, it's another basic one, with a nice sort of rolled landing, just in case, and a wide landing, wide run out. A few mistakes people make is leaning in a little too much, or not leaning enough, turning too much, or not turning too much, so it's a bit of a fine balance, that you just really need to keep practising, but find a nice shallow hip, so it doesn't turn too much, to practise on, I'll give you a few tips here now. So as this hip's left, it's kind of, you almost have to think of it like a bit of a left berm, with a gap in the middle, that's a good way to start off it, as you can see the tyre marks on the floor, kind of carve already, because you have to get that sort of turn from somewhere, so you can help yourself by doing a little bit before the ramp, so we're going to set up here, start carving, a little bit of a turn, so that by the top of the ramp, so you're facing most of the way, over to where you want to run out, and then we're going to do the rest of the turn, in the air, which will sort of happen, if you've already started to turn, you kind of just have to lean your shoulder in a little bit, not too much obviously, so you kind of, like I said, it's like a berm, with a gap, so you want to be landing, almost like you're landing into another berm. So again to recap, basically treat it with the same speed as you would with a straight jump, start your rotation towards the bottom of the take off, continue it up, maybe drop your shoulder a little bit to keep that rotation, and keep that weight lent in the way you want to go, and when you land, I find it easier to land front wheel first, so you've got to be confident, because as soon as you land, then you've got that control of the front wheel, that can help steer you out, if you've either lent in a bit too much, or not enough, something like that. You can see these skid marks off to the right here, which must be from someone not leaning in quite enough, and then having to shoot out there, so that's why I'd recommend choosing a nice, easy, safe hip like this to learn on, which has some good run out, in case you get it wrong, because maybe you will. Due to the nature of a hip, where you're sort of turning and leaning in, actually kind of promotes you to do some kind of cool shape, which is why hips are extra fun, it already starts you off in a bit of a whip, or you can try and do a table top, where you turn your tyres in the opposite direction as the way you're leaning, and try and get the bike as flat as you can, easier to do off a hip, and that's a fun trick, I'll do one now. So if you want to find out more on how to learn table tops, maybe let us know in the comments what we should do, so this is episode 1, episode 2 is going to be cornering, episode 3 and 4, we don't know, so let us know, maybe you want to learn how to do table tops, could go to dirt jumps, could be bike park, could be anything, let us know in the comments, and whatever gets the most, we'll try and do for you, but for now, let's go back to that jump that we saw to flat, because I've got some tips that'll help you hit the jump at that speed, and still land in the landing, so let's go over there. So here we are, back at this kind of cool double gap, where I'm going to teach you how to race jump, so we're going to squash up the take off, as hard as we can, and we're going to be able to hit that jump, the same speed I hit it earlier, and still stay nice and low, and land smoothly in the landing, here's how it's done. So what happens there, basically, you go as fast as you can into the jump, then you kind of use your arms and legs for a bit of a pre-load, as you're coming into the take off, pre-load the suspension, and then almost be ready to do a bunny hop, kind of over the take off is what it feels like, and then as the take off comes up, you absorb all the energy into your bike, so you let your bike come all the way up to your body, and your body kind of floats through, and so all your mass is going forwards, and not up, and that means you can obviously go a lot faster, and clear the same gap with less height, and more speed, which is good for racing, and again, it's just fun to do sometimes if you're coming in really fast to a jump. Before we move on, time for a quick message from today's video sponsor, Squarespace. Buying a domain from Squarespace is simple, because there are no hidden fees or price hikes. They sell over 200 top level domains, so you can find the perfect name for your website. 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So there is actually one other way which you can keep low on this jump, and whilst it is a lot more difficult, it gives you a lot more style points as well, because we're going to try the scrub, which comes from motocross, invented by James Barber-Stewart, I believe, that's why it's called the Barber Scrub, and it is almost impossible to do a really good one on a mountain bike, but I've seen a couple of people who actually do it and make it work, but even if it doesn't work, it's still fun, and looks cool, and feels really good. So here is how I try and do it. I'm still learning to try and do it myself, but basically, the idea, instead of squashing it straight like a race jump, to get over that take-off, to dissipate the upwards energy of the take-off, instead of doing it with your arms and legs, you try and scrub your bike over the take-off by angling it sideways, and your wheel over the top. So basically you want to be sort of turning up the lift over that way, and cutting down into the air to stay as low as we can. So again, we're going to need to come in with a lot more speed than we'd normally jump it, we're going to set up wide, and almost make it into a bit of a hip, that way when we're turning and scrubbing over it, we kind of almost make it a bit of a hip ourselves. Yeah, I'll try one. So to recap, you want to come in super fast again, just like the race jump as well, pre-load before the take-off, but instead of going completely straight and sucking up the take-off into yourself, you kind of use the bike to suck up a bit sideways, into the side of your body, and then you tweak it back around, come straight to land. Like I said, scrubs are super fun, I don't know how useful they are. Some people are a lot better than me at them actually, I think Baz van Steenburg does some epic ones, Dylan Starcus can do some really cool ones, definitely check them out. I'm still working on them myself, but hopefully you guys can go and try that now. So the opposite of going low, obviously is going high, so now I teach you how to do probably the most fun, which is maximum airtime, and a boost. So, for a boost, weirdly you actually want to come in a lot slower, because you're going to be going higher for a lot more airtime. You want to start probably back here, just before the transition, and you want to push as hard as you can into your suspension so it's completely bottomed out at the bottom, all the way at the take-off, and then just as your front wheel reaches the top, pull back with your arms, pushing your feet into the floor, and then when the back wheel gets to the top, you want to lift your back wheel up as well, and that should fire you into the air for maximum height. Then when you're up there, for extra height, you can tuck up the back and straighten your arms for extra star points, but basically, do whatever you're comfortable with in the air, look for the landing, it might be a little harsher than if you just jump it normally because you're coming from higher, but as long as you hit the landing, you should be fine, and there you go, boosting is the best. Once you're comfortable with jumping and all these things we've mentioned today, then hopefully you should conquer every jump in the whole park, and you should start getting comfortable enough to start moving the bike around in the air, because obviously it's not touching the floor. So literally, you can make it do whatever you want, as long as you bring it back before you land. So maybe we'll work on some stuff like that in future videos, maybe some whips, maybe some style things, let us know in the comments, maybe some tricks, up to you guys. So there we go, hopefully you learned a thing or two today, and you too can try all sorts of new jumps, even up to the big bad boy, this 30 footer down at the bottom of Roguet, all the way up to maybe Darkfest or something like that. The techniques are kind of all the same, just obviously the bigger the jump, the harder the compression on the take off, so you've got to be extra strong for that, and obviously the longer the airtime, the slower you have to tilt forward, so don't lean forward hard, or this will happen. And that's bad. But yeah, hopefully you learned something today, watch out for episode 2, which is going to be all about cornering, and like I said, let us know what else you guys want to learn about, and we'll make it in episodes 3 and 4. Thanks for watching guys, make sure you subscribe, check out the other one, and see you on the next one.