OVER 40 MOUNTAIN BIKE TIPS- DROP PHYSICS

The thing about a drop is that the front wheel comes off a split second before the back wheel and that may not seem like much but watch how quickly this attitude of the bike changes. In less than half a second your front wheel is going to drop three feet. Instead of having the front wheel drop and the rear wheel supported, how can you do a drop where both wheels drop at the same time? That's what today's video is about. Hey YouTube, welcome back to the channel. About a month ago we did a video on drops with Leelike's bike. You didn't have any luxury low. I want to get some luxury low. We had a unified theory for drops that would work on 90% of what's out there but a lot of you noticed that leaves 10% missing. So today's video is about that other, you know what, let's call it nine percent because there's one percent that this won't cover either. We're gonna call this popping a drop. So today's video is all about popping the drop. As we're filming this we have major questions about popping drops. Question number one is what's the optimal point for taking off? Question two, does it really work when you're going slower? We think that this is a technique that we use when we're going less than eight miles an hour but we have to film it and make sure that that's really what's happening. And three, what's the height you really need to pop a drop so that rear wheel doesn't hang up? As we ride towards the edge of the drop gravity's pulling us down but the surface is pushing in opposition and the wheels don't drop. As soon as the front wheel no longer has that opposite force acting on it, it begins to drop. And we know that like any object on earth the wheel will begin to accelerate at just under 10 meters per second squared. In the two tenths of a second that the rear is supported and the front isn't, the front drops nearly a foot and a half. In this case the angle created is 23 degrees and the rider lands perfectly. But what happens when the speed is slower? Going slower lengthens the time the front wheel is falling without the rear wheel. Here's how much drop and angle you can expect at different speeds. 10 miles per hour, 17 degrees. 9 miles per hour, 21 degrees. 8 miles per hour, 27 degrees. 7 miles per hour, 39 degrees. 6 miles per hour, 55 degrees. The easiest way to prevent problematic angles is to keep your speed over 8 miles an hour. But that's not always possible. But what if we could get gravity to act on both wheels at the same time? To do this we need to somehow remove the surface from under the rear wheel. Then the bike would be free to fall without forward rotation. That's where pop comes in. The pop essentially creates a new take-off point. A take-off point where both wheels are supported. So this drop right here is a medium but I never use it in classes because it was not built by Alpine Bike Parks, it was built by Boulder Community Hospital. The orthopedic department? The orthopedic department. This wrecks people. A couple things. One is that it's a significant drop and you can't roll it. No. The other thing is it's got like a fair gap. I must have hit this a hundred times at least. I've always used speed but this experiment that we've been doing today has given me some new confidence. So I'm going to come in as slow as I dare and pop it. Let's do it. The physics are simple. As the rider pushes down on the bike, the ground pushes back and the bike rebounds up. This is what we call the pop. The bike travels up until the forces that propelled it up are overcome by the forces of gravity and it begins to fall. The wheels both fall at the same rate and the rider creates the angle to match the landing. Yeah yeah that's great but how do I learn to pop? Popping a drop isn't difficult but it does take some practice. And the first place to practice isn't a drop. It's a piece of flat ground. You'll need something to fill in for the end of the drop. A crack in the sidewalk, a stick. Start by coming at the line at a brisk walking speed. Push into the bike while keeping your hands light. The bike should get weightless and come up off the ground a few inches. The weight distribution on a bike like this is about 60%, 40%. All I have to do is come through, load with my feet, make a wave and unload the bike. And if I do that the bike the whole bike will come up but since the back wheel is heavier the back wheel will come up more. If I want to truly get a level takeoff I'm just going to make it a row by while I'm pushing with my feet to get that release I'm also going to pull with my hands. I'm not pulling upward I'm pulling backward just a little bit. Keep working on your speed and push to get used to the feeling and dial in your timing. You'll want to pop at the very last millisecond. When you feel comfortable that your rear wheel is clearing the line it's time to take your pop to a small drop. One that you would normally roll is best. Do dozens of reps. This technique will eventually become so automatic you won't even know you're doing it. One of the things I love about this technique is you can use it last minute. So you can't necessarily see where you're landing as you take off a lot of drops right but you can see it in the last half second. If you give a little pop in the last half second you can take something that you weren't going to make and make it. That's really good. So it's a beautiful thing to layer on the standard drops that you're already doing. Beginner intermediate technique and this technique have the same start position which is that really low hinge. Again always carry a low hinge into drops and if you decide you need more distance then boom pop it. Simple. Just like the beginner and intermediate technique from our previous video this technique is the same on small drops and larger drops. As you get more comfortable you'll also get more comfortable with larger drops. Don't rush it. Don't let people push you. Progress at a rate that gives you maximum joy. Some pops are big others are small and extremely subtle like this one at the rock garden at Hall. So this is requiring us to use our popping skills like that load and actually use this as a timing cue. Get our pump and our drive and then purposefully take off. You use this knuckle and then what you'll see then instead of the bike being catastrophically rotated forward by picking the bike up I control the attitude of the bike with my arms. If I was new to popping this would be a bad one to choose. I agree. There's so much going on dude. Yeah. Yeah this this one is not the one to learn on. This is a high end kind of application of that basic skill. When you rely on speed you're working really hard to get that speed and that introduces tension. I've hit this drop a lot of times over the years you know and I've never done it as smoothly and as like joyfully as I did it just now and I think it's because I was going slower and I was just like unhurried and I was unpanicked and I was relaxed and I was focusing on pumping this stuff. I gotta say man like when you focus on pump and oscillation it turns on your flow centers and it makes everything work better. The optimal pop zone is right on the edge but can be quite a bit earlier depending on speed and conditions. How slow can you go? Without pop a safe speed for this was eight or nine miles per hour. With pop we rode this at less than five miles per hour. The optimal height is just four to eight inches depending on speed and conditions. If you like this video accelerate your finger at 9.8 meters per second towards the like button and if you'd like to see more hit the subscribe button and we'll see you next time on joyobike.com