BOOST A MOUNTAIN BIKE. INTERMEDIATE JUMP SKILLS TO GET HIGHER

Hey guys last week I spent the morning with Christian Pepper the king of boost and I wanted him to get me jumping in the way that he jumps just getting that supernatural height that he gets. We got so much good stuff that I can't make it into one video so this is the first half. In this video we're going to learn all about the mechanics of boost. We're going to learn how the pump track and jumping are related which we've looked at in other videos but he's got a unique way of seeing things. There's lots of aha moments. Stay tuned for part one coming up next. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Hi neighbor. See now you ride so well you could have a bike. It's purple. I mean at the same time you know sometimes you're oh too many people are looking at me I just want a black bike. Oh really? That's good to hear because I feel like that all the time. I don't want anyone looking at me I want a black bike. You're one of those people that has almost like a supernatural boost. It seems to defy physics. When you ride BMX it's so much about learning to pump and manipulate the transitions to give you more speed in the forward direction and when you can learn how that applies to jumping and how you're going to manipulate the transitions in an upward direction it becomes the same thing. Do you go faster? When you're going higher off of a jump more of your energy is taking you upward rather than forward. Right. So if you don't want to case the jump you do have to you do have to go faster with speed. Okay. And so that's why like this is terrible news. That's why it's the first piece of bad news. It all comes down to how comfortable mentally am I with really leaning back and pushing off with this jump. So this is the second piece of bad news because I look at you going off of the face and you're like way in the back seat. It looks like you're water skiing. Like just is that what it feels like? So like there's the correct technique and then there's a timing. Yeah. And the nice part is once you've nailed the technique it's kind of the same across the board but the timing is how you tweak how high you go. Yeah. So if you're like oh I want to stay low you'll time it earlier and if you want to go really high you'll time it later. Still the predominant advice in mountain biking is get back. And they're all suffering from this advice that they got whether it's from a shop or a friend. So everyone's just trying to solve everything by getting back. Yeah. That's like one of the first things that I see is I'll follow a person and just realize that they're way too backseat and not friendly enough with the front bike. You get friendly. You do a little tire grab. To me your signature move is the whip with the reach around seat grab. I like that one. Maybe you can teach me that today. Let's do it. Doubtful. Pumping is all about creating and maintaining speed in a forward trajectory and jumping is about controlling your speed in more of an upward trajectory. My whole goal is to get my weight over the front side. Like I don't want to push into the front side at all because that's going to send me upward. Rather I want to get my weight over it and then push into the backside so that that weight can go downward through the transition into a forward trajectory. Yeah. So I'll stand up nice and tall and then start a little bit crouched but I like that you get up really tall right here. You see your arms go out nice and straight. Legs too. And that's because you're trying to get that core weight of yourself up over the front side of that roller right there. And then just like I was saying you kind of lunge and get friendly with the front of the bike because you're anticipating having to push your bike down into the backside. You see how your arms and legs are starting to bend and preload so that as you get over the front boom your arms are kind of pushing that front wheel through the sweet spot right there and then your legs consequently become more loaded and they extend like right there. So I'd say your legs are probably extending a little bit late. I could get a little more too it looks like. Yeah it looks like they could probably straighten out. So let's compare. So there you go. I'm straightening out getting nice and tall over the front. I might be getting like a little bit more friendly with the front of the bike but pretty similar. But you see how... You start to move backwards here too where I... Oh yeah. I'm really pushing the front wheel through the sweet spot right there. Like you see that push and that's getting my butt off the back of the bike with my legs preloaded and then boom I really extend the legs to kind of squash that back tire through the transition. So once you get the timing and that technique down it becomes about how much power and how smoothly can I link them together. So definitely move further aft. The thing that you'll start to realize with jumping is this motion right here where I start friendly with the front of the bike and I kind of push my arms out in front of me, sit off the back, and then extend my legs. That right there is exactly how you pop a jump. Here's one roller's backside and here's the roller's front side and they make this little cup in between them. If you take that whole cup and rotate it like this it essentially becomes the jump. I'm going to treat this concave cup surface the same way. I'm going to come into it a little bit kind of friendly with the front of the bike here and I'm going to start to drop my weight and then pump. See my arms kind of extend as my front tire is nearing the tip of the jump. My legs are going to be compressed because I pushed myself into the back seat of the bike and then my legs extend as my back tire nears the tip of the takeoff further up. All right he's human. He cased that but he went out of my frame. I didn't expect him to go that high on this jump. Holy ----. Holy cow. That looked so fun. Okay it just didn't look real. It's not at all what I was prepared for. Oh all right. As your front tire takes off that's where you want your arms to be reaching maximum extension. My arms go from 90 degree bent. They straighten out right there as the front tire is leaving the transition. But look at the legs. The legs are still bent so they are also timing it such that when the back tire reaches the tip of the transition that's when they straighten out. So arms reach full extension as the front tire leaves the transition and then the legs they also are straightening out, straightening out, straightening out. Even my toe is starting to point as the back tire leaves the transition. It's the exact opposite of what I do where I squash a little bit right there. You actually see your tire pushing past the lip. Yeah yeah like you see it? Yeah. Like I probably extended a little bit too late because just like you said the back tire continues pushing and there's nothing to push off of and if you overdo that you can get really tail heavy. So that's why it becomes a thing of practice. So that's what's going to give you that amplitude. Holy smokes. Okay this is going to be hysterical. I'll just ride over it exactly the way that I normally do which is probably going to be in this area. Don't even think about anything that I've taught about yet. Just hit the jump as you naturally would and then after you've kind of gotten the technique down you take those speed knob and the volume knob and kind of turn them up. Instead of thinking to yourself what do I need to do think about how do I need this to feel. I need you to feel like you're applying pressure on your back tire all the way off of the takeoff because that is synonymous with your legs extending all the way off of the takeoff. Just remember that you know getting friendly with the front of the bike chest is moving backward in line with the fork like that and that's pre-loading your legs like this and then the legs fire too and that's what kind of takes you from a back seat position up the lip to becoming neutral in the air. So there's a couple things that I actually really like about your approach and the first one is that you're coming in tall back here and then you drop into that crouch just like I would. Yeah. And you're actually reasonably friendly with the front of the bike. I could accentuate it a little though right? Yeah I think that you could get a little bit more. Yeah. Like look at your legs they're extending from probably almost 90 degree bent right there. Yeah. To getting pretty much fully straightened out. Let's see how I bend them. Yep yep so they straighten out probably right there. Yep. And so if you were to your back tire is connected with your legs and your front tire is connected with your arms but since your legs are a much more dominant muscle the back tire is going to control a little bit more of your of your trajectory than your front will. Yeah. So if you look at where your legs reach maximum extension I'd say it's probably right there right? Yeah. And that if you take the the angle of the ground at your back tire right now and you draw a line straight out tangent line to the circle right there that's going to be your trajectory and you see that you are moving pretty straight out just like the ground is at the base of the jump there where you reach that maximum extension. So so if you're to contrast it with this one of me and you look at where my legs are reaching maximum extension it's more like right there and that's why my trajectory is steeper. You've almost created your own shape. I have yeah and I'm really taking advantage of the top part of the lip so like you're taking advantage really well of the bottom of the takeoff but by the time you hit right here now you're like I've done my full extension I'm going to start to reabsorb. Yeah. The rest of the lip instead of taking advantage of it. Yeah. And so what we'll talk about now is how you can like consciously think about that part of the jump and a couple tips that I have for being able to utilize it. Yeah. Without scaring yourself. Okay I like that. If I can't do it maybe you can do it I'll just keep trying I'll keep working on it it's baby steps. You got good height on because you had a good pump but watch how your back tire kind of gets heavy there. It keeps coming. Yeah you felt a little bit nose heavy coming in. Yeah. And the reason there is watch how good the pump is with the legs they're going from 90 degree and then extending nicely right there but watch your arms your arms they max out right there. It needs to be like even earlier than usual like three feet later and so what happens is your arms are going to continue at that trajectory the front wheel kind of goes flat the back tire goes a little bit higher. Yeah that's what's throwing you forward. It started kicking me. Right so you got a really good pop with the legs but not as good with the arms as you needed to. Do the same thing but try to get that sensation of riding the back tire all the way off of the off of the lip. Nice. Okay you come in you're nice and friendly with the front of the bike right there your head is you know directly over the stem and then watch your upper body. Do you see the angle of your back? Yeah. It's not even vertical your shoulders are farther back than your waist so that means that you're like really getting good momentum with pushing away from the bars right there. You had enough front tire pop that you're like getting back and you're like oh I've got to spring with my legs to throw my weight forward because if you were to not pump hard enough with your arms and then spring really well with your legs the back tire would get way higher than the front. Yeah. And that's what sends you nose heavy. Yeah. So naturally your instinct is your instinct is oh I don't want to do I don't want to spring my legs. Yeah. But the time that you did get enough chest momentum in the backward direction. You know it's okay. Then you know it's okay to spring with the legs. Yeah. You got a lot more just clean pump up the face of the jump and you can see that like your bike the rear suspension there is compressed all the way up the jump and it doesn't release that spring until the bike is actually leaving. Yeah. So that looks great. That felt good. Nice job dude. I kind of represent the average you know jumper smell. I think you're above average. But being able to see like the progress that you make from not knowing what you're looking for to knowing what you're looking for and getting it some of the time. Thanks for the help doctor. Totally. That's the end of part one. Part two we're taking all this over to the XL line and it's going to get even boostier. So click on the link. Click on click over here or go back to the page and find part two. Anyway find part two because it's going to get crazy.