Getting Into a Manual || MTB Skills: Practice Like a Pro #17

So I heard you want to learn manuals. Why yes I do. I brought the manual right here. There's your manual. All right bye. I want to introduce Jason who is here filling in for Simon because Simon is still in Mexico and he is missing out on this 29 degree day. It's chilly. It's very chilly but Jason's being a really good sport and he is here to help me with the manuals. I brought the manual on manuals and here we are. All right well so tell me a little bit about like where you're at with manuals now and what you feel like the biggest challenge you have with manuals is. So far I haven't been able to get to the balance point on a manual. I think a lot of people think about bringing their bike up and really your body needs to come back. So you'll see like when I do it it's a backward movement with my body but you can use the compression of the rear suspension to kind of let that go down and let it come back out and it'll bring you up into that balance point. Okay. So I think the biggest thing you know that there's a challenge for people with manuals is almost always that you're getting to that balance point because you always want to come up short because you don't want to go over backwards. So you know having that finger on the brake and being willing to to actually feel that balance point you really almost have to go past it to keep it there and then come back into the manual. The other types of manuals that are really important is you know when you have an obstacle and you're manualing to it and also when you're coming off of an obstacle you might manual off of it and there's a lot of ways that these will work into making the trail ride smoother or faster or create speed because you can pump differently. I think a really quick easy example would be a route. So you have a bump and then you have a route and you know you can either come into that route and hit it and go over it or you could be in the air already manualing and set your tire on the back side and take that whole risk of the front ricocheting off of this road at all. So you're going to use manuals in a lot of great ways on the trail to go well beyond just I can do a manual. Hey Linnea why don't you just show me what you got. Let's see what we're starting with. Yeah so go up there go up there and come down the hill and try to get into a manual just so I can kind of see your current body position. Can you help me? Yeah so okay we'll start with so let's start with I'm going to actually show you your balance point so go ahead and come kind of come this way to me. So but let's go up into that position so you see you'd be there you go like and then straight back see okay so now you're there now bend your knees a little bit and so see how that brought your weight forward now straighten your legs out a little see how that brings it back oh my gosh and then I've never felt this before so see how it goes forward that's you're balancing that bike by doing that so now you're in that balance point coming from not getting there to into the balance point is going to be a little more like dramatic so you are going to want to be ready and it's going to take a little while to hit that balance point and then hold it. Okay. So you know being forward um you know and coming straight back into that and extending everything so that it pulls the bike up and then looking up and pushing that front heel down will help a little bit as well. Isn't that a dance move? Oh that was a good one. Did you see that? Sorry I got a little excited. All right that was awesome like definite improvement so what do you think? Yeah it felt really good as soon as I felt a little bit of lightness in the front wheel. It gives you something to go towards. Yeah I felt like a little bit of a breakthrough so yeah definitely gives me some progress moments. Awesome so here we are it's freezing cold and I'm basically having you work on what is probably one of the hardest things to do in bike riding which is learn to manual it's one of those things that you know you're always working on you know I still wish I could manual longer or further or perfect or whatever so it's a continuing process but I think we got some good homework for you I want you to really focus on how I was showing you to do a better job of getting forward before you release that energy to get that front end up as well as you know again you know pushing those heels down as you go into that position. Yeah moving forward is something I've never tried before or practiced before so I'm excited to spend some time working on that because I think that was a limiting factor for me not getting the full range of motion front to back I probably just had half of it. Yeah it's more leverage I think just creates the ability to get it up further so it's going to help. Thank you so much. Oh yeah for sure. All right thanks for coming on this freezing cold day. I think it was worth it good progress. Okay.