How to pop up the front wheel. The secret to riding confidently offroad.

So as this becomes more instinctive, it'll just become a technique that you use. Welcome back everyone. Today I want to share with you the one technique that seems to be holding everyone back from progressing as an off-road rider, and that's the ability or inability to simply pop the front wheel or take all the weight off the front of the motorcycle and allow it to track with its perfect geometry when hitting an obstacle or simply preparing for an evasive move. Now we've probably all seen it, probably all done it, where you're trying to teach someone to pop over a little log or even just lift the front to get up a curb and basically nothing happens. They just gas it, get wheel spin, hit it and bounce back off. What I think's spooking people about this technique is the fact that in their mind they don't want to do a wheelie, they don't want to fall off the back of the motorcycle, and so they're not helping the ballast of the bike to even get into that position. And what they're doing is wanting to pull the handlebars towards them, sort of fake it if you like. The bike simply doesn't have enough traction off-road from that point at the rear wheel to lift the engine and you and the fuel when you're in this position. And so nothing happens but wheel spin. Okay guys, as you can see I've got a full load of fuel. I really want to exaggerate the purpose of weighting and gaining traction and how to gain traction to pop the front wheel. So we're in a very dry, dusty, sort of hard pack situation. It is slippery, the front wheel's not going to come up like it just does on the bitumen. Hence the whole purpose of forcing and learning this technique. Right, so just grab first gear. Don't sit forward, don't sit back, just get a comfortable middle position. Okay, and that's how we start. So the first part of learning this technique safely is to train your brain to become the traction control. And all I want you to do is just ride along in first gear, gas it and chop the throttle. Gas it, chop the throttle. Now what this is doing is training your brain to anticipate wheel spin and close the throttle. Do it as many times until it feels automatic, that you're not just going to whisky throttle and leave it open when it spins, but you're already closing the throttle as the wheel spins happening. You need that to become instinctive. When you're confident you've got that, now I want you to just move right back and do the same thing. Do exactly the same thing. Gas it and chop the throttle. Gas it and chop the throttle. Did you see it starting to bite and lift? What that's doing is getting you comfortable with giving bursts of throttle with your weight over the rear wheel. Now just stand up straight, keep your knees bent, elbows bent and do the same thing. Gas it, chop. Gas it, chop. Now this is where it all happens. Don't attempt this until you're confident with that you're chopping the throttle. You're not just leaving it whisky, you're actually closing it. You're closing it, you're closing it. You are in control of the throttle, right? So you see all I'm doing is going from the standing position and as I gas it, you're rocking your weight to the back, getting traction, popping the front and as you get confident pull on the bars a little bit. I'm not touching the clutch. All I'm doing is gassing the throttle, chopping it right at that point, okay? Just familiarize yourself. Watch this. Okay, this is the beginning of a wheelie technique. It's not a wheelie technique. Don't get cocky and try and wrap it back on. You're probably going to loop out and cost yourself a lot of money or an injury. This is not a wheelie technique. You're just popping the front. That's it. Once you're confident in that, I want you to apply it to an obstacle and in this case, I'm just going to use a log but you apply this technique to so many things. It can be a water washout. It can be a small ledge. It can be a small rock pile. The whole purpose of this technique is to put the bike in its optimal geometry before the front wheel hits anything, okay? The other thing, it's to set the bike up in a good trajectory to clear something. You don't want to be under brakes, nose diving, going into an obstacle. You want to be unloaded, lofting. If this was just a bulldust patch or a boggy sand patch and you can see the other side, for that moment that you are entering the rats and the wriggly spaghetti sand and just crap everywhere, you want to be assuming that lightened front end position. It's not about power wheeling through it. It's simply about taking all the weight off the front, getting drive and powering the bike through in its best geometry. You've got your best chance of staying upright and not getting knocked off by these obstacles. In doing this in an evasive situation, it all comes back to that aggressive braking maneuver. I mean, just like a car, you're always using both brakes. 70% braking happens at the front. It's that ABS. Train your brain to be the ABS. It's the same applies to the rear. If you've stomped on the rear brake and you're locking it, you've got to instinctively back off and not, you don't want to lock the rear. You want to minimize that. The rear is simply an anchor, a tail, to keep the bike straight under brakes. All the stopping power happens at the front. So you're charging along the trail, come around the corner, whoa, hold on, an obstacle and away. Now that brings me to the most advanced part of this, where I want you to use this technique to help you avoid a dangerous situation where you may have had to spear off a road to avoid hitting a dog or a cow or whatever. Now, perfect situation. Years ago, I was riding with a mate. We were on GS 1200s on a BMW Safari, charging down this hill, corner come up quick. He just wasn't going to make it. He washed off as much speed as he could. At the last minute, he straightened up and just speared off the road, but he popped the front, cleared a whole heap of rocks in the paddock and landed the big GS and avoided what could have been a monumental cart wheel. So look, you got to look at this like self-defense. It's like training for the fight that you hope you never have, but you just want the skills to do it. You don't need a gnarly drain to practice on. All you need is just a little dip in the track. You don't even need anything. You just need to practice that technique and hope that you bedded in enough that if you ever find yourself in this situation, it becomes instinctive to get off the brakes and pop the front wheel. You want to put the bike in the best possible trajectory of surviving the landing. That's a decent drop. There's a big drain. If I try and wash off all my speed and just go off that and fall off it, yes, I will go in low speed, but the bike is going to land really heavily and probably chuck me over the bars. I have to give it one chance to lob over and land to safety. I'm coming down the hill. There's a corner. I'm not going to make it. Heavy landing. Okay, I see the obstacle. Can't pull up in time. Abort braking. Pop. Big bikes like this, you want to land them like a plane. You want to touch down the rear and then touch down the front and spread the impact over as much surface as possible to give the suspension its best chance of holding you up. Let me demonstrate. Okay, you've seen the obstacle. You can't pull up. Pop. Okay, if you can control the trajectory, control the landing, you've got your best chance of keeping it on two wheels. Okay, and in this situation now, you know, you're starting to talk Dakar territory now. The boys are just hitting stuff like this on the fly. Never seen it before. And they're utilizing this avoiding crash technique every time. The faster I go, the smoother this situation is. Nice landing. That was third gear. Fairly fast. Notice there's no head shake. The bike is in its perfect geometry to take the hit, to take the landing. I'm helping the suspension by spreading the impact between the rear shock and the front forks over a longer distance. One more. And pop. Nice. The base principle of this, and the easiest way for my European audience especially to understand, is treat the front end of your motorcycle like the curve on your skis. Okay? Why are skis curved? It's so they're constantly in a position to deflect up and forward over any surface and oncoming obstacles. Your bike, under brakes, is like a pair of skis with no curve on the front. Any opportunity they get, they will tuck in, bite, and flip you over. That's what's happening when you brake hard. Okay? Now, you need to brake hard to wash off speed over the course of riding. But again, it all comes back into that evasive maneuver. If you've come in too hot, you're going to go off the edge of the road. You're going to hit the obstacle. You need to try and train into your brain to release brakes, unload the suspension. You need to turn the front end of your motorcycles into the curved edge of a set of skis. You want it to just glance and skip and ski over all the terrain. Right. Next up, and this isn't for everyone, it's a very advanced technique. And if anyone's serious about learning how to send the big dog up and over obstacles like this, then check out this video right here. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep producing the basic technique videos for you guys. So hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell.