Part 4

Wheelies

The wheelie is one of the classic show off tricks. The're easy too, but they take time to learn, if you practrice you will become better.

So lets start. The basic idea is to ride along on the back wheele, so to do this you must lift the front wheel in the air and balance on the back whilst still ridding. The bike and yourself will want to fall over to the side, if this happens turn the front wheel. Now heres the real how to bit, but first safety, wear a helmet and don't fasten the bike to your feet, it will hurt if you can't unclip fast enough

• Ride forwards in the middle chainring and the second or third largest rear sprocket.
• covering the brake with 2 fingers, start shifting your weight down on the bars a little.
• Now all you have to do is move your upperbody weight back, lift the bars and pedal, all at the same time

At first just attempt to get a couple of crank revolutions in and get a feel for where the balance point of the bike is. After that you can start to control the possition of the bike by using input through the pedals and the rear brake.

If the front of the bike starts to fall don't try and yank on the bars, you have to push on the pedals thus driving the bike up and shifting your weight backwards to the region of balance. If the bike starts to loop touch the rear brake to stop it, only gentily though or the front will fall very fast and could cause serious pain.

So now thats covered move 2 next

Speed Jumps & Terrain Pumping

The idea of this is to ride over things without leaving the ground, this is useful in all types of racing as leaving the ground wastes time, you are not able to peddal, and if your in the air, your not in control of the bike and so waste time. For more information about speed jumping watch ski sunday as skiers are always looking to stay on the ground instead of in the air. Right here we go then with Speed Jumps.

• Start by finding a place to ride with a few rolling humps (a bmx track is perfect for this)>
• As you approach your desired hump, their are a few things which should happen, the first is your upper body weight will lift upwards, and the front wheel and the handlebars come up too.
• Aim the front wheel so it will skim over the crest of the jump and then push down on the backside of the jump. Your legs should be extended at this point.
• As the front wheel crests the top of the jump the back wheel will start to rise, bend your knees and let it rise underneath you.
• Your arms should be extended forwards, and you should be tucked in, speed jump-style as you launch over the top.
• Now all you have to do is to extend your legs and push the bike back to the ground.

Next is the tern of Terrain pumping, some of this technique is similar to speed jumping, but you have to bear in mind the rest of the ground which follows the jump. The idea is to hold the front wheel in the air and keep the rear firmily planted on the ground thus getting more speed, this is also a lot easier than speed jumping as you are not trying to lift the bike off the ground. so here we go then.

• If the jumps are close together, then the bikes wheelbase doesn't fit the jumps. This means that the terranin can not be pumped at speed as both wheels are on the ground.
• Approach the first of the bumps, lift the front wheel into the air as you did for speed jumping but with your weight slightly further back as if you were coaster wheeling.
• As the bike gets to the jump, work the back wheel down through all the jumps.
• Let the front wheel down over the crest of the lst one.

This again takes practice but is still pritty flash