Learn some tips and techniques on how to gauge your speed on a BMX bike in this free instructional video clip about applying basic BMX bike riding skills.
Garson Fields is 20 years old and has been riding BMX and mountain bikes for 7 years. He is currently attending college at the University of Vermont and pursuing degrees in both English and Philosophy.
For a jump like the one that I just hit, you are going to find that it has a pretty big take off. It's tall and it is really steep and it will send you really high. So while the distance you are jumping actually isn't very far, you are still going to need a pretty considerable amount of speed to make it all the way to the landing. Basically what you want to keep in mind is that as you start to hit jumps that are bigger and steeper, you need to go faster. It is very simple but basically if you are going to ride a lower flatter jump and have the necessary amount of speed to clear that at the same length, if all the sudden that jump is steeper and taller, it is going to take a whole lot more to get you over the lip and all the way over the landing. A lot of the time especially when you are first starting out, this is a real learning process and the best way to figure it out is to just experiment. You usually especially if you are not jumping a double, if you are jumping a table top where the top is flat, it is better to go too slow than to go too fast. So ultimately what you usually want to do is give it a couple of feeler runs and just figure out first of all how fast do I need to go to get up to the top of the lip; a lot like a quarter pipe. Figure out okay if I can fly out at this speed and then I get an extra pedal stroke or two and that will get me this much closer to the landing. It is a process and each step where you are engaging your speed constantly builds off of each other and once you've got a lot of experience on different types of jumps, sometimes you don't even need to engage your speed at all and you just sort of instinctively know how fast to go but that takes a long process of experimenting with your different speeds to do that properly. Here I am going to demonstrate. The rolling on this jump is pretty big and it offers you a lot of pump so I don't even have to pedal. You just pump, throw your weight in and ride over. So basically the type of rolling you have is also going to be very important because as I just showed you, that one I don't even need to pedal. You know if I really want to go high and pull up so I go up higher or if want to land farther down the landing or certain types of tricks, naturally will scrub your speed off of the take off. You might want to go a little bit faster. Keep in mind that the way that you or coming into the jump is just as important as the jump itself.
Member Comments