I recently picked up a MTB to mess around with on the days I can’t ride my dirt bike. Took it out today and tried a couple of small drops, but they went super sketchy – almost went OTB both times.
What am I doing wrong? On the moto this stuff feels easy, maybe I was going too slow and should’ve shifted my weight further back?
Any tips would be appreciated!
by Key-Sheepherder4146
3 Comments
Just ride dude and you will become good, atleast this worked for me
Ben Cathro How to Bike on youtube. He’s a good rider and a good teacher, and the fact that he’s a very tall guy makes his movements on the bike quite exaggerated and so it’s easy to see the mechanics of the concepts that he’s teaching.
It’s a little bit of leaning/pulling back, a little bit of pushing the bike forward as you go off the drop, and a little bit of letting your bodyweight fall naturally once your front wheel is off the lip to minimise the weight on the rear wheel which would cause forward rotation. How much of each depends on the drop, and your speed.
You don’t have a throttle to keep the front wheel up, and your bodyweight has a large bearing on the pitch of the bike, so it’s not much like a moto.
Don’t trust reddit advice, the insane recommendations I see here are hilarious sometimes.
Drop your seat for starters. If you have knee pads, consider wearing them. If not, consider buying them.
That’s a good sized drop to practice on but simple curbs are also good. Watch some vids on youtube (Shred Academy, Ben Cathro, Joy of Bike, etc). You can drop by pushing the bike out (like you’re doing), by doing a front wheel lift (exageration of what you’re doing), which are the two safer / better ways to start learning. Later you can do it with bunny hops and manuals and pedal kicks if you want, but practicing different small / safe drops at different speeds and trying to land purposefully flat vs front wheel slightly first vs back wheel first will start to teach you the control.