I Can't Keep My Bike On It's Back Wheel!

[Herr.Wolfkatze]

Heya gang,

I've got an Inspired Fourplay with a nicely streety set-up. I'm completely new to trials so i've been practicing my trackstands along with popping my bike onto it's back wheel via various methods, (quarter crank turn, little rock from a small endo) but when I get it up onto the back wheel the little sod just won't stay there! I either rock to one side and have to drop the front to stop from going over sideways, or it just doesn't stay up and goes back down.

Does anybody have any tips on how I can keep the bike nicely straight on its back wheel? It's frustrating me so much because once I get that down and know how to hop, I know i'll progress much faster!

I'm also really confused as to which foot I should ride forwards. You see i'm left footed and I play footie/kick with my left, and box as a southpaw, but when riding my bike my right foot ALWAYS ends up feeling much more comfortable forwards in terms of holding myself over the frame, and balancing etc. I feel more comfortable in a right footed trackstand and so on even though the left has more power, should I be forcing myself to use my left foot? Or should I just go with the comfortable right foot.

P.S. When I quarter crank turn I really can't get the height, I can only get really high with a rock from an endo.

Cheers!

[JonMack]

Stick to right foot forward if it feels most comfortable.

With regards to getting it on the back wheel and keeping it there, sadly it's just practise. If you've never ridden anything like trials before it's gonna take you a while to even get the basics down. I wouldn't recommend using a 1/4 kick to get it onto the back wheel yet, use the endo rocking method, and just keep practising that until you can hold it up there for a couple of seconds.

Once you've got that mastered, you should learn to back hop, then once you've done that, learn to pedal kick. Don't dismiss the basics like back hops, they help with bike control no end. I see loads of riders who can sidehop or tap really high, but have shit bike control because they never spent time learning the basics.

http://www.trashzen.com/ should be your first port of call for how-to's, along with youtube and vimeo, Ryan Leech's "Mastering the Art Of Trials" is up on vimeo, would be worth downloading and watching.

Remember, different people progress at different rates. It might take you 3 months to learn how to pedal kick, it might take you 3 hours, but don't be disheartened. When I first started I used to go out in my road for maybe 2-3 hours a day just learning how to balance, trackstand, ride along the edge of curbs, doing back hops and pedal kicks, and just working on the real basic stuff, but it helped in the long run. Don't try and run before you can walk, you'll get nowhere.

Edited June 28, 2009 by JonMack

[Ali C]

Hey Ric, enjoying the bike still?

Not sure if I have any useful info on backhops...errmm...Most people I see learning them seem to be really rigid on the bike and either have their arms out straight, or so bent their chin is nearly touching the bars!

When rocking onto the rear wheel, try not to pull the bars up to your body to get the front up, use your whole body weight to get you up, your arms want to be slightly bent but not rigid and you want your knees to be bent as well. Keep the whole body relaxed and centered over the rear wheel.

Once you have gotten the bike up and you feel like you are directly over the rear wheel you want to start hopping as soon as you feel off balance. Don't try for big hops (like most people seem to do), you only need little hops to correct yourself. Don't expect immediate results, these things take a LOT of practice! You may find that one day you manage 3 hops, the next day you might get 7 hops and the next 10 hops, but then you might go back to 5 hops again...don't worry about it...it will come as long as you keep at it. (I remember the first time I got 13 hops...that was a good day )

as for foot positioning, it sounds like right foot forward is your natural stance...which foot you use the most for every day stuff often has no bearing on what foot forward you are for riding.

Taa

Ali

[Herr.Wolfkatze]

Stick to right foot forward if it feels most comfortable.

With regards to getting it on the back wheel and keeping it there, sadly it's just practise. If you've never ridden anything like trials before it's gonna take you a while to even get the basics down. I wouldn't recommend using a 1/4 kick to get it onto the back wheel yet, use the endo rocking method, and just keep practising that until you can hold it up there for a couple of seconds.

Once you've got that mastered, you should learn to back hop, then once you've done that, learn to pedal kick. Don't dismiss the basics like back hops, they help with bike control no end. I see loads of riders who can sidehop or tap really high, but have shit bike control because they never spent time learning the basics.

http://www.trashzen.com/ should be your first port of call for how-to's, along with youtube and vimeo, Ryan Leech's "Mastering the Art Of Trials is up on vimeo, would be worth downloading and watching.

Remember, different people progress at different rates. It might take you 3 months to learn how to pedal kick, it might take you 3 hours, but don't be disheartened. When I first started I used to go out in my road for maybe 2-3 hours a day just learning how to balance, trackstand, ride along the edge of curbs, doing back hops and pedal kicks, and just working on the real basic stuff, but it helped in the long run. Don't try and run before you can walk, you'll get nowhere.

Hey Ric, enjoying the bike still?

Not sure if I have any useful info on backhops...errmm...Most people I see learning them seem to be really rigid on the bike and either have their arms out straight, or so bent their chin is nearly touching the bars!

When rocking onto the rear wheel, try not to pull the bars up to your body to get the front up, use your whole body weight to get you up, your arms want to be slightly bent but not rigid and you want your knees to be bent as well. Keep the whole body relaxed and centered over the rear wheel.

Once you have gotten the bike up and you feel like you are directly over the rear wheel you want to start hopping as soon as you feel off balance. Don't try for big hops (like most people seem to do), you only need little hops to correct yourself. Don't expect immediate results, these things take a LOT of practice! You may find that one day you manage 3 hops, the next day you might get 7 hops and the next 10 hops, but then you might go back to 5 hops again...don't worry about it...it will come as long as you keep at it. (I remember the first time I got 13 hops...that was a good day )

as for foot positioning, it sounds like right foot forward is your natural stance...which foot you use the most for every day stuff often has no bearing on what foot forward you are for riding.

Taa

Ali

Class responses as always guys, thanks.

I held one for a while yesterday and tried to get the hops going it's so annoying!

I think I need to get my trackstand down too which may help, because alot of the time what causes me to fall sideways is how my endo's go a bit skewed, that is the rear wheel fishtails to one side so I lift the front up at a slight angle.

I'll be working on it and keeping you updated!

Hey Ric, enjoying the bike still?

I adooore her, passers by won't stop commenting/stopping me on the street! Had a convo with one guy yesterday who said he had a very similar set up but sprayed his frame pink. Mmmh The novelty of seeing her propped up against my wall still lives on strong

[ScottTrials]

Just keep practicing the basic, when i started up trials i spent nearly 4 hours a night after school for 3 weeks just doing trackstands, endos, rocking the bike and wheelies to improve my balance. Then when i was comfortable i moved on a stage and started putting more pressure on my prefered foot when i was on the back wheel to see how long i could stay up. Then one day i just kicked the pedals and started hopping forwards (I was so happy with myself) and then practiced the pedal kick for ages (I still practice them to make them easier). But for your footing wants you have got it dialled on your prefered foot i would try and do it on your other foot so you get comfortable on it aswell as you may need to use it one day.

Hope to see a video eventually.

Scott.

[Matt Vandart]

Hey Ric, enjoying the bike still?

Not sure if I have any useful info on backhops...errmm...Most people I see learning them seem to be really rigid on the bike and either have their arms out straight, or so bent their chin is nearly touching the bars!

When rocking onto the rear wheel, try not to pull the bars up to your body to get the front up, use your whole body weight to get you up, your arms want to be slightly bent but not rigid and you want your knees to be bent as well. Keep the whole body relaxed and centered over the rear wheel.

Once you have gotten the bike up and you feel like you are directly over the rear wheel you want to start hopping as soon as you feel off balance. Don't try for big hops (like most people seem to do), you only need little hops to correct yourself. Don't expect immediate results, these things take a LOT of practice! You may find that one day you manage 3 hops, the next day you might get 7 hops and the next 10 hops, but then you might go back to 5 hops again...don't worry about it...it will come as long as you keep at it. (I remember the first time I got 13 hops...that was a good day )

as for foot positioning, it sounds like right foot forward is your natural stance...which foot you use the most for every day stuff often has no bearing on what foot forward you are for riding.

Taa

Ali

This is really important, when you fall to one side it's because you are "locking up" this took ages for me to work out.

Being relaxed when doing things is really important, get relaxed now while you are on the ground because panicking and locking up is not good when you start doing drops off stuff, as I found out last week, rather embarrassing in front of loads of people.

Matt

[joshlyd1]

You could try and move your bars forward but that might wreck the streetyness but it alays a thought

PS** practice makes perfect

[Dan81]

just keep practising - you WILL get it. see how many back hops you can do then just keep trying to better it. once you can do about 10 you're probably ok to try doing a little pedal hop.

when you're starting this is quite hard to learn so expect to get annoyed with it but don't give up!

[Tom Booth]

I dunno about anybody else, but I learnt back hops and pedal hops by wheeling into them? Like a half crank roatation while lifting the bike then locking the brake when you feel comfy and your right foots foward, then getting it down to a 1/8th kick onto the back wheel and just repeating. Probbaly not the best way to do it as I hate pedal hopping onto the backwheel now, it feels really uncomfortable to me

[Herr.Wolfkatze]

just keep practising - you WILL get it. see how many back hops you can do then just keep trying to better it. once you can do about 10 you're probably ok to try doing a little pedal hop.

when you're starting this is quite hard to learn so expect to get annoyed with it but don't give up!

After a while I just want to hurl the bike into a brick wall xD

The worst part is now I'm SO tired I don't even know if I have the energy to go out and practice today, I reckon my muscles just won't listen to me any more. Eh.. I got it high onto the back wheel yesterday but couldn't work out how to hop to stop myself from going back down again. Frustrating sport this is =[ Hopefully I can meet up with more riders soon.

[JonMack]

Trials uses muscles that aren't used regularly by other sports, so it will take a while for you to get used to that, but just keep at it, don't be disheartened, once you get the basics down your personal bests will just keep improving and you'll gain loads of confidence in no time.

[Herr.Wolfkatze]

Trials uses muscles that aren't used regularly by other sports, so it will take a while for you to get used to that, but just keep at it, don't be disheartened, once you get the basics down your personal bests will just keep improving and you'll gain loads of confidence in no time.

Thanks for the words of reassurance everyone, I'll definitely keep at it and have a video for you soon!

[aener]

Just for extra reassurance, I'll say the same as everyone else.

It makes no difference - but if more people say it, it'll encourage you to keep trying.

It IS just practice. Gotta find that balance point, and just get the knack of those little hops to recover balance.

That's a good point actually. If you lift the front wheel up, and get to a point on the back wheel but start to tip over, hop the back wheel forwards/backwards/sideways according to which way you're falling. This'll correct your balance a bit, and - if you get it right - stop the front wheel from going down.

Arms cocked, but not bent too much. Straight arms makes it SO much harder than it need be

[Redneck]

After a while I just want to hurl the bike into a brick wall xD

The worst part is now I'm SO tired I don't even know if I have the energy to go out and practice today, I reckon my muscles just won't listen to me any more. Eh.. I got it high onto the back wheel yesterday but couldn't work out how to hop to stop myself from going back down again. Frustrating sport this is =[ Hopefully I can meet up with more riders soon.

trials is frustrating but when you get it youll never loose the skill. to hop just jump. your feet should automatically center beneath your body and that will center the bike. less air in the tires will help alot.

[scary_jeff]

I spent ages getting onto the back wheel the 'endo first' method, then just randomly trying every movement I could think of and throwing my weight in any direction until eventually I got it. The one thing I would say extra to everyone else is that to do some small hops on the spot, your arms shouldn't really be doing much, somewhere around 40 degrees from straight. Then like Redneck said, it's really just jumping with your toes pointing downwards to grip the pedals. When I was learning I was trying a lot of stuff involving my arms, but that turned out to be a dead end

Since you say you're just starting out, I thought it's worth mentioning that you must have the ball of your foot on the pedals. You almost certainly knew that so sorry if this was obvious!

Lastly, I think it's worth just leaning back too much, so that you actually fall off the back of the bike on purpose a few times. When you can happily do this, you won't have the fear of falling backwards that seems to stop a lot of people from finding the balance point when they are starting out. Probably the easiest way to then do a hop is to hop as you start to fall back; you still have momentum from the pullback, so you shouldn't fall sideways, and since you know how to fall off backwards safely, your brain will have more confidence to put more energy into it all.

[Herr.Wolfkatze]

I spent ages getting onto the back wheel the 'endo first' method, then just randomly trying every movement I could think of and throwing my weight in any direction until eventually I got it. The one thing I would say extra to everyone else is that to do some small hops on the spot, your arms shouldn't really be doing much, somewhere around 40 degrees from straight. Then like Redneck said, it's really just jumping with your toes pointing downwards to grip the pedals. When I was learning I was trying a lot of stuff involving my arms, but that turned out to be a dead end

Since you say you're just starting out, I thought it's worth mentioning that you must have the ball of your foot on the pedals. You almost certainly knew that so sorry if this was obvious!

Lastly, I think it's worth just leaning back too much, so that you actually fall off the back of the bike on purpose a few times. When you can happily do this, you won't have the fear of falling backwards that seems to stop a lot of people from finding the balance point when they are starting out. Probably the easiest way to then do a hop is to hop as you start to fall back; you still have momentum from the pullback, so you shouldn't fall sideways, and since you know how to fall off backwards safely, your brain will have more confidence to put more energy into it all.

Cheers mate that helps me understand the technique alot better atleast. I've fallen off the back once trying to wheelie, wasn't actually too bad so long as you're quick on the brakes.