Don't avoid that trail feature, clear it with confidence and style. Here are some steps and tips for riding over obstacles rather than around them.
1. Approach
As you approach the feature, spot your take-off and landing. You’ll know whether you’ve got enough speed to clear the obstacle, so now is the time to commit! If you decide to bail, make sure you scrub off enough speed to avoid piling into whatever it was you were planning to jump!
2. Pull up
The type of take-off will determine how hard you need to hoick on the bars for maximum lift. If it’s a ramped take-off, treat the jump like a normal double, but if there’s nothing to kick the wheels up off, such as when clearing a tree stump, then you’ll have to use more of a bunnyhop technique.
3. Flight time
Relax in the air and level your bike out. This is the moment to enjoy as the clatter from your chain stops.
4. Brace, brace!
Assuming you spotted your landing earlier, before taking off, you should know where you want to touch down. As you come in for landing, extend your arms and brace your legs to absorb the impact.
5. Landing pad
Now that you’ve hit the ground, wheels first, you should be looking up and ahead and focusing on the next section of trail, and the jump should be just a distant memory!
Top tips
1. Stepping up your game
Don’t expect to jump like Evel Knievel right away — you’ll want to up your game in steps.
Pick a single jump that you’re used to hitting and place a rock or small branch on the ground after it. Practice jumping over it and clearing it, slowly extending the distance you need to clear. Before long you’ll be jumping further than you imagined.
2. Transferring the skills
You’ll want to take this newfound skill to the trails to help you ride faster, smoother lines.
Normally, there’ll be sections of trail that you can double, clearing a hole, some roots, rocks or other gnarliness. Once you’ve mastered and identified where and what the best things are to gap, you’ll notice you’ll be riding much smoother and quicker.
3. Suck it up!
Now that you’re riding faster and hitting lines harder with your new skills, it may be worth considering setting up your bike to tackle bigger hits, by increasing your fork and shock’s compression damping and slowing the rebound down.
If you’ve got firm suspension you can use that to help you pop off lips and obstacles.
