Prozac. Valium. Lithium. Xanax. All well and good, but when I get depressed I take foam, as blue as the deep salt sea and in chunks as big as shoeboxes, for my therapy - and I knew it was time. The black mood had settled over me and I knew I needed foam immersion, to be dropped in from five or six feet up, to let my inner child flail helplessly in the pit of despair until I was hauled out by the rope of hope. My therapist's office covers twenty thousand square feet, and his couch is massive, wooden, fourteen feet tall and twenty-two feet across. Our sessions are intense and sometimes the therapy is painful, but when I'm done I know I've made a breakthrough. I needed that breakthrough again. It was time to return to Woodward, Pennsylvania. It was time to return to the foam.
I had been depressed because my doctor had pronounced my death. More accurately, he had pronounced my right knee dead. Less melodramatically, he had pronounced it dying and in need of some serious therapy and cleaning up. It couldn't be fixed but it could be jury-rigged to survive a couple more years of low-flying BMX. Unfortunately, my summer riding season, to which I had been looking forward for months, would be a casualty of this little repair session. Surgery would be in a couple weeks. In the meantime, I should rest, put ice on the knee, and do some therapy. I nodded an emphatic "Absoultely", walked out the door, and called Mrs. Boswell. "You know what to do," I said. "Call the right people and make it happen." Five days later, I was in Lot 8, preparing to roll into the foam pit for the last hurrah of my summer... in April.
Amazingly, I had managed to bamboozle two other riders into dropping their weekend plans on short notice and accompanying me on this fool's errand. This was my third trip to Woodward; it would be their first. Our mission: to see if intensive foam therapy could do for their jumping skills what I expected it to do for my swelling depression. Could two thirty-something racers with very limited skatepark experience benefit from a trip to the world's most famous skatepark?
My partners in crime were Douglas Madden and Joe Wood. Douglas is a thirty-seven-year-old Intermediate and Cruiser rider who started racing BMX in 1998, making a few mains along the way in both classes but never really having the time to do a full National season. Joe Wood was one of the two people who got me started in BMX back in the Eighties. (The other one, of course, was "BMX Basement" kingpin Rich Hetzel.) Joe has not raced since the late Eighties, but he enjoys collecting, building, and selling old-school bikes. He also builds the occasional Retro New School ride, such as the black Azusa 20"- currently the only one in the world - that he brought for our weekend.
Joe and Douglas are very different people, but they share one important trait - they're both what I like to call "double-pullers". You see, there are two basic ways to jump, just like there are two basic ways to bunnyhop. For the purposes of today's discussion, we'll call them Serial Pull and Double Pull. Serial Pulling is the way most people jump and/or hop most of the time, pulling the front end up and bringing the back end up shortly afterwards. Most young riders are Serial Pullers. Double Pullers, on the other hand, pull the whole bike up at once, yanking at handlebars and pedals without an intermediate pause. Many old-schoolers were Double Pullers in their youth and continue the habit today.
The problem with Double Pulling is that it limits one's ability to jump modern obstacles, both at the skatepark and the BMX track. The Double Pulling style doesn't allow a rider to take a really hard pull at the front end, and because there's no natural front-to-back rocking motion in the Double Pull, it's tough to get your nose pointed down to land on backsides. None of this mattered back in the Eighties, when the Double Pull, combined with a sinking motion, was often the best way to get over small, shallow-backside jumps - but it certainly matters today. Modern double-pullers often find themselves (not) enjoying a terrifying rear-wheel ride down the steep backsides that little today's tracks. I'm not saying you can't win races double-pulling; I've seen it done in the older cruiser and Intermediate ranks too often to count... but if you want to enjoy jumping, or if you want to enjoy skatepark riding, learning the Serial Pull is essential.
My plan was to start both Douglas and Joe off in the foam pit, and let them progress to the different "resi" jumps as time permitted. Douglas was interested in race jumping, so he'd want to focus on the big resi box jump in Lot 8; Joe wanted to improve his vert riding, so he would probably transition to the vert resi in Cloud 9. (What's a "resi ramp"? It's a soft-surface jump with a plastic top layer. For a full explanation, read last April's column.)
Joe's first jump is a good example of a very competent double-pull
jump. Note that his bike is front-wheel-up, but not by much, and that
his knees and elbows have about an equal bend to them.
After a couple of runs, he loosened up and began to slowly space
out the time gap between his bar pull and his pedal pull. In doing so,
he discovered a great old-school benefit to Serial Pulling: better
cross-ups. A double-puller has to pull and twist his bars at the same
time; a serial puller can turn the bars while he is pulling up with
his legs. This allows you to cross-up farther and hold it longer, as
seen in this next photo:
I still felt, however, that Joe wasn't spacing out his bar and
pedal pulls enough... but I knew we would deal with that once we moved
to vert. Meanwhile, Douglas was having the opposite problem, putting
too much time between his bar and pedal pulls. Furthermore, the pulls
were disproportionate. His first jump looked a lot like Joe's:
...but as he moved into a Serial Pull, he pulled too hard, and too
late, with his pedals. Initially this manifested itself as unwanted
sideways motion:
Attempting to correct the motion led to his repeatedly dropping a
foot:
With a few more runs, Douglas corrected this motion, but his pull was
still problematic. Finally, he overpulled his pedals and went forward
over the bike:
Reducing speed and refocusing on the pull fixed these problems, but
ironically it wasn't until we went over to the resi that Douglas
really bore down and began balancing the bike:
I could, and will, criticize his center of gravity in this shot, but it's clearly a solid jump and it was done at high speed. Let's take a moment to review the fundamentals. As you ride up the lip of the jump, you pull strongly and evenly on the bars while leaning forward. As you finish your pull, you should feel your rear wheel leaving the jump. Now, shift your weight back and pull your rear end up until the bike is level. Depending on your landing, you will want to drop the rear wheel, hold the bike level, or push the front end down to finish the jump. I would have been happy had Douglas been a little more behind the seat on this jump.
Douglas then switched to his cruiser and began increasing his
speed. At this point he made a serious error that, had it happened on
dirt or wood, would have cost him some serious time out. Let's watch.
His positioning looks good coming up to the jump:
Notice that he is pulling strongly, but his weight is very far
back. We'd prefer that he be leaning forward at this point.
At this point he should be transferring his weight
backward... instead, it's moving forward as his rear wheel goes up:
Can you see what is about to happen? Douglas can, and he is trying
to correct the problem by shifting his weight. Good instinct but in
this case it's too late:
More correction by Douglas but it's just too late. Had he been in
this position leaving the jump, he'd be in good shape. As it is, he
cannot stop the forward rotation.
Having failed to shift his weight in time, Douglas prepares to eject.
Bad, bad forward rotation.
At this point, the only question is how much it's going to
hurt.
We'll skip a few frames to the untimely end. Ironically, the only
injury Douglas sustained happened here, as his pedal cut and bruised
his unprotected leg. The face-first hit into the resi didn't hurt him
a bit.
This ended Douglas's weekend, but rather than dwell on the crash we'll focus on the positive. His jumping had improved considerably in just five hours of practice. I think he had the accident because he moved to his cruiser and tried to apply the same amount of pull to it that he did to his twenty, and didn't shift his weight correctly. We'll fix it next time. Thanks to the resi ramp, this was an amusing sequence rather than a horrifying one, and Douglas will live to make more mains.
Meanwhile, Joe was riding vert and using his newly Serialized pull
to carve higher and better. Let's look at a "before" shot. In this
shot, Joe is double-pulling and kicking-out too much in the process:
In the next photo, you can see Joe's serial-pull turn. His weight
is forward and he is directing the rear end which is about to lift and
come around nicely:
By the next morning, he was able to pull harder and turn harder,
even on low ramps. Look at the textbook nature of this pull and turn,
low on a ramp at the Cage:
Not bad for a guy who hasn't done any serious jumping since the
first George Bush was in office, eh? He even managed to do a little
Serial Pulling while riding the indoor pyramids:
This isn't massive air but the properly leveled bike is what's important. Like Douglas, he is not in the habit of getting behind his seat, and that's something that he can work on in the next few months. Serial Pulling isn't something you move to in the course of a day, a week, or even a month. It's hard work reprogramming muscles that have been jumping the same way for twenty years, but it can be done.
The question becomes, "If the Double Pull is a common old-guy problem, and it can be fixed pretty easily, why don't more old guys Serial Pull?" and the answer is simple: Negative consequences. Remember the bails Douglas took into the foam and onto the resi. Either wreck would have put him on his back for weeks had it occurred on the street. Young riders have less fear and faster recovery. It's as simple as that. Without a foam pit, we would have had to start with a bunnyhop stand, work on changing to a Serial Pull bunnyhop for a few weeks, and gradually moved on to jumping and vert. The foam removed some of their fear and let them explore different riding options. We'll be returning in the fall and I expect to see even more improvement then, now that we all know what to expect.
Speaking of next fall: We're assembling a crew of old dogs who want to learn new tricks. If you're interested, drop me a line.
How'd my weekend go? Well, the Bionic Knee decided to
cooperate. Jamie Bestwick and John Rooker helped me work on my vert
riding, and I was able to conquer a couple of fears I had along the
way. I think the photo below says it all: a beautiful day, beautiful
jumps, and about as nice an X-up as I can hope for. The cloud has
lifted. See you next month.
