BMX Basics

The monster bunnyhop article!.

This is it. The article I've been promising for years. Many of you have read my original bunnyhop article from 1995 and said you wanted more. More specifics, more detailed instructions, more photos. Here you go.

If you are still reading, chances are you either cannot bunnyhop and want to learn, or you want to improve your ability to hop. Well, those of you in the first group can rest easy. Every rider I have ever personally shared this instructional method with has succeeded. We're talking dozens of riders here, from 10 Novices to BMX Dads. If you read this article and follow my instructions, you are very probably going to learn to bunnyhop, even if you have failed in the past.

The second group, the riders who want to improve, will also benefit, assuming you are willing to learn and can pay attention. Of course, if you are hopping thirty inches and want to do thirty-five... then I want to learn from YOU!

Let's begin. We're going to use four riders today to help us learn to hop, and I want you to learn a little bit about each of them:

Now that you've met the players, let's explain the format. Each photo you see will be a link to a larger photo. There are Quicktime movies for each move, you will need a Quicktime player to watch them, which you can get from www.apple.com. The links to the movies are in the appropriate sections.

Getting Started

The first thing you will need to get started is a positive attitude. I've received many sad e-mails from readers who have convinced themselves that they are unable to bunnyhop. That's not true. If you can ride a bike and you are not physically impaired to a serious degree, you can bunnyhop. Today you will learn.

The second thing you will need is something to hop. You will see boxes of various sizes used in this article, along with a full bunnyhop stand. We talked about building the stand in the original article, so I won't bore you with a repeat. I really suggest you build a stand. It's the easiest way to improve... but for today, you can start with some small boxes. You can also use a 12-pack of soda. A soda can is a nice beginner's hop, and the case that the soda comes in can be set up three different ways for different heights.

Got your stuff? Good. We're not going to bunnyhop just yet, though. We're going to start with two basic drills to teach you the two-piece bunnyhop.

Learning The Pieces Of The Hopping Puzzle

The first thing we learn is the Front Pull. In the photos below, we will follow Rachel as she demonstrates:

Rachel begins by crouching a bit, flexing her arms and legs.


She then leans back, letting her arms go straight and moving her center of gravity behind the seat a bit, while keeping her knees bent.


As she leans back harder, her legs will begin to straighten. That's perfectly okay. Notice that her arms are still straight. She's not "pulling" the bike up with her arms. She's using her back and the momentum she gets from moving her center of gravity back.


As she keeps pulling back, she will naturally "straighten up" a bit. That is because her hands and feet are moving horizontally closer together as the bike stands up. Her arms and legs are now straight.


Rachel's gotten about all the "hop" she is going to get from leaning, so she now uses her arms to bring the bike up the rest of the way.


The bike's standing up now and she's standing up with it. This is a full Front Pull. Did you notice that she never "pedaled the bike up"? Her pedals have stayed level through the whole manuever, even as the bike rose. Many younger hoppers try to "wheelie" the bike up with their pedals. Don't do it. It doesn't work. When you begin cross-country mountain biking, you'll use that technique - but not now..


Time to put the bike down. This is just as important. Rather than fall forward with the front end, Rachel extends her arms and puts the front end down gently. Don't skip learning this step. Instead of "slapping" the front end down, "place" the front end down. That's the key to success.


With the front end down, she's ready to do it again..


Might as well get back in our riding crouch.

Looks easy, huh? It is. You might also want to look at the movie to see her trying it a few times in a row. Although this is easy, I can predict how most new hoppers will fail. First they won't use their backs enough to lift the bike. Once they fix that, many of them will not pull evenly from their back with both arms. If you find yourself bending your arms while the front end is still now, you should use more back. If the bike is "waving around" once you bring the front end up, you should practice pulling evenly with both arms. It takes some practice. Don't get discouraged. It took me weeks to teach myself to bunnyhop and I made all the mistakes you can make and more.

Some new riders will have a strength issue, or a bike weight issue, particularly younger ones. Don't worry. The more you practice, the stronger you will get. I've seen eight-year-olds eventually lift the front ends of department-store bikes using this technique. It takes time and effort. You will get it right.

So, you've learned the Front Pull. Let's learn the Back Hop! Again, we'll use Rachel to show us how it's done.



Hmm... this looks like the standard riding crouch we ended the Front Pull with, but Rachel is leaning forward just a little bit more.



She shifts her weight forward. This is done quickly, but not so quickly that it shakes the bike. She doesn't "throw" herself forward.



As she completes her shove forward, straightening her arms, her feet begin to turn on the pedals. Look at her left foot. It's halfway to vertical!



Now both her feet are vertical. She is pressing BACK against her pedals and pulling her legs UP hard. Look at her calves, which are now flexing a bit as she pulls. This motion, right here, is what sets BMXers apart from mountain bikers and other clipless riders who are unable to pull their bikes up without being clipped or strapped in. This is the motion, right here. We rotate our pedals to vertical, push back against them for traction, then use our calves and hamstrings to pull the rear end up. If you've done leg curls, you understand the motion. If you find yourself "jumping off" the pedals while trying this, your feet are horizontal on the pedals, not vertical. I guarantee it.



How high can she go? It's all up to the strength of her legs...



...which are pretty darned strong! Note that the angle of her back hasn't changed much in the past few shots. She really is just using her legs to pull that bike up.



Time to let the back end down again. When I do this, I just extend my legs back down. Rachel is "sinking" with the bike, which makes her pedals go a little uneven. Either way's fine... but we will see later on how this affects Rachel's and my hopping.



And we're back in the crouch, ready to continue.

Watching the movie will help you see the motion at speed. Most riders find this motion a little easier to learn than the Front Pull, maybe because it isn't quite as physically tough. You're not moving as much weight and most of us are more used to a "leg curl" motion. When riders do have trouble with this, it's almost always because they don't turn their pedals vertical. I've run around behind my students making them turn their pedals vertical, then turn them back, fifty times in a row until they get the hang of it! But once they do, they've opened a very basic and important door in BMX.

Putting It Together

You've probably figured out that I just taught you the two motions of a bunnyhop, separated for your learning pleasure. Let's watch Rachel as she puts them together for a small hop:



Rachel approaches a twelve-inch tall box in the crouch that we remember from the previous photos.



Yup, it's that Front Pull lean, keeping the arms straight and working the back.



Hmmm... still no difference from the Front Lean. When's her back wheel going to come up? Actually, I do see one difference. Her rear tire looks a little flat. I think she is shoving her weight into the ground a bit for some reason... just like you go with your feet before you try to jump really high without a bike!



This is the "missing link" between the Front Pull and the Back Hop. She's "bounced" her weight off the rear tire. Note that her legs are straight and that her tire now looks very lightly loaded, even though her pedals are still level. So, that's how we connect Front Pull and Back Hop... with a little "bounce" off the rear tire.



Serious hoppin' time. Rachel has turned her pedals vertical and is beginning to apply serious backpressure to them. Look at her front wheel! It's more than twenty inches off the ground.



Now she uses her legs to bring the rear wheel up, just like she does in the Back Hop. It's the same motion!



She continues to pull hard as she flies towards the box.



This is where Rachel's technique differs slightly from the textbook. She rotates her pedals a bit in mid-air to give herself more "kick". I don't recommend that you do this until you have done a lot of hopping. Heck, I don't even do it. Keep your pedals level until you have Rachel's talent, which for me will be... um... never.



Rachel has cleared the box with ease and she is perfectly level in the air. This "level flight" is something to strive for, it shows you are Doing It Right. You don't want to let your front wheel dip as you clear the obstacle. It's fine for hopping boxes, but the day will come when you want to hop up onto something. On that day, you will be glad that you got into the habit of leveling the bike.



And she puts her rear wheel down first. That's a good idea too. It stabilizes your landing and makes controlling the bike afterwards easier. Note that the box is falling, and that the big cardboard box has moved somehow. I just did that to keep you on your toes, and also because I messed up the vidcap extraction! It's actually from another bunnyhop she did... oops!

Of course, we have a movie of this move... and at only 46K, it's worth watching, just so you can see her string it together in real time.

So that's it. We learned two moves and strung them together with a little "tire bounce" to bunnyhop a whole foot in her air. Can Rachel do better than that? Sure she can... but let's turn our attention to hopping lower for a moment.

It's one thing to see a girl bunnyhop, but let's face it: She's an awfully talented girl, capable of jumping twenty-foot doubles in a single bound. What about a truly "regular" rider? This is where Eric Wilson comes in. He'll perform the same move on an eight-inch hop stand, just to show you that a Novice or Rookie rider can do this, no problem.



E-Rock approaches in the standard pre-hop crouch.



Uh-oh, ladies and gentlemen, he wants to trick this up a bit. Looks like he's going to turn as he leans back...



Arms mostly straight, he pulls hard.



At the top of his pull, he bends his arms and begins to rotate his feet. Note that he is NOT clipped in.



His feet are rotated and his pedals are level as he comes up to the bar. And because he wanted to be a little tricky, he's throwing the rear end sideways. You can do this too, with practice.



E-Rock is completely level at the top of his hop. His form is so good, I won't even give him too hard of a time for what happens next.



What's he doing wrong? You know - he's putting his front end down first. He certainly knows better, but the extra time it took to rotate his rear end sideways kept him from having a textbook rear-end-first landing. Since it was for style, we'll let it pass.



Having kicked out in the air about a foot while hopping eight inches, he rides off. Not bad!

Nice job, Eric! I'm sure you'd like to see more footage of him, but unfortunately for him, and you, this is my website... which means that I got to choose myself as the model for our next section.

Going Higher

Once you can consistently hop twelve inches, you will be able to ride pretty much anywhere you want, jumping curbs with ease, using the sides of sloped driveways to kick you even higher, and just generally having a great time. But eventually you will want to do more.

Many people encounter a mental hopping barrier at twenty inches. That's enough to clear a BMX wheel (which is really 19.75 inches or so) and it's an important "hop ceiling" to break through. Others, particularly those of you who build a hop stand that measures in inches, will see a mental barrier at twenty-four inches - the point where you can tell people "I can hop two feet". The laid-over garbage can height. A cruiser wheel. Follow along with me as I clear a twenty-four-inch bar.



What's this? I'm twelve feet from the stand! Why is my front wheel in the air? It's a little motion I do prior to bigger hops, kind of a practice hop. It lets me align my back and arms correctly. I do this "pre-pull" with my arms. During long riding sessions, it helps me understand how much strength I have left in my arms and back. I've likened it in the past to a boxer tapping his own face during a match. It resets your muscles and prepares you. Naturally, it's entirely optional and I don't see too many riders doing it - but I like to.



With my "pre-pull" done, I'm ready to crouch and pull.



Big hops, particularly by big fat riders, require a big crouch.



You could draw a line from my eyes to that bar. I'm looking straight at it, measuring my pull.



A big, sharp, lean back. See that rear tire flatten? I'm running 90 psi in that tire. This is a big "push" against the ground.



More suffering for the rear tire as I push hard on the pedals while pulling back hard on the bars.



Note that my front end is not as high at this step of the hop as Rachel's was. I just don't stand the bike up very hard before leaving the ground - and that is probably why I can't do thirty-six inches.



Good pedal rotation here as I pick the rear end up. This looks like it will be a decent hop for me.



Take a minute to go back to Rachel's hop and compare our relative form. See how much more compressed my body is? How my hands are even with my knees while hers are several inches away? There are two explanations for this. #1: I'm more than half a foot taller than she is, riding a bike of similar size. #2: I'm pulling much harder because I weigh twice as much. If you have a lot of room between hands and knees, viewed from the side, during this point of your hop, you have more potential than you are using. Rachel could have hopped higher than she was hopping in her photo sequence, and of course, she does, frequently.



Remember that old Smokey Robinson song, "The Tears Of A Clown"? Well, these are "The Calves Of a Pro". I'm pulling pretty darned hard here. When you are done hopping for the day, your body should feel like you have been working your back and legs very hard. If your biceps or forearms are hurting, you are either unevenly strong or you are using too much arm to pull and not enough back. Yup, I have the calves of a Pro... and the appetite for fine steaks of three Pros!



The infamous Bill Curtin of Vintage BMX says, "Ride slow to hop high", and as a former Haro Freestyle team member, he would know. I'm going pretty slow here, which is why I can afford to have my rear wheel six inches below the bar with less than six inches to go...



Whoa! Am I tucked! Compare this with Rachel's hop and you will see how I doubled the height of her hop without any more initial front-wheel height. The harder you pull, the more you can tuck, and the higher you can go. We, ahem, "large-bellied" riders are a bit challenged in this respect... later on in this article we'll see Jamalama bust more height with an even tighter tuck.



This is the way to do it. I reach my top height EXACTLY over the twenty-four-inch bar. Had I waited a fraction of a second, I'd have clipped it on the way up; had I gone a fraction of a second earlier, I'd have clipped it on the way down. This timing is critical to getting good measured hops. I've seen many riders clip stuff on the "way up". If you are doing that, it means you need to work on your timing. Don't worry. It will come with, er, time, pun intended. I've been doing this for seventeen years.



Did you know you can get hurt bunnyhopping? The easiest way to get hurt is to do a bigger hop and drop your front end down too quickly. I have a (unfortunately analog) video of a rider named Dominic Valentino trying a 24-inch hop at the tender age of thirteen. He made it... and promptly dropped his front wheel and flipped forward off the bike onto the ground. That's nothing but bad news, so do what I do. Although my center of gravity hasn't really begun to sink (check the position of my head in relation to the house behind me) I am already extending my arms and legs to safely drop the bike.



I'm coming out of the tuck now, slowly, safely, and surely.



My arms are fully extended and my legs are prepared for landing. Landing from a taller hop involves some force... in this case, it's just like riding off a two-foot-tall curb. You wouldn't do that without preparing, so I don't land the hop without preparing.



My wheels hit at the same time, with more force on the rear wheel for safety (look at the relative flatness of the tires). An easy two-foot hop and a picture-perfect landing. Not bad for a crappy old rider!

The 60K movie tells the whole story. Not the prettiest of hops - most street riders look far more fluid and stylish when they do it - but it's enough for me. It's also enough to grind a thirty-five-inch rail, if I had the guts to try!

If you can consistently hop two feet, nobody outside of Steve Veltman (whom I saw pull a 42-incher on wet grass) is going to laugh at you... but I wonder if it's possible to go even higher?

The Next Level: Heading Towards The Three-Foot Hop

A three-foot hop is a powerful weapon that most riders will never, ever possess. With a three-foot hop, you can go over handrails, go up onto the hoods of cars (not that you ever would, of course...) and accomplish a million other wonderful things.

I've never done a "three-footer", but I've brought someone who is on his way to doing it: Martin "Jamalama" Larrea. In the next sequence, we'll see how he makes it to the thirty-inch mark with no trouble at all!



What's this? It's that same hop stand from the last sequence, set six inches higher! And isn't that Martin, going into his crouch?



Martin's explosion out of the crouch is much more dynamic than mine, but the principles are the same.



He's got a little problem. It's not enough to just pull the front end of the bike up. To get thirty inches, he has to bounce the bike off the ground nice and early.



Note that, unlike my and Rachel's hops, even with a near-vertical bike it won't be enough for his front wheel to clear. He has to vertically hop his bike before he levels out. That's the secret of super-high hopping.



He's done it! At a time when I am leveling my bike, Martin is still pulling the bike vertically into the air. As a result, his front wheel is now nearly three feet off the ground.



As he begins to pull with his legs, the bike is still moving vertically. His front wheel is now thirty-seven inches up. It's all up to his rear wheel now. Is his Back Hop as good as his outstanding Front Pull?



Crunch time now. He's very close. A little more leg curl and he'll make it.



Pull, Martin, pull! Luckily, he's got a lot of tuck room left, because unlike me he doesn't eat entire pizzas at a single sitting.



And he's over.... but it gets me thinking. Earlier in this column, I told you that Martin would out-tuck me and make it to thirty inches that way. But when I look back at my tuck, I think I might have out-tucked him a bit, big belly and all. Which means that Jamalama should be able to tuck more and hit that elusive three-foot mark!



Remember that story I told you about Dominic and flipping over the bars? This is how it starts. But unlike Dominic, Martin has full control of the bike. I bet he levels it out.



Getting there...



Leveling... Might as well take this moment to mention Jamalama's vintage 1979 Saab Turbo. It's a nice car. You can see it in the background. Sometimes, when he parks it there, the mailman doesn't deliver my mail.



He actually touches his rear wheel down first. NICE.



Time to absorb the shock of landing from thirty inches up onto blacktop.



And off we go. Ho hum. Another day, another thirty-inch hop.

Although it's slightly larger at 196K, I really recommend you watch the movie on this one, just to see the fluid ease with which he hops. When I hop, it's like watching a crane lift something heavy into position; when Martin hops, it's a thing of beauty!

Review Time!

Okay. Let's review:

There's more to learn, but we'll save that for future columns. I want to close this month with a really beautiful vidcap. You see, we closed the video session with a "long hop" contest - hopping across "gaps" created by placing a box at the beginning and the hop stand, set for eight inches, at the end. We set up an eighteen-foot gap for Martin. He hit it at top speed, clearing it easily. As you can see, he even had time to lean it over a bit:

Do you need any more inspiration than that?

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