How To: Ride the slippy roots in the Tweed Valley with Dirt School

A few weeks ago, Andy gave us an insight on how to bunny hop, so today we explain how this applies to the trail. 

The bunny hop (and speed hop), once mastered, are incredibly useful techniques you can use to float over the rough and slippy stuff and link together the grippy parts of the trail - we call these ‘grip points’ at Dirt School. Learning how to link grip points together not only allows you to ride smoother, more in control and therefore see an increase in speed - but it also reinforces a positive mindset as you descend. If you are just focusing on the positive sections where there’s grip and not worrying about ‘that slippy off camber root’ you will be in a much better place mentally and have a lot more fun! 

What to do

Find a section of trail where there’s smooth dirt on either side of a small root cluster and follow the steps below: 

1 - Start in the correct body position and crouch down close to your bike by bending your knees and arms. 

2 - As you approach the obstacle, generate upwards momentum by pushing off the ground. Your legs should straighten as your weight is pushed upwards.

3 - Avoid pulling the bike in the air - you should stay fairly neutral with the bike level

4 - As you come into land you want a small bend at the knee, but make sure you leave plenty of room to absorb the impact

5 - Bend both your arms and knees to absorb the landing. This should feel smooth. 

It’s so worthwhile learning how to do this so you can link the smooth patches of the trail together allowing you to ride with a lot more flow! 

Top Tips

• If you don’t have much time in the air, or your landing is noisy and feels heavy with no room to absorb the impact, this is an indication that you have pulled the bike up. Remember, the key here is to push away from the ground and utilise that grip point, rather than trying to lift the bike over the obstacle. 
• The timing of the push will take a bit of practising to get right - don’t be hard on yourself if this takes a while to work out. Be sure to choose a section with low consequence so you’re able to make mistakes safely to begin with. 

Once you have mastered the technique, you will gradually be able to build up to doing much more committing, bigger hops. 

Dirt School are now taking bookings for coaching sessions from July 15th onwards. We’re offering full refunds for all new bookings if courses are postponed due to covid-19 restrictions. Book with confidence and give yourself something to look forward to this summer at Dirt School.