MOUNTAIN BIKE SKILLS FOR OVER 40 - HOW TO WHEELIE - Can Lee get his Wheelie on

Hey YouTube, welcome back to the channel. Today we're doing a video about wheelies and I'm on a unicycle right now because when I was 12 my neighbor got a unicycle for Christmas and we spent a week and we learned how to ride it but for some reason I could never wheelie. Always scratched my head how can I ride one of these things and not wheelie. The reason is you have to commit to the balance point or you can't unicycle at all but with bikes you don't really have to commit as much and I never did. For 30 years I never committed. Then in my 50s I finally learned how to wheelie. We're gonna show how we figured that out. We got Lee from Lee Likes Bikes out here. He doesn't really wheelie. Kind of gave up on it. Pretty sure we're gonna teach him today. I think I know all the different tips to do it but for me that balance point is this mysterious magical place that I just can't conceive of. I've tried off and on over the years and failed. On hindsight I didn't enjoy the process. My failures felt terrible and I even came up with a story that sounds something like this. Well if you're out wheeling by the time you're 30 your wheelie gene is recessive. Alex and I are here telling you guys that you can learn new things as an adult. It's time for me to learn this. Lee's gonna let me try to teach him. There's a big difference between knowing how to mountain bike and knowing how to coach it. What I hope happens today is I try to explain to Lee and then Lee takes that through that coach mindset and distills it into something that is going to just be really powerful. So we're going to use all our tricks all our kung fu secrets and I'm going to learn this thing. Definitely want flat pedals. I don't want to be in the balance point in clips. There's no way I could even go there with clips. Gearing, I'm a big fan of pretty low gears for this and pretty slow wheelie. With a slower wheelie you feel more comfortable getting to that balance point. You're going to want to be in a gear that's low enough that when you give it that first stroke it lifts the front end. Seat height, you can pull really fun wheelies with the seat slammed and you can pull them with the seat all the way up. When it gets too high you don't pedal in a round way and so it can be a little bit harder to keep it sustained. I was thinking to run it down a bit so I can get off the back. That's a good point. You're not going to feel comfortable going to that balance point unless you start to get comfortable knowing you can step off. This bike is a full suspension bike. You can pull wheelies with any kind of bike. If you're running full suspension, people say firm it up. I don't think it matters. Play with it a little bit and then forget it. This bike, all this money, won't get you wheelie. There's a lot of money in this thing. This fork won't get you wheelie. It's green. I know. There's only one way to achieve this. You got to put in the time. Get some flat pedals, start in a low gear, have your seat up but not too high, and make sure your rear brake's working. To get that balance point I got to feel comfortable bailing. I'll just show you what that looks like really quick. Depending on which foot is dominant, you'll move that foot into this 45 degree and you're going to push and you're going to move back with the arms straight and then just step off the back of the bike. You can see that when I hit the balance point for just a millisecond and that's what you're going to want to do. You might want to do a hundred of these. Because you can't go into the balance point if that fear comes on. I don't mind if you if you come off the back with one foot at this speed. When you're going faster you want to come off with both feet. It's real nice. This itself is fun. You'll know when you're starting to get it because that panic will start to go away. The reason why so many people don't wheelie is it's scary. You can't be panicked and wheelie. Those two things don't go together. I've always been just shy of the balance point. I've never been there because I'm afraid of it. I'm going to consciously do this sub goal until it feels fun. I think that's a good metric because that's when you haven't mastered. This is a crazy irony. Right around the time it feels amazing, it's time to move on. Beautiful. He's already doing it better than I am. I'm sorry dude. Damn you. No, I'm stoked. I got to be stoked for him or he's not going to learn as fast. Linger. You guys are probably gathering from watching the channel. I put a lot of energy into being in the middle of my bike. This is against my religion to go back here. That last rep, I felt like a moment of peace. I have a crazy idea. I want you to help me get to that spot and just hold my bike and balance it there. See what it feels like there. Are we there yet? No, we're still not there. There's less stress here. Is it easy for you? It's easy, yeah. One of the things that you should feel now is your weight on your butt. Yeah and like my hands aren't like working that hard. Dude, this is how people do with one hand. There you go. Not a lot of stress in the system. No. And that's what a wheelie feels like so that's why it's delicious. So first you got to get into the wheelie and then you've got a wheelie. Getting into the wheelie is made up of two parts. It's the pedal stroke and it's the pop. The preload of the front suspension and then that rocking back into that seated position. Your power stroke is going to happen from here as high as possible down to here. Although you may not really begin it to about here, think about starting it pretty much at 12 o'clock. All right, power stroke coming up here. When you're going slow, much more of the emphasis is on that power stroke. You're going to want to bring your crank up on the power side. It might be your right foot, it might be your left foot. You're going to push and at the same time you're going to pull back a little bit into that wheelie position looking for that balance point. And what I like to do is pull in the brake enough that I can just feel the brake engaging and then let off right as I pedal. Just that much and try to find it again. That's when you really start to unlock the longer wheelies. I like practicing them really slow like that. They're harder but it forces you to be in the right place because if you're going really slow and you don't get in the pocket, they come right down. So faster wheelies are always easier. Nice one. Look at him just go up that path. Yeah. Dude. I figured that was long enough. Yeah, you made the point sir. When you're wheeling faster, it's going to be much more important to get a great preload and a big rock back. The minute you get it up there, you have one or two things to do. It's either a little more force or a little bit of brake. Hopefully have it in a place where you just need to tap a little brake. Arms are straight. Make sure as you get back that your weight is going into your seat. Integrate your power stroke and rock back. Transfer your weight into your seat. Keep your eyes up and arms straight. Balance pedal pressure and brake forces. Dropping the heel and then. I lingered right into the balance point. That was sick. I'm doing it again. That one was super good but he didn't have any brake on. The reason we're like holding the brake right before the engagement point so we can have a really fine control. I'm just barely barely almost on the brake. Very nice. All right. A lot of control. I'm like a millimeter away from a brake drag. That was better than the last one because you kept the pedals going. But like Alex said like you know hey you can have the brake engaged and just overcome that with pedal power. So that time I did that so there was a constant tension between pedaling power and brake pressure and I'm having the wherewithal to do a correction cycle. That's what I've been shooting for. That's that's my goal. That's a wheelie. I'm pre-loading forward. I visualize myself going back. Wow. That was a wheelie dude. That's a big deal. The difference between that and wheeling a block ain't much. Whenever we like create a new pattern in our head right like a new experience the more emotion that's tied to that experience the stronger the pattern becomes. The extreme sport all have a culture of celebration. Road cycling. There's not a big culture. There's an anti-culture. I didn't want to say that but yeah. Watch a pro nail something in slope style. The guy that came in second, third, fourth, fifth. They're all there losing their minds in support. Is it a coincidence that those sports are like that? I don't think it's a coincidence. That was a good one. I like that one. Yes. Yes. When you go slower a lot of the wheelies end because you go off to one side because you don't you flop. When you go a little faster you don't have that issue. Okay this is it. I'm visualizing my body farther back. Yeah. That's the most extended wheelie I've ever done. The previous ones I noticed my arms weren't straight all the way. They were just barely bent. So that time I went full straight and it worked. Whoa okay I just gotta keep pedaling at this point. Like that was a wheelie. We're gonna look for a spot with a little less wind. Not only like Alex says I put weight in the seat. I'm actually gonna shift my butt back farther on the seat. Oh yeah dude that freaking works. That that was sick but I just gave it the butt bounce doink and then the bike was like and I pedaled and I backed off and I coasted for a moment and I was like yeah I heard the angels are playing enter sandman on on harps. Having gone from not being able to wheelie to doing that wheelie now he's in a place where every time he goes for a ride it's super fun to wheelie. So reps don't have to be painful they actually can't be painful unless it's fun you're not going to do it. Now it's fun I guarantee you he gets really good at wheelies. If you're not at the balance point it's hard. There's tension there's struggle you're not getting good feelings it's not good and we give up. Huge for me to understand that no you don't move your body back this far you got to move it back that far and once you get there it's pretty chill dude yeah there's not much struggle and now and now I know why these forgive me I used to think they were bastards always showing off on the wheelies because it feels good I'm gonna be wheeling all the time now I'll be a wheelie bastard a wheelie wheelie. 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