Throw Your First Whip || MTB Jumps: Practice Like a Pro #16

Oh, we're not syncing cameras. We just have one camera. Okay, that's easy. Okay, I totally know what we're doing. All right. Well, hey guys. Today is a little bit different. It is just me. Simon is in Mexico on a beach and I'm not. But today we're going to do something really cool. This is actually the day that I'm most excited about because we are going to talk about throwing your first whip. So I've had a couple breakthrough moments and I thought it was a really good time to just stop and do a quick check-in and share with you the two things that allowed me to get to this point where I'm at right now from just jumping a jump straight. The first one is actually how I took off the jump and that was just riding with heavy feet and light hands. And so what happened over the summer when I wanted to do my first bar turns was I was jumping but I had so much weight and tension in my hands that when I got into the air I was just frozen and nothing happened. So changing where that weight was and dropping that all down to my feet and riding with light hands all of a sudden unlocked my upper body to be able to move. And then the second thing that happened just in the last two weeks that I'm really excited to share with you guys is that once I started moving the bike, instead of just bar turning with my hands, I started moving the bike with my core and my shoulders and all of a sudden I felt the back end of the bike move beneath me and it's like oh I just did a little itty bitty baby whip and I didn't even realize it. Okay so the first thing I started doing was just turning the bars and this is a great place to start because it's pretty simple. This can look kind of cool in the air but at the end of the day it's pretty limited and what caused my crash on Semper was even if I was turning the bars I'm not actually turning the bike. So if you want to get really steezy and also be able to move your bike in the air, it's important that you can do more than just like a bar turn. When you turn the bars and you have your shoulders and your core engaged, you see how the back end of the bike just naturally moves and I'm not doing anything with my feet right now. It's just engaging my shoulders here all of a sudden creates that nice s-turn with the bike and then creates that natural movement. So that's what we're going to try and do but actually in the air today so we'll see how it goes. Well it's less soggy than yesterday. I have so many jackets on right now it's embarrassing. Right now what we're going to do is basically go through all three options. First is just going straight off the jump, popping heavily with your feet and light with your hands and then second we're going to do some bar turns and then third we're going to try and throw some little baby whips. Cool, all right let's do this. Okay it was a little slow I'm gonna have to speed it up a bit. All right here we go. That'll do it for straight air. Feeling pretty good. It's really greasy at the beginning so I'm just trying to get some extra pedal strokes in and hold my speed through the line but now we're gonna do some bar turns like little bar turn, little bar turn, a little bit more in here through the mud pit. Try and keep my speed up. Aren't you from like the YouTube tutorials? Yeah, look behind you. All right that's enough of that. Let's get to the fun stuff which is trying to get the back end to move around. Basically the key foundation is just that you're moving your shoulders and your core so just do a little even just like super little movements and make sure that that motivational source is coming from your core and not from your hands. Send a favor turning left and so with these jumps I'm going right, left, right so hopefully I can even out the right hand side. Okay heavy feet, my hands. It's hard when it's muddy. I don't know if it's actually harder or if it's just in my head but it feels hard. It feels like I've just unlocked the potential to whip. Not that this is really a whip yet but this to me feels like a huge step that all of a sudden I've gotten my bike off of this one-dimensional plane and it's moving naturally so it feels pretty good. Hold on, don't go anywhere. I'm just getting cookies. It was really good. Sweet, all right gonna get a phone out and send this to Simon. All right I'm gonna drop this into Simon's inbox and we're gonna see what he thinks. Oh he's calling now. Hey, how's Baja? Oh I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty awesome and pretty warm but it looks pretty nice where you're at too now that I'm watching you. This is a system from sideways there they're on purpose. I realize that in Seattle we have a different definition of a sunny day because this to me is a sunny day and there's actually no blue sky, it's just like a brighter version of clouds and that's a sunny day. So I got your videos you sent, you look so good Linnea, this is such great improvement. You know what I'm most impressed about is the fact that on that second to last jump on Luna line you're turning right and turning right and on the last one you're turning left so you're actually whipping in both directions. I think you're right now at least from these two shots I'm looking at your whip when you turn turn right and whip left there is like that is really really good. Especially this last jump, oh my gosh, like I had like no feedback for you other than just keep practicing. I'll be back there in a few weeks so save some sunshine for me please. I'll try, I'll do my best. Cool, all right thanks for your help. See you later. I'm happy about my progress today. I think in my head I don't really want to carve off of lips that are super super sloppy so I'm going to set this aside for a few days, let the rain roll through. I think we've got like five or six inches coming up and then maybe work on some muddy cornering in the meantime and then get back to whips. So hope you learned something today and we'll get some more coaches back soon and work on some tech riding in the mud and some wet routes and then get back to Baja. So see you guys later.