How To 180 On A Mountain Bike

Hey buddy, trail's back that way. Oh, right on, thanks man. No worries man. That guy looks familiar. Doing a full 180 on your mountain bike can be a lot more than just a cool parking lot trick. In fact, the basics of the technique will substantially help your bike riding, whether it comes to switching directions on the trail, readjusting your back wheel as you ride down the trail, or even ripping tight switchbacks. I mentioned this briefly in my parking lot tricks video a couple weeks back, and I ran through the basics of the technique, but today I want to dive really deep into it and show you all the nuances of it, so you can nail it perfectly. You know what, now that I think about it, this was the first move I learned as a trials rider, and the reason for that is that being able to move your back wheel around is a necessity when it comes to trials riding, and something that really plays into your riding as a mountain biker as well. Being able to control what direction your bike is going, the back wheel plays such a huge role in that. It's so easy to just turn our handlebars to point the front wheel in the right direction, but being able to move your back wheel around, that's what this is all about. The first component we're going to work through is lifting our back wheel up off the ground. I actually spent my 16th birthday party just riding in a circle around my parents' basement trying to get my back wheel off the ground. So I'm going to give you some really basic things to practice to get that back wheel up. We're basically doing an endo, and I do have an endo tutorial full video on this channel, but I'm going to give you the basics right now to get it going. There are two major things when it comes to doing a proper endo that make a huge difference. Number one is your shoulder position over your handlebars, but number two is what your back foot is doing. Your front foot doesn't really make much difference on this whole thing, but your back foot does all the work. Now when you're riding, typically you have your feet level, right, and you have your forward foot and your back foot. Your back foot in this case is doing all the work, and what you want to be thinking about is what we call the scoop. And you put your back foot down, you point your toes kind of at the ground, and then you do this backward scooping motion. So what you're doing is you're putting pressure on the pedal, and then you're pushing back and up in this kind of backward scoop position. That will actually pick the back wheel up off the ground. If you're trying to pull up like you would if you were clipped in or something like that, you're not going to get very high. But if you do the scooping motion, you're going to notice a substantial difference when it comes to getting your back wheel off the ground. Couple that with getting your shoulders over the handlebars, and you can get your back wheel off the ground quite a bit without even having to touch your front brake. Now that you've got your scoop figured out, you understand where your shoulders should be over the handlebars, we can start adding in some other elements to kind of stretch this whole thing out even further. You've probably experimented with grabbing your front brake to bring your back wheel off the ground already, but there are a few other things you can be doing proper that will help you get even higher off the ground. Two things that work really well for me, I like to think about pushing my arms out and locking them out straight. I push the handlebar away from me while I'm keeping my shoulders over them. And the other thing I do is I bend my knees and even pull them apart a little bit to bring the bike up into my body. Those two things will help you get a ton of height out of your back wheel. Now, you're not necessarily going to go all the way there when you're riding on the trail, that's for sure. But understanding where this balance point is and getting further over it and getting more comfortable on it is going to make the most difference In any case with mountain biking, being comfortable over your back wheel and front wheel pivot points is something that's going to make a tremendous difference when it comes to all sorts of riding. So now that we know how to lift our back wheel up off the ground, it's time to start moving it around. I've broken this up into two pieces for us to work through. First is what we do with the handlebars, then we'll talk about the back wheel. So the handlebars, what we're going to do, we're going to turn them the opposite direction we want the back wheel to go. So if we turn our handlebars left, we're going to move our back wheel right. Or you could think about turning the bike in one direction. So I'm going to go counterclockwise with my handlebars and then my back wheel is going to go counterclockwise because ultimately we're trying to turn the bike in different directions. In any case, think about doing the handlebars first so you set the intention of where the bike is going to go. And then as you're doing that, you're going to move the back wheel and your back foot is again going to do all the work here. It is the workhorse of this entire movement. So you've already done the scoop where you've lifted the back wheel up. Now you're going to use that same back foot to push against the rear triangle to move it in the direction you want it to go. I know that I titled this video how to do a trail 180, but when we're starting to work on this process, you don't need to do a full 180 to start out with. Let's just work on a 10 degree or a 20 degree or a 45 degree turn and then build our way up to it. The last thing you want to do is over rotate and flip over the bar or something like that. We just want to work on getting this movement started and then you can build from it from there. In fact, one of the things that I practice a lot and this goes back to the parking lot tricks, it's just keeping my front wheel locked in place and then pivoting in a full 360 around it, just going 10, 10, 10, 10. It's a great way to get comfortable on the front wheel, just turning it ever so slightly and moving that back wheel one after another time. All these things are going to build into eventually getting to pivot further on that front wheel and getting to that full 180 eventually. But like I said, you don't need to start with a 180. You don't need to throw yourself into it that hard. You can start with just a small pivot and ride away from it and then continue on from there. One thing I would think about when it comes to how to feel confident and controlled in this movement is how you pick up and put down your back wheel. So I think about this move about picking it up and then putting it down in place, not skidding and sliding it into place. If you're coming in at a little bit of an angle or throwing it just a little bit further than you think you can go, you could be at the risk of maybe even potentially bending your wheel a little bit. So think about picking it up, moving it and putting it back down, not picking it up and throwing it as far as you can and hoping for a full 180. Like I said, just start with a little bit of movement and then go a little bit further and a bit further after that and eventually you'll get to 180. It'll just be you developing your confidence over that front wheel, you developing the feel of the scoop and pushing the back of the bike around. All it takes at this point is just repetition. Get out there and get comfortable over that balance point on the front wheel and you'll be surprised how much further you can go with it. So here's something that never gets talked about. What are your hands doing while you're actually trying to make this whole thing happen? Okay, now obviously you're on the handbars with them but one thing I really wanna talk about here is that I have four fingers on the bar and one finger on the brakes and that's really important because I wanna have as much control over the bike as possible. So I've made some modifications to my bike. I have one finger levers on my brakes but really it comes down to just having the other four fingers on the bar on each side obviously. And the point of that is so I'm holding the bar with as much power as possible. If I have two fingers on each brake, I'm actually down to just my ring finger and my pinky that are holding onto the bar and making it happen and I just think that that's gonna impact me when I'm trying to ride technical stuff and I'm really going for it. So think about what your hands are doing on the bars. Think about how your brakes are set up. Are you getting the most leverage out of your current levers and what else could you do to have the most control over your handlebars? That's an important one for this. So now you're getting this trail 180 thing kind of dialed in. There's a few opportunities for flare with it as well. You've probably seen me do an endo and pedal a few times and a few other things. The pedaling thing for me is actually so I stopped thinking about my balance point. It looks cool, yes, but it's also one of those things where it's like distracts you from what you're actually working on and so you're not thinking too hard about what you're doing. You're thinking more about the pedal and you're just letting your body and your muscle memory kind of take over on the front wheel balance and sometimes that's what we want. We want our muscle memory to be taking over in so many of these scenarios so that when you have to do these quick moves, it's all ready to go. On top of that, there's a few other things you can do and number one is probably riding fakie. So if you do this full 180, you're landing the bike completely backwards and with the intention to ride in the opposite direction. But if you land, pull your weight back a little bit and backpedal a few times, you're going to roll backwards. The backpedaling part is actually so the hub doesn't engage. It's basically like putting the bike in neutral so your bike can actually roll backwards and the hub won't catch and push you forward if you continue backpedaling and so what I like to do is do that full 180, backpedal a couple of times, let the bike roll backwards and then take off. It's just another added flair. I don't know. It's cool. If you're not having fun, it's not worth it. Speaking of having fun, it's 100 degrees in Oregon right now and my camera keeps overheating and I have to keep changing out the batteries to try to make it work so I'm going to go have some fun. I'm going to go knock down three lines while this thing cools down and I'll be right back. This parking lot I've been filming in, they keep dumping off all these giant logs here which is kind of perfect for a trials rider. Every time I come here to film, there's something new to ride which is kind of sweet. So I've got a couple lines picked out. I'm just going to give it a shot. Well, that's that. Broken chain. Awesome. How crazy is that? Whoops. Not even the master link. I thought it's like 100 plus degrees here. I thought I was going to break before my bike did. That's gnarly. I guess that's the end of that. We've dissected the Endo 180 into its smallest possible components, each one of which you should be able to practice and then confidently put together for use on the trail. I hope this is really helpful for you and this is exactly what I'm doing on this channel where I take these seemingly complex and difficult skills and break them down into small pieces. So if you like this, definitely go check out the track stand tutorial. Check out my parking lot basics. Check out the up and over. There's a ton of stuff in there and there's plenty more to come. If this is valuable to you, definitely consider subscribing to the channel as well. Thanks again for being here. Definitely check out this tutorial playlist. It's got all kinds of how-tos and if you want, come hang out with me on Twitch. We usually ride Tuesday and Thursday morning. We can have a chat about some techniques that you're working on. I can show you in detail and answer any other questions that you may have about something you're struggling with. Thanks again for being here and we'll see you in the next video.