How To Bunny Hop Like A Pro

A skill I believe every road rider should be able to do. It is, of course, the bunny hop. It allows you to do this, this, and this. Yes, not only does it give you bike handling skills that you can take on through your cycling career, but it also comes in really handy when you do meet curbs, potholes, bits and bobs in the road, or even roadkill. Yes, we want to be able to hop out those situations. I'm going to get some advice not only from a road rider, but also from someone who knows more about hopping than anyone else. It is, of course, Blake Sampson from GMBN. Before we hop off, there's two types of bunny hops that you can do out there on your bike. Now, predominantly on the road, it's up and down, but in the mountain biking world, it's called a log hop bunny hop. It's where the front's first and then the rear will follow. Now, that one's pretty much predominantly used over bigger obstacles. Today, what are we going to focus on is the log hop bunny hop, front and then rear. Before we start, there's a few things you need to think about. First up, safety. Safety does come first. Make sure you've got a helmet, securely fastened to your head, and any other protective gear you feel you need. Second up is make sure your bike is in good mechanical working order. Make sure the brakes are working, they're not binding, or if there's a few nuts and bolts, make sure they're tight. Do an ABC, one, two, three, make sure it's all prim and proper. Body position. Body position is absolutely key, something we'll touch on more a little bit later. This one is foot placement on your pedals. Make sure your power foot is in front when it comes to the bunny hop. Last of all, when you are practicing, make sure you're on a car park or a very quiet road so that you can practice without any disruption. Oh, naughty. Yes, it just doesn't look right on a road bike. Yes, no. Right, you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Let's go. Are you ready? When it comes to the bunny hop on the road, I don't think there's a bad technique. It's all about trying to get both wheels off the ground and over an obstacle safe. Yes. At the end of this video, we want you to get over that. Yes, you've basically put a tree in the middle of the road. I have put a tree in the middle of the road. It's a quiet road, so it's all right, but this should give you a breakdown of how to do it. Let's just say I'm going to be the guinea pig for you and Blake's the tutor. Makes sense, doesn't it? Let's get to it. First up is your body position when you're coming into it. We'll use that tree as a new example. When you're coming in, it's all about getting into that attack position. You're already in that attack position. You're on the hoods. You're riding along. You've spot your obstacle. This is where you want to preload your body. You bend your arms. It's all about timing when it comes to it. You're going to lift up, pull up on the bars. As soon as you get to a point where you know it's at your peak, that's where you're going to bring up your hips and your feet on your pedals. Now, in the mountain biking world, we would say don't rely on being clipped in because it's bad technique pulling up on your pedals. Predominantly, everyone that rides on the road is riding clips. There's no bad technique here. Rely on those clips. Bring up your back wheel by using your clipless pedals and your shoes. Bring them up. Bring your hips up to match your front wheel like this and then glide over. The speed and the momentum that you'll be carrying through this obstacle will give you the trajectory that you need to clear over that obstacle. That's pretty much the technique. Let's break it down to a point where we don't have an obstacle in front of us and we just want to get the front wheel up in the air like that. You're going to compress your arms and give a tug on the bars. When you're doing it, you're standing up as well. You're bringing your body up. You're not going to stretch out your arms. You want to compress your arms and then pull up into you like that. That's your first step. Your second step is your rear wheel. Forget about the front now. Let's focus on your rear, bringing it up like that. Now, it's pretty easy because you're clipped in. You literally compress your knees a little bit and bring up. You can rely on the clipless pedals because, like I said, predominantly, everyone is riding clips on the road. Practice that. The next bit is combining them two together. Let's go back down there. Before we combine the two together, your front followed by your rear, let's talk about the movement, your range of movement. On a mountain bike, it's totally different. You have a seat post that actually retracts. It goes back down. It gives you movement for your hips. It gets your body weight to get quite low so you can compress your bike to get it up. Because your saddle is going to be high constantly, your movement there is going to reduce the height of bunny hop that you're going to execute at the end of the day, but you can still do it, especially when it comes to a big log like that in the road. Now, timing, this is where it's going to feel weird and alien for you guys because there's not much going out there on the road as roughness and especially on a bike that has no suspension. What we're going to find is a little obstacle that we're going to use as timing. Let me find that and I'll get back to you. Trust me, it's going to help with timing. When it comes to bunny hop techniques on a mountain bike in a tutorial that we've done before on GMBN, we use a stick like this as timing. Now, it's the perfect way to find the timing point because it's all about timing when it comes to the log hop slash bunny hop, is you're going to hit your front. When the front taps, that's when you know you need to pull on the bars to get the front up. When the momentum of your bike, because you're not coming in at crawling speed, you're coming in with a bit of speed. You're going to let it roll through with the front in the air still. As soon as the back hits, that's your next timing point to lift up the back. Now, this is where you can rely on those clipless pedals to manipulate the back wheel to come up into you. Bring your hips up into you like that to match the front wheel with the rear. Now, this technique is actually quite hard to do on a road bike. It does come with confidence and time practicing the skill that you need to learn of the bunny hop. Now, with that said, let's get Hank in and see if we can get him to do it. Hank Nelson Man, I can easily hop that. Blake Shepherd No, but this is where you're going to actually want to hit it. This is where timing is key. This is where you want to learn the timing point. What you're going to do is you're going to come in, tap your front. As soon as you tap, not hit into it, but use as a little bump like boom, get the front up into the air. As soon as you keep the front in, like a bit of a manual, but you want to come in with a bit of speed, leave the front up in the air. As soon as the back hits, get it up. Or just about to hit, this is where you tug on the pedals. Hank Nelson All right, mate. Blake Shepherd You relied on those pedals to get it up. Don't worry about the rear. Just let the front go up. Oh, that was actually pretty good. Hank Nelson Right. Blake Shepherd Kind of. You're still lifting your rear. You've got to wait until you just got to lift your front, let your back wheel follow through. As soon as it taps, that's where you and you'll feel yourself going way higher. Hank Nelson Right, there you go. Next up, the big log. Let's do it. Blake Shepherd When you're on the road, you are cruising at a nice pace. Speed is your friend here. You don't want to be going too slow to hit this because you do that, because you'll do that. You don't want to hit it. A little bit faster, Hank, because when you're out there cruising, you're going faster than that. Hank Nelson In the big rain. Blake Shepherd Big obstacles, you tend to go a little bit faster, and then it gets a bit more scary. Yes. It didn't touch that. Easy. Let's raise the bar. Let's go. I'm actually quite scared. Just touched it. What technique would I use to clear this big obstacle out on the road? It will be a combination between the both of them, more primarily on the mountain bike one, the log hop, obviously, for obvious reasons. It's front up high, so you can clear it, and then that's where you can lift up the rear. Because having the rear lower, you can actually use it as a bit of a bump over an obstacle. It's a bit more safer than trying to clear it and landing in the middle or not getting the timing right and hitting your front wheel and getting spat over the bars. Let's try that. Nailed it. You cleared over it. I would say that's just over half a foot. It's nearly just under a foot. Let's go higher. You want to go higher? Okay. Watch this. I don't know if I can get my front wheel up high enough. The log hop. Let's see how that is. I got size 12 feet, right? That's just above it. Let's give it a go. Literally just touched it. That was more oomph in the hips to get it up. There you got it. The front was there. It's just the rear. That's what will happen. When you get good technique, you'll be able to go that bit higher, and that's higher than what you'll find on the road, even if, I don't know, there's a curb in the middle of the road. That would be a bloated badger. I've been laying in the road for a couple of days. Let's go higher. Let's try. You've got that. Like I said, I have a 12-inch foot. Do you want me to go first? You can go first. No, you go first. You set the bar, dude. Yes, but if you can't do it, then I can't do it. He's going to go higher. I'm not going any higher. He's going to go higher. I'm not going higher. All right, my turn. I don't know if I can do that. That is high. That is seriously high. Timing. I don't think you're going quick enough. You landed just on top. That's my limit, I reckon. Yes, that is high. Well done, dude, for going that high. That was good. There we have it. Mountain bike skills does transfer. If you get the technique right, you'll be able to go higher than you ever thought. Let us know in the comments section below if you've tried this and if you think the bunny hop is as much as an important skill as I do. Thank you so much for Blake Samson for joining us on the channel. Let us know in the comments section below what you think about Blake and hit that thumbs up button if you want to see more. See you next time. See you. Cup of tea? Let's go. Cup of tea.