How To Ride A Pump Track | GMBN Teaches GCN MTB Skills

Do you remember that time I took Conor and Manon from GCN into the woods to try and teach them some cross-country skills? Yes, it turned out pretty interesting indeed, but under their own admission, they need to learn some more of the basics of what better place to teach them than here at the pump track. Stay on course, big man. Stay on course. Oh my God. I didn't get this big by just eating soup. It's maybe not as hard as I thought. Oh God. Now Conor, welcome back. Manon couldn't make it. We're going to put it down to fear. Scaredy cats. Now, you've never ridden a pump track before, have you? No. I've never. I've been messing around on one on my road bike, but obviously, terrible. On your road bike? Yes. Well, just to mess around when you see them. Mad man. They're kind of cool-looking things. They are, right? I've never done it on a BMX. Okay. Is that what you ride on? Well, a mountain bike. This is a global mountain bike network. I thought you guys rode BMX as well. It's going to look like a BMX underneath you. I'm slightly nervous. I have to wear my helmet. I'm just filming with you guys. It does end up like that, doesn't it? Well, you did pretty good when we rode XC, but yes, like you said, a bit of brushing up on some core skills were kind of needed. I think, let's get you on the bike. Let's get you around the track. See where we're at, shall we say, with you, and then teach you some of those basic core skills. Okay, nice one. I'm going to try and get you on the bike. last time because I'm not sure I'm going to be looking good this time. The aim of a pump track is obviously to pump round, no pedaling, but we're going to let that slide to begin with. That doesn't matter because that's where our skills are hopefully going to get you around by the end of the day. That's our sort of challenge, is what I'm thinking, is that can we get you, once you've learned the skills, to get round the entire track without pedaling? Is it a fixed gear? No, it's not fixed. No. Can you imagine a fixed gear? I kind of feel I need to just go down the ramp to the pump track first. I need to get a handle on the bike. I can't just set it straight. There's one brake. There's the back brake. Suspension's at the front. We'll firm it up a bit because you're a big guy. Okay, yes. You get around that way and just roll in. You'll be fine. Just take it steady. Okay, right. I'm going to go real slow. Don't laugh at me. This will be the slowest. Really slow. I'm not someone that jumps in at the deep-ended things. Oh my God. I get in at the shallow end, but then I kind of paddle my way to the deep end. Can you not just walk to the deep end? Yes. Well, the deep end's kind of the shallow end for me. What? Oh my God. I'm flipping heck. The kids are looking at me. Rightly so. Initial reactions. How was the bike? Okay, yes. The bike's a lot easier. It's a lot easier to ride than a road bike. Than your road bike? Yes. A pump track bike is basically a 100 mil hardtail with one gear and one brake. Super slick tires, so it rolls really fast. It's all about efficiency. If you're on a full sus bike with knobbly tires, you'd have loads of drag. You'd be bobbing and bouncing all over the place, so you'd lose speed in that way. You'd lose efficiency by pumping into the turns. The thing that makes me really nervous about these sort of tracks is you can roll around them really easily. Oh, okay. You heard it here first. Wait, that was slightly overconfident. Okay, well, look. I'm sort of watching you around there. I think body position is somewhere that we can improve almost straightaway. Did you see that the front end was real twitchy? The front end was going quite light. Let's have a look at that to begin with. Right. As Conor goes around, can you see, everyone, how the front wheel's kind of going wobbly as he goes up and over a roller? The front end's getting really light and twitchy, so that's essentially a body position error. There's not enough weight over the front of the bike. As he sort of compresses into the takeoff, his weight's shifting back, and it's causing the front end to go really light. Now, that's two problems. One, it means he can loop out. Secondly, that once he goes over, he's not got his weight far enough forward to do that pumping action of pushing down the other side. That is something we can work on with him. How do your legs get quite tired? My quads are on fire. Yes, a pump track's essentially doing a lap of, what, 20, 25 squats? Yes, there we go. This is the hard one. There you go, all right. At the top of the berm. I just don't have the confidence to send the berms. You got it. Try and shift your body weight forward a little further. For those at home, I'm sure they've noticed you're quite a tall chap on quite a short bike. Yes. That does become a little bit harder because your center of gravity is so much higher. You're really high up, of course. When you're riding, you notice the front end goes really light and a bit twitchy when you go over the jumps, over the rollers. What happens is as you're coming up, your body weight's shifting back, but you're not shifting it then back forward. When you come up the roller, you're at the top and you're like, as you go back down it. Does that make sense? You need to be in a good attack position. You're going to have your head almost over the front tire. Obviously, you're going to be looking up where you're going, but you want to try and stand up a bit taller. That's going to shift your ass and that a bit up. Yourself at the motor, you come down and then your body weight's coming back. Because your body weight's up high and back, you're getting all light over the top. Your momentum's just about getting you over, but then you need to shift your body weight. If it was more central, you shift it ever so slightly forwards so you can push down the backside. When you come in, you see how you push? That's what generates your speed. Do the whip at the end as well? Yes, you can try. His legs are getting tired. Hang in there, bud. You can do it. That was a bit better, I think. That was really good. As the name suggests, that was you were pumping. You all right? Yes. Quick breather. You were pumping, so that pumping motion is what generates the speed around a track like this. It's obviously transferable over onto an actual mountain bike course, a mountain bike track, trail, whatever. When you're hitting, like what we rode at Forest of Dean with the rollers and things like that and the berms, which we're going to get to in a moment, that's exactly where you would transfer this core skill that you can learn in a really nice controlled environment out onto the trail. That act of pushing and pulling the bike. It's just so different riding on the road. Massively, yes. You're trying to keep your upper body quite relaxed, whereas here you are really using my arms. I really felt that. Yes, you would. Your whole body is, you're doing essentially press-ups or bench-press. Pretty much. You're doing squats, if you like. Which is not what I normally do. Have you seen these little chicken arms? Hopefully, they'll get you taking flight in a bit. Now I notice, let's move on to berms because I noticed your line, you all right there, buddy? I'm stressed. I'm so stressed in my house. When it comes to line choice in berms, ideally, on a pump track, you want to be entering high and you want to be exiting and trying to stay as high as you can through the middle part, exiting kind of middle. The reason for that is it's the best and most optimal way to maintain and keep your speed all the way through the turn. If like Conor's been doing, unfortunately, he enters quite low, the line in that turn then naturally sends you really high up and that puts you in danger of being spat out the top of the berm or in the worst-case scenario, crashing, but you don't want that. It also means that actually you're going to have to break in the turn and that's going to lose you the most amount of speed and momentum, which on a pump track especially, that's a no-go. We're going to play a fun little game. I'm going to stand in the turn so that he has to go around me so that he has to do the proper line. This could go one of two ways. I'm going to stand here, buddy. Conor, are you ready? Because you should then have to enter the berm high. Now, you're not going to be leaning over into me because you shouldn't be leaning just yet. You'll start to initiate the lean as you get to the red line. By my theory, if I'm here, maybe I'll go one step this way just to be safe. I should be safe and Conor will be in the correct line. In fact, I'm not even going to look. Fire away, Conor. Here we go. High line. Oh, that's very high. Oh, it's not too bad. It's not too bad. No, you knew that. I think next, that wasn't too bad. Now that he knows it can be done with more commitment and less tensing from me, I think the second attempt is going to be better. Oh, he's going again. I'm going to go straight in. Oh, yes. That was good. It worked. I'm a genius. Yes, it felt safer, actually. It does because if you actually- On a berm like this, especially where they get quite steep, you want to try and match the angle of the turn. Your body wants to be at a right angle to the berm. That way, you're pushing pedals level into the turn and you are the most stable you can be. Just like this. Right, here we go. Yes. Oh, my boy's all grown up. Whoa. A bit low. That was a bit low. A bit low. That was a bit of a mess up. Oh, yes. That's where you mess it up, isn't it? As soon as you got off line and went back to, we'll call it old Connor, because you're instantly wobblier and your body weight just went all over the place, right? Yes. I just lost my height. You feel it on the front wheel, though. Yes. You know because you came in, so when you came in like that too low and you exited a little bit higher, it shot all your body weight back and just went like that, didn't it? Yes. It's interesting, right? It's a lot of fun to ride. They're cool, aren't they? They are fun. They are cool. Okay. Next up, let's move on to the art of pumping itself. I feel like we've jumped the gun a little almost. Let's refine that, because you've got the basics of there, but I think we can improve it for sure. Connor, pumping. As the name suggests, we're at a pump track, so the idea is to get around without pedaling. You've mastered the basics of pumping already. You can do it like we've touched on already. It's that pushing and pulling motion over the rollers and around the turns to generate speed. It's the timing of those that is crucial, and it's something that I reckon you could just finesse. Pumping should look like this in a nice slow-mo. Okay, mate, so from that super awesome slow-mo that the viewers just saw and you just saw in your brain. I did. You can see that essentially what I'm doing is I'm pulling the bike up as I go up the takeoff. I'm sucking up the energy, if you like, and then I'm pushing back down the downside. It's that pushing that's almost forcing the bike away from me and generating that speed. It's linking that up, so roller after roller, that's gaining more and more speed and allowing me to get around the track without pedaling. The trouble is, you're trying to pedal around a pump track as well. If you pedal up and over the rollers, you're probably going to hit a pedal, so it's actually just really difficult to do that in the first place. Now that you've seen the super awesome slow-mo. Give it a whirl. Nice. I liked how you dropped in from the top then. Whoa. Get on, son. You absorbed the roller and then you pushed back down the backside of it and it got faster because there was a few noises out of you there and there was almost a bit of a worry going on. There was a little bit of worry. You were a lot faster than I thought. A bit of what? I think I'm making quite funny faces as well, but it was actually a lot easier. My legs aren't hurting as much. I think when I started, I was taking a lot of it with my legs. Because that body position, your weight was further back, you were essentially just squatting. Your arms weren't taking any of it. It's not actually as hard as I think. Spreading the load. Once you get the technique a bit done, I think it's your coaching, mate. Hey, no. Happy to help. Okay. Next up, I think we'll move on to something more advanced. Manuals. Oh, manuals. Right. Get some music going. Get the vibes. Here we go. Manuals and jumps. That's what I'm talking about. Jumps as well. Ain't nobody no jumping. He swears he can do a manual. Now, the best piece of advice I've given him to begin with, cover the back brake. By all means. It's the fail-safe. If you feel like you're going to loop out, grab the back brake. The front wheel will drop. Here he goes. I am a tiger. All right. Nearly. I'm going to just stop it. I could hear you, so you kind of have recognition of using that back brake. I could hear it then just go and drop. You could see it drop. You know kind of what to do. Manuals I always think are trickiest because it takes a level of commitment up again to really lean back and hold it there. That's the scary part, right? That's what I find really hard. Yes. Just that last bit of commitment. Yes. Oh, that was good. Yes. Look at that. He did it. X Games, here I come. X Games. That's good, isn't it? That is good. That's a fail. That was just erratic. What you're doing now, the skills that we've been learning on the pump track help with that. You notice when you did get your couple of little mini manuals there, you notice you're pushing and pulling with your legs, right? You were shifting your body weight back and forth, much like a pump. In conjunction with, obviously, you got to shift your weight further back and covering that back brake. The way to transfer, or this is the tricky part, transferring that from the flat like this to a track, you've got to initiate that manual as you go up a roller. The scary and the hard part there is that when you manual out the top of a roller, the back then just drops down because it goes down the backside. That's when you have to alter where your body position is slightly. If you manual even out of this one, you just put like it's not very comfortable, but it gets you the feeling of manualing out of a roller. You have to hit a roller with a certain amount of speed to initiate the manual and manual between rollers. It's maybe not as hard as I thought. Oh, wow. Winning the Tour de France doesn't look that hard if you just pedal faster than everyone else. That was incredible. It's not as hard to get the front wheel up. I reckon I could do that and go down. If I just pedal a bit quicker than Pikachu, I reckon I could probably win. I'm sure. I'm saying it's manual now. Do it. Yes. Yes, it does out the big one. You hear the back brake there. That was the panic back brake. It's like the opposite of a panic front on a vertical spike. He's like, break. I think you need a rest in a sec. I'm just saying. Here we go. Manual. No, it's not quite as easy as I thought. What's the time? You've got four minutes. There was moments of greatness and moments of scared from me watching because you veered off into the grass at one point. I was like, oh man, where's he going? Well, you need to always know your exits, Trash G. Yes, just the bushes. This is the roller to learn on. These are quite small, nice and quite close together. The more mellow the rollers and the closer they are, the easier it is to nail and safer it is because you don't have as far to manual. If they're mellower, it means that G out of the back wheel going down the backside ain't going to be as aggressive and you've got more chance of actually making it. It's not going to be a sudden thud if you don't make it either, whereas some of these bigger ones are literally like a thud. I'm just scared of going down and then it's just like whipping. Big Larry loop out. If you can manual that one by the end of this vid, breakfast is on cameraman Leo. There we go. I'm always motivated by breakfast. There we go. Oh, it's a bit windy. Oh, breakfast on you, Leo. He's got some, look at that line choice. That was well good. Oh, no. You messed it up. That was the committing part. To be fair to him, his line choice on everything beforehand was really good and he was carrying really good speed, but I think there is just a, we'll call it a brain block. A little bit of a brain block on the manual. There you go. That wasn't too bad, was it? That wasn't too bad. Mate, you have been crushing it. I like it. Thanks, man. You've done well. It's been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I'd love to come back and just chill and enjoy my little laps around here. It's been really cool. We've still got the final goal of doing a complete lap without pedaling to do, but before we do that, if you would like to see Conor in a mountain bike video, in more GMBN videos, we're going to say jump in. Jump in. I want to jump air. I want to jump you, Rich. Right. Well, for that to happen, we need 1,000 likes, people. If this video gets 1,000 likes, Conor, in some way, shape, or form, will jump me. My first bit of air. On that note, thanks for watching, everyone. We're going to go do a full lap. Conor, you've crushed it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the tips, Rich. We'll see you later, everybody. All right. Let's go fly. All right. Full lap. No pedaling. Yes. Good line choice. Oh, he goes for the cheeky manual. Nice, dude. Oh, stay on course, big man. Stay on course. He's done it.