Catching air, sending it, flying high. One of the coolest and most impressive things mountain bikers do is hit jumps that send them soaring through the air. There’s a reason clips of riders hitting big jumps get so many hits, and it looks fun too!
Hitting jumps on your mountain bike can be a lot of fun but only if you know what you’re doing. Trying to catch air with poor technique can be a one way ticket to crash town. Want to learn to jump your mountain bike or level up your jumping ability? Read on!
Before you start: fundamentals
Getting your mountain bike airborne sounds like a lot of fun, but before you do, there are some important fundamentals you should make sure you understand and master.
Proper ready position
As you approach any mountain bike jump, make sure you’re in a proper ready position (some might call it an attack position).
Getting your body positioned properly on your bike as you approach jumps allows you to be set up for success, and a good ready position before you jump can be just as important as what you do once you’ve taken flight.
Flat, even pedals
You should be sure to ride with flat pedals when a jump is coming up. You’ll be able to tell your pedals are flat by how your feet sit on them. If your toes are pointing either down towards the ground or up towards the sky, your pedals are not flat. You want them to be parallel to the ground when a jump is coming up.
You’ll also want to be certain your pedals are even with each other. You don’t want one foot at the bottom of the pedal arc and one at the top as you hit jumps (or most other technical sections of MTB trails), you want both to be halfway from the top and bottom of your pedaling arc which will allow your feet to be even with each other.
By having your pedals flat and level to each other, you’ll have better balance on your bike and prevent leaning to one side or another. Taking off from a balanced position is important to staying balanced and in control while you’re in the air.
Knees bent
When jumping your mountain bike you want to be as athletic as possible, and part of that is having your knees bent slightly as you ride towards a jump. You don’t want to overdo your knee bend though, because this can mess with your balance.
A good reference point to know your knees are bent a good amount is having your knees over your toes. This will ensure you’re in an athletic position, while helping to keep you from overdoing it and getting too far forward.
Learn to Manual
Learning to manual is a great way to understand proper technique for hitting jumps on your MTB.
To manual, bend your knees and push your weight down into the bike. You should be low including having your arms bent and upper body closer to your handlebars.
From this position, you’ll push forward with both your arms and legs, extending your body back away from the front wheel. When done properly, this will cause your front wheel to rise.
A manual does not mean pulling up on your handlebars. Instead, you’ll pre-load your weight down into the bike and then push the bike out in front of you extending your arms and legs.
Learn to Bunny Hop
A bunny hop is the next step up from a manual, where you build on the technique used from a manual. Learning both manuals and bunny hops is a great way to improve your jumping technique with lower risks of falling and less consequences if you do happen to make a mistake.
To complete a bunny hop, you’ll first want to follow the same technique as a manual. Bend your knees and push your weight down into the bike, then push the bike out in front of you and extend your arms and legs.
As your front wheel gets off the ground and gets close to its highest point in the manual, you need to get the back wheel up to complete the bunny hop. To accomplish this, you need to lift your weight up and move it forward slightly. This will lift your rear wheel while the front wheel is off the ground and have you and your MTB completely airborne.
Timing the weight shift to get your rear wheel in the air can take a little practice. The best way to learn this is to perfect your manuals first, then just practice the next step of moving your weight up and forward to get your rear wheel up. Practice makes perfect, and getting bunny hops down to a science will be a huge benefit for you when hitting jumps.
Approaching the jump
Once you’ve got the technique for manuals and bunny hops figured out, you should be ready to start hitting jumps.
Approaching mountain bike jumps well is important and can be the difference between a smooth jump with a safe landing and an off balance jump that ends with you taking a hard fall.
Get in your ready position
Your ready position, discussed in more detail above, is important to allow you to be athletic as you approach the jump and to help you be set up for success mid air and while landing.
Keep your knees bent slightly so they are over your toes, and keep yourself low and centered over the bike. Also remember to approach the jump with flat pedals, and make sure they are level with each other.
Look where you want to go
When you’re riding towards the jump, you want to look at the take off, but you can’t only focus on that. Just like when you’re mountain biking on any other trail, you want your focus to be ahead to where you want to go. Which means looking at what comes after the jump just as much as the face of the jump itself.
Our bodies have a funny way of adjusting and sending our mountain bikes where we’re looking. This applies when we are simply riding on the ground on a technical, winding trail, but it even applies when you get your mountain bike airborne.
Don’t think of the jump as a standalone feature, but instead think of it as just another section of trail to ride.
Ride in at the correct speed
You want to approach any jump at the correct speed. The reason for this is most properly built mountain bike jumps will have a certain distance that is optimal to land at to keep things smooth. For example, many jumps have a downward sloping transition or landing ramp that reduces the amount of impact when landing.
You want to make sure you’re maintaining speed as you ride towards the jump to make sure you clear it and avoid casing it (casing a jump means you didn’t jump far enough, and usually you’ll feel a hard impact in the rear wheel when you do this).
This doesn’t mean you should go overboard and approach the jump with way too much speed either, because that can also result in hard landings caused by overshooting the landing ramp or transition.
A great way to help you learn the correct speed for a jump is by following someone who is already experienced at hitting that jump safely and successfully. Mirroring their speed will allow you fly very close to the same distance as them in the air, so assuming they had the correct speed while hitting the jump, you will too.
Taking off
The take off is a crucial point when jumping your mountain bike. Mountain bikers who excel at the take off will be able to land jumps much more consistently than those who struggle with it.
The keys to a good takeoff are mostly found above – in our discussions about doing manuals and bunny hops.
As you take off and get yourself off the ground, you want to basically use the technique of a manual or small bunny hop. Bend your knees and push your body weight down into the bike, and then as your front wheel gets to the lip of the jump, extend your arms and legs.
This is the “manual” aspect of taking off of a jump, and it will feel like your weight is shifted towards your bike’s rear to accomplish this. A sensation many mountain bikers feel is like their front wheel is moving further ahead of them as they are beginning their take off.
As your rear wheel hits the lip of the jump, the extra step from the bunny hop comes into play. Shift your weight forward and in an upward direction, as you would on a bunny hop, which will help your rear wheel up into the air.
Timing is everything
The timing of how to do this and actually executing this technique properly does take practice. You should start out on small jumps with low consequences, meaning something with a relatively smooth and gentle landing area with no gap to clear.
Mid air
While you’re in the air, ensure you remain calm.
If your approach and take off are on point, there is very little effort involved for you to stay in control. Staying relaxed is a good way to keep tension at bay and help you to maintain control while you’re in the air. A good way to help keep your body relaxed and preventing it from locking up is by intentionally moving around some in the air. This can help add some style to your jumps, too.
Keep your eyes forward and spot your landing. Focusing on where you want to go will work wonders in allowing your body and bike to be positioned correctly.
The landing
If you’re executing the approach and take off well, and you stay relaxed and in control mid air, sticking the landing becomes much easier.
Use your arms and legs as natural suspension to help you land smoothly. Keeping loose and free of tension mid air will allow your arms and legs to absorb your landing.
As you land, keep your focus forwards at what else is coming up on the trail, whether its another jump, a tight turn or a steep descent.
Different jumps – different technique?
Each jump is different – but your technique should stay largely the same.
You still want to let your arms and legs extend your front wheel out in front of you as arrives at the jump’s lip, and then shift your weight forward and up once the rear wheel arrives at the lip to help get it into the air.
Steeper jumps will tend to get your weight compressed down into your bike more simply because of their geometry, which means you won’t need to push your weight down into the bike quite as much. You should still feel as though your front wheel extends out in front of you as it reaches the lip of the jump.
To take off smoothly and stay in control, you’ll still need to shift your weight forward and up as your rear wheel arrives at the lip.
Start small
You want to learn how to jump, but make sure you jump safely too. Jumping on your mountain bike isn’t risk free, and there is always the risk that you could fall and become injured.
To help and reduce this risk while you’re learning to jump, make sure you start out on small jumps, that have wide, smooth landing areas and no gaps to clear. The perfect learner jump is one that minimizes the risk of a crash or injury while still allowing you to work on your mechanics.
Small jumps with wide and smooth landings will allow you the ability to practice jumping, including dialing in the timing on your weight shift. It will allow you to experiment with hitting a jump at differing speeds to see how that affects your air time. And if you make a mistake, your risk of falling or getting hurt will be much lower.
Common mistakes
There are a few common mistakes that lead to most bad jumps:
Pulling up on the bars
By pulling up on the handlebars, rather than using manual technique to get the jump started and let your front wheel extend in front of you, your balance will be thrown off. This can also make it difficult to get the front of the bike descending properly as you make your landing.
Tense upper body
Your body’s natural reaction to fear or perceived danger is to tense up, and this is a major sticking point that causes mountain bikers issues when they are learning to hit jumps or trying a new jump for the first time. By tensing up, your body won’t be able to move fluidly.
Tensing up as you take off from the face of the jump can get you into all sorts of terrible positions in the air. Make sure to keep tension at bay and let your front wheel smoothly extend out in front of you as you take off.
Tension can easily throw you off balance mid air too, and cause sideways landings and crashes.
Tensing up will also make your landing rougher because your arms won’t do as good a job at absorbing the impact.
Uneven pedals
Riding into the jump with one pedal lower or higher than the other one is a recipe for disaster. You will be off balance from the very start, which will make it much more difficult to execute the jump well.
Poor body position
Poor body position as you approach the jump is another common mistake that can get new jumpers in trouble. Having your weight too far forward or too far back can make it very hard to stay in control and be athletic through the jump. The same can be said for standing too tall as you approach and hit jumps.
Staying centered over your bike with knees bent slightly over your toes as you ride in to hit jumps will make sure you’re in a good position to catch some air from.
Frequently asked questions
There are several reasons you could be getting crooked in the air while you hit jumps on your bike. Usually, its a result of poor balance, which stems from having poor body positioning either approaching the jump, or in mid air. Tensing up can also lead to crooked jumps, as can riding into a jump with uneven pedals.
Keep loose and athletic and bend your knees so they are over your toes as you hit the jump, and you’ll have better control and start jumping straighter and more consistently.
If you find yourself getting nose heavy off jumps, meaning you’re landing with your front wheel first or at the same time as your rear wheel, its usually because you aren’t letting your front wheel extend out in front of you as it hits the lip of the jump. This can result from being too tense as you hit the jump which restricts your movement and can prevent your arms and legs from extending as they should.
Yes you can jump on a trail bike. Compared to downhill or enduro bikes, you will have less suspension to bail you out in case of a hard landing, but you also don’t need to worry about pumping as hard into the face of a jump to engage the longer travel suspension those bikes usually have.
If you’re landing your jumps smoothly, you won’t need much suspension anyway, however trail bikes will often have more than adequate travel to help you out of mistakes on small and mid sized jumps.
No a full suspension mountain bike isn’t necessary to hit jumps. Hardtail mountain bikes, with only a front fork, are the bike type of choice for most dedicated dirt jumpers. The main reason for this is because you don’t need to worry about compressing the rear suspension to jump a hardtail, and you can often get even more air since you don’t have any rear suspension to blunt the amount of pop your rear wheel gets off the lip.
Conclusion
Hopefully the idea of jumping your mountain bike doesn’t seem quite as intimidating anymore. With proper technique and by learning on smaller, easier jumps, you’ll be improving your jumping and sending it off the jumps you see on the trails with confidence and style in no time!