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Cross country skills: the bunny hop
Now that we’ve made it through the first few skills sessions we’ve finally arrived at the good stuff. This article focuses on the bench press of the mountain bike world: the bunny hop. The bunny hop is one of the most important skills for an cross country rider and it’s the skill that really will take your riding to another level.
Imagine that you are approaching a rock or a log and without hesitation or slowing down at all, you hop right over and continue on your way. Your buddy behind you locks up the brakes and either picks his way over it one wheel at a time or dismounts as you fade away into the distance.
But wait! There’s more! Call now and, in addition to learning to bunny hop, you will also get rock hard abs and a Ginsu Knife set. Ok, so I’m just kidding, but once you start to bunny hop, you will feel like a new rider.
Straight up, straight down
The bunny hop takes the skills you learned from my previous post on lifting the front and rear wheels and combines them into a single, fluid motion.
A common mistake, and one that I suffered through until recently, is the idea that you have to pick your entire bike straight up and then let it fall straight down in order to bunny hop over an obstacle. While this technique works on a road bike for hopping over small cracks and crevices, when you need to get up and over something — a log, a root, or a rock — it has some problems.
This illustration shows the square wave approach:
You can get over obstacles using this method, and it is fairly easy to do if you are clipped into your pedals: just jump straight up. However, most people have problems with the distance that is marked ‘D1′ on the diagram above. ‘D1′ is the distance that your rear wheel has to travel in order to clear any given obstacle. The problem is that you need good speed in order to stay airborne long enough to get over anything of decent height.
The J-Hop, or Porpoise
Contrast the square wave approach illustrated above with method described below. In this method, you first lift your front wheel in the air and then get your rear wheel off the ground by pivoting the bike around an axis point in front of your center of gravity. While comparing the two methods, notice the distance ‘D2′ in the second diagram. When you look at ‘D1′ in the first diagram, you’ll see that D2 is significantly shorter than the distance described by the previous method. In short, this means that you can clear obstacles that are the same height while going at a slower velocity.
This method is sometimes called the J-Hop, although some sources call it a porpoise. When you land heavily on the front wheel (like I do a lot), I guess the move looks kind of like a porpoise jumping out of the water.
I’m still not sure if landing level is preferred or if landing slightly on the front wheel is a more appropriate way of landing. Most how-tos suggest to land level, although Lee McCormack’s book suggests landing biased to the front wheel slightly.
Troubleshooting the bunny hop
For me, the hardest part of this skill is getting the rear wheel airborne. My troubles aren’t based so much on lifting the rear wheel off the ground as it is rotating the bike around an axis point. Since this rotation is what lifts the wheel off the ground it’s really important to do it well. Often, you hear people describe it as rotating the handlebars forward — hold on tight and twist your wrists forward.
After my last post, someone commented that the angle of the rider’s forearms is a key to this move. In the sequence of pictures below, you’ll note that I need to work on this. Also note that I tend to get the rear wheel a lot higher than the front wheel and end up landing heavily on the front wheel, something that wouldn’t be as exaggerated if my bike were pointing downhill. Finally, note how I am looking down when I land — as with any skill, you head should always be looking UP!
It’s funny, this series of photos was of my third try at this height and in looking at the images, I cleared it with several inches to spare.
Practicing the bunny hop
Try lowering your seatpost when practicing. It is amazing how much an xc post height gets in the way of things.
Also it seems that I can hop higher on my hardtail than my dually. This was counter intuitive to me because I figured that I can get more rebound off the dually after compressing it prior to lift off.
One of the hardest things to figure out with the bunny hop is your timing: how soon before the obstacle do you start the motion? The answer is that It depends on the height of the the upcoming obstacle and how fast you are moving towards it.
References
There are a lot of great online tutorials dealing with the bunny hop. Check some out some of the better examples using the following links:
Conclusion
I work on the bunny hop constantly, and try to develop my sense of timing on the trail, when I’m working to get over obstacles. Although the bunny hop is a difficult skill to learn, it has the greatest reward potential of any skill, in terms of riding faster, smoother, and, in the end, having more fun.
This is the last entry in my cross country skills series (at least for a while). If you have other skills that you’d like to read about, post your requests in the comments section. Between myself and the other contributors (who are very good riders) we’ll get something posted.
The entire goal of this series has been to give you a starting point to increase your basic skill set so you can better enjoy your time on the bike. Lots of practice will make you faster on the bike and help make riding more enjoyable. And, as I always say, faster is funnerer.
1. Posted by David French | 1:46 am, 28 March 2006
I am AWFUL at bunnyhops… but what really helped was going on my friends BMX.
Give it a try.