Comments on: How to Do a Wheelie on a Bike

on 7/21/2007 dont lean back!!!!!!!!! when just starting you want to do the opposit kinda crouch over the bars. and as you yank up through yourself back this will give you extra lift

on 8/8/2006 I always found that popping the wheelie (lifting the front wheel) was the hardest part, but it's actually the easiest. What I do is I stand up on the pedals, left pedal forward, both pedals at the the same level. Then I lean forward while pushing a bit harder than usual on the left pedal. Once my left pedal gets to vertical position, I push myself back up, while pushing even harder on the right pedal. Then I pedal more or less to balance myself.

on 8/8/2006 Wheelies are so much easier if you understand that your body is always balanced and centered exactly over your axle. Forget about your bike angle elevation and concentrate on the center of balance over your axle. It does not matter what kind of wheelie you do, your body will always assume the same approximate position over the axle. If you practice with bongo boards, or other balance related toys, it will make you that much better and quicker to understanding Body English, which is the essence of truly understanding wheelies. Try to do that yoga V sitting thing, where you do vertical toe touches over your head, because it's a similar fight to stay perfectly balanced on your butt. Just try to apply the same control, but quicker in your reaction to counterbalance looping out or dropping forward. When practicing, try to start your wheelie exactly the same way every time, it helps quicken muscle memory if you are consistent and smooth. Hope this helps.

on 6/30/2006 When I pop a wheelie I like to roll while setting my pedals up so that I can release all my pressure on my left pedal.

on 6/30/2006 Go as slow as you possibly can without losing balance. If you're using a mountain bike, have the gears set at 2,1 (front gear, back gear). Sit down. Pull up hard and pedal really fast. You will eventually do a wheelie.
These are harder, but they look much smoother. These will also take some practice and you will probably fall! But, don't give up!

on 3/29/2006 This is how I, and a lot of serious flatlanders do a wheelie (or those serious about the wheelie as a building block to other wheelie tricks). These tips will transfer to wheelies of most any position on a bike, forward, backward, upside down, reverted, perverted, bar flipped, and freaked. Spastic and gyrated, I will go over at a later date as these are Very tricky to explain, yet easy to adjust to once you master the side angle gliding wheelie styles. Scuffing wheelies are also tricky to explain as well.
But, as to the basic foundation wheelie, I will get into as much detail as I can. Enjoy!

I can do them for city blocks pedaling, death-trucked (sitting on head tube uni-cycle-like gliding on pegs or pedals), spastic/gyrator (on pedals or pegs in small-tight gliding circles or spinning), hitchhiker (long story), whiplashed, hang five/hang nothing (front wheel wheelie glides), freaked/foot-over-bars, wheel chair (backward hang five going backward), tomahawk/F.O.B. chicken glide, steamroller, a bunch of different ones linked together. You get the idea. I ride hardcore flatland. I am currently riding a KHE Easyrider with 42/24 chain ring, 16t freehub,175mm cranks and platform pedals, standard flatland half seat. Understand that longer cranks may make it a little harder as will shorter ones, the chain ring size and your rear sprocket ratio will also determine ease. Heavier bikes are also a bit harder to start off, but are more stable in long long glides especially over cracks, bumps and doing a wheelie over curbs.

The best tips I had ever gotten were from Kevin Jones (first god of the wheelies) of the Plywood Hood, York PA., he did a rolling only clinic a few years back (1988), way back! But the trick is to break down all parts of the wheelie and do each of the parts individually.

First he had all us newbies, just do the quickie manuals by pulling up on the bars without pedaling and try to coast as far as you can at a medium-fast speed. When you start pulling up into the glide, your cranks are comfortably level almost parallel to your top tube or both feet almost at the same distance to the ground. Try to unweigh your front end by leaning back smoothly. When you are into the glide your cranks will shift just a little into a more comfortable angle. Do not stiffen up your legs or lock your knees, keep them straight (if standing style) but loose and yet under tension. Your upper body will be tight at first until you build stronger muscles up top to deal with this new kind of strain. They will eventually relax and loosen after a while of practice under your belt. The key is to try to enter or start the glide the same exact smooth and strait way every time you do it, it becomes muscle memory and will be easy to pop into a short quickie glide after a while. Just do that for a while to get the hang of gliding in that position until it is easy to hit that position without even trying or thinking.

Well, that was the beginner's wheelie drill. It will get harder, but not forever. Gliding this first pop-up for a few car lengths should take about a couple of hours to master for the quick and about one to five days for the not so quick. Once you got this down even in your sleep, move to the next step below. At first, it doesn't matter if you sit or stand, but each has very different techniques to them. Find your preference of one or the other and stick to it in the beginning but occasionally try out the other as your preference may change. Also, it is better to be more rounded in your wheelie bag of tricks anyways.

In a sitting wheelie you have to pull up on bars as straight and as smooth as you can while giving any forward positioned pedal a forceful yet relaxed crank. Relaxed because it is your knees pointing/wagging out to the sides, counter weighting from side to side, keeps you from falling to either side. you should try to be as still as you can as you develop though, as lots of counter weighting is OK in the beginning, but looks amateurish and rough in jam circles. Try to lean back almost to the point that you are about to fall backward and pedal hard enough to keep you in that exact point of balance. After a while you will just know that point like standing. That point will begin to actually feel huge with lots of room for error in balance, yet you will easily control it almost without even thinking about it. Your body will be on auto drive and automatically fix it as you go. It will begin to feel less and less like a chore and more and more like you are just in a rolling reclining chair. Those of you who already know how to balance on a wheelchair will already understand this feeling. Do not concentrate absolutely and totally on the pedaling at first but more on what the perfect balance point feels like. Yes, feels like, because that's how you train your brain to recognize it whenever your body hits that position. A lot of my buds like to tap or feather their brakes if they are going to tip back, this is OK too. but I don't like to rely too much on my brakes because of a lot of the positions I get rolling in, I'm nowhere near where I can use them anyway. Also you will learn and know the point more intimately and clearly if you put in the extra discipline of going by pure body English (shifting torso, waving knees, sliding up and down seat aka humping, and bar levering/pulling).

I like to feel the balance point and occasionally visually check my front bars in a certain angled tilt and look through past my head tube at my destination points ahead. I will also in plain wheelies, use the balls of my feet to meet the axis of the pedals as this delivers more easy power strokes with less effort on long wheelies. The heel is almost always a bad idea for beginners to use as power delivery or balance. Advanced riders can use almost any part of their feet to power the wheelie, even the sides of the feet or even just one foot. Stick to what you are comfortable with for now. for pace, I like a semi fast speed, but to break up monotony, I still occasionally experiment with different starting and coasting speeds. Experimenting with different speeds will help you feel the same balance point in different ways, but try to stay as consistent as you can when not experimenting. Always always set goals to beat every single time you practice, never ever let up on your intensity to learn this trick till it is solid or wired to the point where it is second nature or you are able to wheelie/glide about a hundred feet. If you can get that far, you have already felt and can duplicate the balance point at least pretty consistently. If you are quick I have seen peeps get to this stage in about a week or two of steady practice. If you are not so quick, I have heard of people getting to this point in about a month to as long as three months of steady practice. Just as a clue in, it took my girlfriend about six months total to do this one, but four of those months were goofing-off before really getting serious on the last two months. She did however develop a slightly weird, spine bending style that I could never figure out. But the main thing is if she could do it anyone can. As a side note for beginners, I don't recommend the pedal pump tech for the sit down wheelie until you at least get it semi-wired as it is very uncomfortable to do in the sitting position. See below for the more complete pedal pump technique as it is the most popular way to manual a standing style wheelie.

Standing wheelies start with the pedals level to the ground and pop up into your quickie manual glide(wheelie beginning drill) you should have wired by now. smoothly and without zigzagging too much, forcefully yet not aggressively (controlled) begin to crank your pedals as you concentrate on keeping your lean back enough to find a spot that is just a couple of degrees from looping out or falling back. Do not pull unevenly on the bars or crimp up your arms on one side more than the other significantly as this will cause you to lean to one side more. If you find that you are getting neck aches from pulling the bars during your wheelie, you are still under vertical and are fighting the balance point because it is way behind you. You are playing pedal-fast-to-catch-up to the dropping front end. lean back a touch more, little by little till you are comfortable and do not have to pedal as hard to keep the balance point. When you are at the balance point, your upper body feels almost no pressure, it almost feels like you are just standing and leaning slightly back. The middle or center of your mass is directly over your rear axle, if you could draw a strait line from your rear axle perpendicular to the ground it would slice you through somewhere between your belly button and your clavicle. It doesn't matter what position you roll in, your mass should be exactly over the axle of the wheel you are coasting on in a wheelie. Unlike the sitting wheelie you could hump your waist more into that space between your seat and handle bars as an easy way to compensate your balance if you are tipping back. Although this is really funny looking, everyone who does standing style wheelies will use this. However, try to minimize and economize your body English for a more professional smooth look.

Don't hold on to your bars like the coming of grim death because that will tighten you up way too much to flow with the trick. Try to look at least a few yards ahead of you as this will help lessen your flailing and calm your mind to free it up for unconscious learning of muscle memory. Sometimes if you concentrate too much on your limbs it makes them slower or too fast to compensate. It's a weird concept, but Chris Day told me that one when he showed me how to hang five. It works for rear wheel wheelies too, just look ahead instead of at your pedals or bottom bracket. When your have the basic wheelie pretty down pat, you may want to try a manual style of wheelie. The manual is the same as the beginning glide into the wheelie position but, instead of doing full rotations of the cranks to propel you forward or to correct front end dip. you rock the cranks like a sea-saw using only a three to five inch forward pump on the forward pedal to deliver forward power before returning it back immediately. Forward cranking five inches then back-cranking five inches, back to the loaded level position ready to repeat for the next pump. This is a way cool way to conserve energy on long long wheelies as you will get very tired doing endless full crank rotations. Note that the standing full crank rotations style will work way more muscles at once causing more than leg fatigue, but upper body fatigue also by way of body English necessary to compensate the dip of the legs. When doing this technique, try to get into a rhythm in the beginning to get used to the idea and train muscle memory into your legs. After a while you will just pump when you need to.

Remember, stay relaxed yet in controlled tension, hard to understand until you get into that mystical magical point where you will say to yourself "Wow! I get it!." Cruising about a hundred feet in the standing wheelie should take about few days to a few weeks if you are fast (they are a little easier than the sitting style for most people), and if you are not so quick, maybe a month to three months. But no more than that would be necessary if you keep at it consistently and concentrate on consistency.

Sometimes if you have not been getting better for a while, change up the style or speed or move your hips more or less. Maybe jam some music, as a steady rhythm or beat will help you see into you movements and help manufacture steady rhythm in your technique. Another aid is a video camera recording you sideways to check how vertical you are (most newbies are almost always way way under vert and need to lean back more). Another learning cheat is to drag a toe on the ground barely supporting your wheelie position as you learn the correct angle of lean (this however can lead to a compulsive and ugly habit of being too comfortable in giving up on the wheelie rather than fighting for it to be clean and pro).

on 11/22/2005 This is a trick you can do after you have mastered the wheelie. First, find a pretty good sized hill (when your starting out don't choose too steep of a hill) then do your wheelie. Keep pedaling for awhile then ease off the pedals. Find your balance point. The hill will then take you and you can stay up on your back tire for literally blocks. If you feel yourself falling too far back, lightly tap the back brake. It took me about a week to get this down. But once you do, they are a lot of fun.

on 11/22/2005 First, put your bike in a low gear then come to a really slow speed nearly at a stop, then pull up on your handlebars while you are pushing down with your pedal, then just keep pedaling.

on 11/22/2005 To do a good wheelie you have to first find your gears. I like to use 2 and 1-3, but that's just me. Then I set goals for myself. I would look at cracks in the road and try to wheelie that distance and if I did it 3 times in a row I would go on to the next crack past that. If I couldn't do that, I'd go get some chalk and mark a line I could reach. Then I practiced getting to where I could balance my bike on the back wheel for 80 or 90 feet.

on 11/22/2005 Doing wheelies: When rolling forward (front end in the air), feather the rear break if your front end is rising too high and you cannot otherwise lower it.

on 11/22/2005 Some tips that Hans Rey shares are to extend a knee or foot out to control lateral (side to side) balance. Even riding a wheelie bow legged (by sticking both knees out) makes you more stable. Also, turning the handles bars in the opposite direction helps. It sounds like a lot to think about, but if you practice enough, it'll come to you. I learned these tips from one of his videos a few years back. If you don't know who Hans Rey is, do a Google search on him.

on 11/22/2005 If you find that you are doing a wheelie, and you have to keep pedaling (but don't want to move back for fear of falling), try doing it in a higher gear, you will probably go farther. As for bailing, if your new to it, use platform pedals. This will help you jump out - slide your feet off or jump off.

on 11/22/2005 I find that shifting your weight from front to back, while pedaling strongly but smoothly, is essential to get the wheel up consistently. Once I am up, I keep pedaling until I get the front wheel where I want it, and keep it there by pedaling and using the rear brake very slightly. I usually try to keep my arms pretty straight so that I am leaning back pretty far. Look where you want to go, 10-20 feet in front of you. The main thing that will help is practice.

on 11/22/2005 I have learned to do wheelies without leaving the seat of the bike. When I leave the seat, I have no center of balance. I also move the handlebars side to side to keep the balance maintained. This is a very helpful site!

on 11/22/2005 When I do a wheelie, I start off slow and keep it balanced. Then, I start going faster, still balancing my weight over the bike. When you're going fast, the bike will start to go down. If you pull the handlebars toward you and keep it steady, you can go longer and faster without dropping the bike.