Tips for Turning a Manual into a 180 on BMX BIkes

Video Transcript

"The best tip that anybody ever gave me when I was trying to learn how to do Manuals to 180s, is that your bike shouldn't come around, you know, it shouldn't come around like this. It should almost come underneath and that's at least how it should feel because what you are trying to do, it's very difficult to generate the necessary spin while still popping out of that 180. It's just, it is really difficult. So what you want to do instead is you want to pick up, kind of like a Fufanu actually. You pick your bars up closer to you and your back wheel sort of swings underneath. Again learning how to do Fufanus properly is really going to help with this because the 180 out is, it almost feels more like the second half of a Fufanu, pulling out off of the back wheel stall. So the one thing that I personally found helped me a lot when I was learning this was learning them on driveways where you have a nice mellow wedge on either side and a nice flat section up on top. So what you're going to want to do is basically pop up into a nice Manual, nothing with your front end too high or too low. You know, you want to stay properly in the balance point so that you get a good pop out. You know think, and you're going to know about that you're ready if you can Manual across that driveway box setup and then do a Bunny Hop out. You know it doesn't have to be anything huge but if you want to want to be able to get a good controlled Bunny Hop out. So then once you've gotten to that point the next key is to turn just a little bit and you pick up like I said you pull up with your handlebars closer up to your chest and you pop off with your legs. Push the bike sideways like this and almost closer to up and down so that it's not spinning around. As long as you make sure that you can keep doing that and that you get that motion down, you just want to make sure that you carry enough speed and that you're not waiting too long before you get into the balance point. In general if you sit there and think about it, it's going to be a little bit harder to generate that type of speed. A little more speed on the 180 also, or excuse me, on the Manual is also going to help a good deal because the more speed that you have it's going to allow you to ride out backwards without pulling the 180 completely perfectly, which you know, obviously isn't ideal but when you're learning it, it really is more important to get the basic concepts down then you can really smooth out the trick. "