How to Build BMX Dirt Jumps

Video Transcript

"Nathan Grant here again with Evolution Bike Company up in Acworth, Georgia. I'm here talking about how to build jumps, alright? First off you want to make sure you have plenty of room. If you don't have enough room, you're going to end up bunching them together and it's going to be really hard to build and really hard to ride. So after you do that, you find out where you're getting your dirt. After you get your dirt, you want to just kind of spot it out, decide how tall you want them, how long you want them because all that factors into your building. This here's the takeoff, it's pretty self explanatory, it's where you takeoff. This is where you want to start off because you don't want to build your landing first and not have enough room for your takeoff or whatever. So always start with your takeoff. This takeoff here is pretty inclined because we like to go high on this one, we want to go high. Still pretty far so you want it to shoot you not straight up, but you don't want it to shoot you straight out. After you figure out where you want to put your takeoff and you pile it up and you figure out how you want to build the trajectory, then you want to just take usually a spade shovel or a round headed shovel works pretty good on building it up and then you want to take a flathead shovel like this and you just want to work it up and down like that till it's flat all the way across. You usually want it kind of wide, three feet, three or four feet is usually really good because you don't want to take up too much room but I usually just keep working it up and down like that until it's real smooth. Then to pack it in you just pack it in real hard with a flat shovel. You don't really have to worry about it being too smooth because then when you're done packing it in, you just go back over it with a shovel and smooth it back in. I use a little technique, I don't know how many other people do it where I just I'll go up top and just do like that and drag it down, it makes it real smooth and like glass looking and who doesn't like to have a good looking jump? Watering is another good thing, watering helps pack it in because moisture especially out here in Georgia we're really dry and can't pack in dry dirt, it just doesn't work. So we have a water hose out here and we just spray it down real heavy when we're building it, get it real wet and you can shape it real well, it packs better when it's wet. Then we'll just shape it out, pack it in a little, let it dry till it's just a little moist. Then we go back and reshape it again, pack it in real good and then just let it dry and after that let it sit for a day and a half or so, it'll be perfect, hard packed and everything. Now I'm going to talk about how to build the landing. Landing is pretty similar to the takeoff. You just don't want to build it quite as inclined. As you see here, this lane is pretty wide and that's just so we can do more tricks and stuff. You still want to use your water, your shovel packing, your scraping and everything. It's not easy to dial in a jump, it usually takes a while to get it just right how you want it, especially when you have a lot in a row like this. You want more speed you'll have to incline the landing a little more so you get more pump off of the landing for the next jump. That all just, you got to figure it out as you ride, you can't just build a jump just perfect the first time."