Basic Freestyle Bike Tricks

Video Transcript

"Hey it's Kevin Schmick again for Evolution Bikes here in McDonough at Georgia Hazard Skate Park, trying to show you a little few basic tricks to learn how to ride around and tell you little proper skate park etiquette and things like that. First off, make sure every part of your bike is tight before you ride. Make sure everything is good to go. Now once you do that and put on your proper safety equipment, you're going to want to come to the skate park. Now this is a smaller scale of the large Vert-ramp. This one is six-foot with seven-foot extensions on it. We'll work our way up to the seven foot. But when you first get in here, the first thing you want to do is kind of roll up and just turn a little bit real slow; just kind of get them, get the feel of the ramp; pick a little speed up and then you pump. What a pump is, is where you kind of bend your knees and use your body weight to come down the transition of the ramp which is the bottom of the ramp. Now the first basic thing you need to learn when doing BMX freestyle will be the 180. Well, what a 180 is, is exactly what it sounds like. It's when you take your body and the bike and rotate it to a 180 degrees. So what you do is you come up and then you turn the bike and land back down. In, in order to do that, you come up just kind of like you were doing; get your little speed and then you bunny hop and turn at the same time and then the more you do it and pump, the more momentum you get; then you can get faster and faster. Now a bunny hop for those who don't know is where you're actually be on flat ground with no ramp or transition and lift both tires up. So you just practice that by just rolling, you can pick up your front wheel, you can pick up both up and there you go; that's a bunny hop. And the next thing you're going to want to learn as far as riding Vert or mini ramps or anything along those lines is how to roll in. Now first what you're going to want to do is decide which way you want to roll in; either this direction or the other direction. So what you do is you look and see which pedal you ride in front. If you ride your left pedal in front, you're going to want to drop in to the opposite side. If you ride your right pedal in front, vice versa. So basically what you do is you get rolling and you're going to pick your front wheel up. Now when you pick your front wheel up, you just kind of lift it over this metal right here. This is called coping. This is what you use grinds and stuff for, for when you get your scale down and learn a few more tricks. But we'll get into that at another time. What you're going to do is just kind of pick your wheel up, turn it and place it over the coping. What this does is it allows the rest of your bike to clear and roll in. Now remember when you do come in to turn your wheel towards the ramp; not too much, but not too little 'cause if you go too little, you'll slide out. If you go too much, you'll do the same thing. It's kind of like a brake. So basically you just get back, you set your petals up, you start rolling, pick your wheel up and go. Now when you get to the other side, you're going to practice what we just discussed. You're going to go up and you're going to do your 180 which is where you turn a little bit and bunny hop at the same time; turn your whole body and your bike a 180 degrees. And then when you land you do the pump which is basically you just bend your knees and push down the transition. What this does is it keeps your momentum up and then you come back and you do that. Now as far as doing the 180, it's going to be the same concept as your pedals in roll, rolling in. If you ride left pedal in front, you'll turn clockwise. If you ride your right pedal in front, you'll turn counterclockwise. What this does is it allows your body to keep the momentum without throwing your balance off and keeps your whole bike or whole body centered over your bike; excuse me. Now that you've mastered both of those techniques, you put them together and you can start running Vert. You just come back, like we just discuss earlier; you start rolling, you drop in, pump. And that's how you ride Vert."