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The lurch is one of the most functionally
important moves in Trials, and is the basis for a whole
variety of moves you'll probably need if you want to progress
beyond the Beginner level. I think it's also one of the
most tricky moves to learn (it's not hard to do, but until
that light clicks on, it's hard to figure out).
The pedal kick movement can be used all the time, to get
up an object, to get down something, to clear a gap between
objects, etc. It's an important one, and is also one of
the most impressive looking moves. The first tme you drop
off a picnic table in front of the local BMX kids you'll
get a lot of slack jaws.
There are probably a good dozen ways to learn the lurch.
One of the easiest and best that I learned is as follows.
This is really an extension of the pedal stroke movement
that you learned in the Basics section. The movement we
went over the for the pedal stroke is used here almost exactly
the same way. They key to adapting it to learn to lurch
is to practice stringing a few pedal stroke movements together
without putting your front wheel down the ground. It looks
a little funny, but doing this gives you a great feel for
how the bike and your body are positioned, as well as giving
you the timing for the brake modulation. Practice this motion,
lifting from a stationary postion, then ratcheting through
as many pedal stroke motions as you can, letting the front
wheel drop a little each time, then pedaling again to lift
it back up. Once you can do this easily, you're just a very
small step away from pulling off a full blown lurch.
The real lurch is exactly the same as what you just did,
except you add a little more body english and pull of the
arms to get the rear wheel off the ground at the same time
that you initiate the pedal stroke. This will just take
a little bit of practice to figure out. The best way to
start is to do one pedal stroke to lift the front wheel,
then do another one, getting the rear off the ground. Just
concentrate on doing one lurch for right now. Once you get
used the feeling, try to string a few together. It's also
important to learn how much pedal motion and bike motion
is necessary to go a certain distance. Eventually, you'll
know by feel exactly how much to do it, so that you can
hit a target within an inch.
Another point to make here is that for distance there is
a basic formula to follow. In general, the lower you let
your front wheel drop before giving the main pedal kick,
the farther you will go. This is rather obvious if you think
about; if your front wheel is near the ground, all that
pedal energy will be translated to forward motion. Conversely,
if your front wheel is really high, you will mainly go up
instead of forward. Just keep practicing, and eventually
you will be able to stay on your rear wheel all day, making
little adjustments to keep yourself upright.
There are a whole bunch of variations on the lurch, and
you can probably come up with some yourself. Some of these
include pulling off a big lurch directly from a standstill,
pivoting from a standstill and lurching, and lurching around
in a circle.
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