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Sidehopping up something is another
technique that is very useful but also rather difficult
as you increase the heights involved. There are two main
techniques that are valuable to learn when sidehopping:
using a pedal kick or a static sidehop.
It is important to know that there are many skills needed
to properly sidehop. You must be able to balance in place,
pedal kick, understand the bunnyhop (J-hop), and use weight
transfers.For the pedal kick method, you will first want
to determine your "favorable" side of the bike.
Typically, most people have one side that they are more
comfortable going to. It just takes experimentation to see
which one works best for you. Once you've gotten that figured
out, you will want to position your bike parallel to the
object in question. Then, lean your body towards the back
of the bike to help preload your weight transfer and unweight
the front wheel, at the same time crank back the pedal in
preperation for the pedal kick movement. Then it gets complicated;
you will need to do about four things at once. Once you
have the weight preload and the pedal crank done, quickly
let off the rear brake and pedal, jump up with your body,
and shift your body weight to the side you are going to.
At the same time you will be pulling up and to the side
on the bars. By this time you will (hopefully) be in the
air, with your front wheel starting to go over the object.
Then you want to bring your legs up as in a bunnyhop to
lift the rear up in the air. At this point, you should be
fully over the object, at which point you will want to plant
the front wheel and let off the front brake, therefore rolling
forward a bit and letting the rear wheel touch down. It's
simple, huh?
Static hops are a bit easier to learn,
since there is no pedal movement needed. All you have to
do is do a small endo, lean way back (you will lift the
front wheel while doing this), and at the same time jump
up and back. At this point you will basically be doing a
static bunnyhop, going back, up, and to the side, and lifting
up the rear wheel by pulling up your legs and lower body.
You will find that when you land, the bike will be further
back than where you started
Most of the time, you are going to
want to use a pedal motion as well as the body movement
to get the bike airborne. The higher you want to go, the
more exaggerated the movement is going to be. If you watch
some of the video clips, you will notice that you really
need to lean way back over the rear of the bike and then
explode upwards.
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