# Extremely frustrated with bunny hopping



## Muffinhead (Jul 30, 2012)

I have been practicing this trick for about 3 months in my yard. I am using some crappy flat pedals so I don't develop bad habits with my clipless. I am short (5' 6") and am riding a 29er. I have a nearly unlimited number of questions about how to bunny hop, but have narrowed them down to these:

1. Could this bike be too big to maneuver around as I'm very short? 
2. I have heard that compressing the fork and using the rebound can help get the front wheel higher. Is this true?
3. If it is, should the rebound be set for a faster response?
4. I can only get my back wheel off the ground using the front brake, is this correct or should I be able to do it otherwise?
5. I have heard that "pushing" the front wheel forward like a manual, then lifting it up with your legs is the best way to do it. Is this true?
6. I can't get both wheels off the ground at the same time, even an inch off the ground. How do I do this?
7. Should I be trying to stand up all the way, pulling up on the bars, to get the front wheel up?
8. Once I have the front wheel up, should I put all my weight on it to raise the rear wheel?

I have watched what seems like thousands of video tutorials on how to do this and have never gotten anywhere other than sometimes getting the front wheel up 6" at most. This trick has caused me so much anguish that I don't like riding much anymore until I get this down pat. I would really appreciate some good advice


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## car_nut (Apr 5, 2010)

Don't get so focused on just this. Ride and enjoy. Your overall balance and strength will improve which will make it easier. I assume you've read through the "Bunnyhop tutorial VIDEO" thread at the top of the page?

Now, the first part of a good bunny hop starts with a manual. Focus on nothing but riding wheelies and manuals until you're perfect at them. A smaller bike, and more importantly shorter chainstays, will certainly make this easier. That doesn't mean it can't be done though. Just go ride and practice popping a manual off of every hump, bump and rock you come across. You'll get there.


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## Larry_K (Jul 10, 2010)

The answer to your question is: snakes on the trail. 

Growing up I was the one kid in the neighborhood that could never bunnyhop. Try as I may I could never ge tenough air to clear a tootsie roll. It wasn't any easier when I got into mtn biking back in 2010. A few months into riding I came across a fairly large king snake that was completely across the trail but it was just after a turn and didn't see it on the ground until I was too close to hit the brakes. Somehow it just "clicked" and I was able to clear it without making contact. I can usually hop over anything under 8" high now with a bit of speed. Not much compared to many folks but it's enough to get by around my local trails.

In a nutshell, you may be overthinking it quite a bit when you're trying to bunnyhop. I've found that I'm bad at doing that but if I'm not thinking about as much it usually comes more natural. Same thing with handling drops/sketchy sections a lot of the time.


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## eb1888 (Jan 27, 2012)

Think Bikes Tutorials - 7 - The Bunny Hop - YouTube
Keep at it.


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## Mazda Guy (Jul 12, 2012)

I've never seen their tutorials. Now I wish my finger wasn't broken so I could get out and practice them today.


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## mtbtacolover (Dec 29, 2010)

I don't really remember how i learned to do it, it just happened haha, one way you can try is think of it like a skateboard, if you skate haha, but when you ollie you lift the front and push it forward the front forward, it snaps the back up and you ollie.

it kind of works the same with a bunny hop, get low stand up, pull up on the bars then push out on the bars. before i saw a video i used to use more of my legs now i do this method and can get much higher. it shouldnt require much leg power other than soaking up the bunny hop to get your rear end nice and high. 

atleast thats how i do it and it seems to work. try lowering your seat all the way, it can help with clearance. ive never bunny hopped a 29er but i cant imagine it would have too much affect unless your frame is too big maybe


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## curtisp (Aug 21, 2012)

eb1888 said:


> Think Bikes Tutorials - 7 - The Bunny Hop - YouTube
> Keep at it.


nice tutorial :thumbsup:


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## Jon Richard (Dec 20, 2011)

Two part manuver

Extend your legs like a stationary standing jump while pulling up on the bars to lift the front wheel

Retract your legs while pushing forward on the bars. 

It is a one two motion that feels similar to pumping your bike over a hump in the trail.


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## mtbtacolover (Dec 29, 2010)

eb1888 said:


> Think Bikes Tutorials - 7 - The Bunny Hop - YouTube
> Keep at it.


i didnt even realize it but i pretty much just said to do what they said in the video haha, i guess i should have watched the video first hahaha


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## Katz (Jan 29, 2012)

Muffinhead said:


> 1. Could this bike be too big to maneuver around as I'm very short?


I don't think your height matters much, but 29" wheel and longer chainstays make lifting the front wheel difficult. See if you can pick up a 20" BMX or 24" cruiser at a yard sale or craigslist. IMO, it's easier to learn it on a little bike, and adapt to the full-size bike later.



> 2. I have heard that compressing the fork and using the rebound can help get the front wheel higher. Is this true?


In my case, it is true. Here's a slowmo clip of me doing a hop on my FS bike. You can see the front fork compressing as I crouch down.








> 3. If it is, should the rebound be set for a faster response?


I've never played with shock setting strictly for bunnyhop practice, but I' imagine bumping up air pressure and backing off both compression and rebound damping would help (for faster response and minimizing energy being dissipated).



> 4. I can only get my back wheel off the ground using the front brake, is this correct or should I be able to do it otherwise?


See Think Bikes video above. Kick pedals up rearwards, as if you are scooping up the pedals with your toe.



> 5. I have heard that "pushing" the front wheel forward like a manual, then lifting it up with your legs is the best way to do it. Is this true?


That will make lifting the front wheel easier, but I don't believe it is going to help you get the rear wheel very high.



> 6. I can't get both wheels off the ground at the same time, even an inch off the ground. How do I do this?


Do it like you hop on a pogo stick.



> 7. Should I be trying to stand up all the way, pulling up on the bars, to get the front wheel up?
> 8. Once I have the front wheel up, should I put all my weight on it to raise the rear wheel?


You kinda "jump" up almost vertically but slightly towards front, then bend knees and extend your arms. That will get the rear wheel up. It is easier to do that when your weight is towards the front (see how close the handlebar get to my thighs on my video). This is why I don't do manual to lift the front wheel, as I can't move my body from extreme rearward position of manual to front quickly enough.



> This trick has caused me so much anguish...


Have some beer.


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## chugachjed (May 20, 2010)

On my fr bike I can bunny hop over a trash can, on my ht 29er I can barely clear a pack of gun. I'm 6'2" so I don't think it's height.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2


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## Hutch3637 (Jul 1, 2011)

Don't focus all your riding on this trick. Lots of useful help above. It's not really the bike which is the problem but your form. When I first learned how to j-hop or bunny hop it was frustrating. It will click on day for you. Though I will agree that bikes with 29ers or a long wheel base will not help in learning this trick. Like others have said, see if you can pick up a BMX. Best of luck.


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## chester2123 (Aug 24, 2012)

I always try to pull the bike up which I know is wrong, I'm going try the method in those tutorials tmr


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## zebrahum (Jun 29, 2005)

Learning how to manual (or as much as I can manual) helped me bunny hop. One other thing that might help you is to video tape yourself and see what you're doing wrong. And if you're brave you can post it up for some MA from the board.


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## Trail_Blazer (May 30, 2012)

Not sure if this will be well received here, but...
I recently went riding with some friends and the one of them was bunny hopping 
his 2012 Cannondale 29" SL2 hard-tale a good 6-8 inches high.
I kept trying to match him on the trail and never could get more then a 3 inch rise on my rear wheel.
We have similar bikes mine is a Cannondale SL4 26".

The next week we were out again and I asked if I could ride his bike for a minute.
Well I was shocked that I could bunny hop his bike and easily get the rear wheel 6-8 inches high!

I discovered the difference was that he had lightened his bike's rear end by about 3 lbs from the factory parts.

The next week I swapped a bunch of parts on my bike and dropped 2.5 lbs from the rear of my bike.
Now I can bunny hop the rear so high I almost fall over the front bars landing. lmao


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## beanbag (Nov 20, 2005)

Despite my advanced degrees in physics, I never figured out bunnyhopping. I mainly blame this on two things. One is the bad and spotty advice you get from all over the internet. You get things like "push down and then pull up the back of the bike with the (flat) pedals", "twist the grips to rotate the back of the bike up" "push forwards", "push backwards". Etc. Some of these thing make no sense in getting the back of the bike to pop up. I just assume that these people are subconsciously doing something slightly different than what they are saying.

The second reason is probably my lack of upper body strength. I could never do an overhand serve in tennis either.

I just accepted that I am not good at bunnyhopping.


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## Muffinhead (Jul 30, 2012)

^ Sorry to hear about it, and yes, there is a ton of conflicting advice from the internet. I've found watching the videos do a better job of explaining than text


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## Jon Richard (Dec 20, 2011)

beanbag said:


> Despite my advanced degrees in physics, I never figured out bunnyhopping.





Larry_K said:


> In a nutshell, you may be overthinking it quite a bit when you're trying to bunnyhop. I've found that I'm bad at doing that but if I'm not thinking about as much it usually comes more natural.


Reminds me of trying to learn dance moves from a step by step pictorial. I get what you're saying beanbag, but you have to try to conceptualize all the individual steps as one fluid motion.

I think the advice given here is good, especially with the slow motion video and zebrahums suggestion to record oneself and watch it to assess what may be the issue.


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## AndrwSwitch (Nov 8, 2007)

Muffinhead said:


> 1. Could this bike be too big to maneuver around as I'm very short?
> 2. I have heard that compressing the fork and using the rebound can help get the front wheel higher. Is this true?
> 3. If it is, should the rebound be set for a faster response?
> 4. I can only get my back wheel off the ground using the front brake, is this correct or should I be able to do it otherwise?
> ...


1. It's probably not doing you any favors, but meh. I bet you can figure it out.
2. Yes, but IMHO it's a stupid and inefficient way to do it. What you really want to do is loft your front end. So why would you push it down? You'll be a more fluid rider if you don't add extra, unnecessary steps. As others have suggested, learning to manual, or at least working on the skill until you can pull with your arms and pump with your legs to lift the front end of the bike, is a better approach.
3. Not dignifying it. 
4. Nope, you should be able to lift your rear wheel by shifting your weight. It's a bit tricky and will feel pretty heavy if you haven't already raised the center of mass of the system, especially the bike itself. Which is part of why bunny hops are a tricky skill, and timing is really important. It's useful to be able to lift the wheel from a stable position because it will make it a little easier to learn to lift it during a bunnyhop. Point your toes, press your feet back against the pedals, and make a sharp upward motion. We're only trying for an inch or so of air under the rear tire - not all that much. But you'll have to learn to get some engagement against the pedals with your feet when you're pulling up, which is a really valuable skill for users of flat pedals. Clipless too, actually, but we can get away with worse form a lot of the time.
5. I don't know what you're talking about with pushing the front wheel forward. When I manual, I feel like I push the back wheel forward. Basically, I'm rotating my bike around myself so that it's in front of me and the front wheel is off the ground. Or, starting to. I could never quite hit my balance point doing manuals. So - push the front wheel down? No, not if you're trying to lift it. Like a manual? Yeah.
6. Figure out the thing in my answer to 4. Got it? Great. Ride along slowly. Get low over your bike. Both over the bars and over the saddle. Now jump upwards, and then pull up on the bars and the pedals. Awesome. You got both wheels off the ground at the same time. Actually not a great way to do a bunny hop - for practical purposes, it's better to do the front wheel, then the rear wheel. You'll be able to clear something bigger and maintain a better flow.

I'm skipping 7 and 8.

In answer to your last comment - I agree with the others. Don't stress out about it so much.

When I was first learning to ride mountain bikes, I went to clipless pedals pretty early on and learned to do a crappy jump/yank bunny hop. But I rode a lot, I got comfortable on bikes, and I had a lot of fun. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to be a better bike handler. So I put some inexpensive flats on my bike and worked on wheelies, manuals and bunnyhops. While I still can't hit my balance point doing a wheelie or manual, I can now place my front wheel where I want it, land little drops on balance, and flow over larger obstacles. I've become a better bike handler. I had a big advantage when I decided to go back and clean up my technique - I was already pretty comfortable on bikes and trails, and I could start incorporating my technique improvements right away.

So here's my advice to you: Back off from the bunny hop. For now, work on being able to loft your front wheel at will. I find it easier to use my drivetrain to do it on a climb and to do a manual on a descent. Adding those skills to your repertoire should improve your riding right away. When you're climbing or riding flat singletrack and you come to an obstacle that you'd like to be able to bunny hop, just loft your front wheel onto or over it, then shift your weight forward so you don't smack your rear wheel into it so hard. That's it. When you're feeling good about lifting your front wheel in different ways, revisit the bunny hop. Use the same timing as you'd use to get over that obstacle, or maybe speed things up a hair. If you can get good traction on your pedals with your feet and do that goofy rear wheel thing, your bunny hop may "just work" at this point. If not, you can probably get it in under an hour of focused practice. But you really need to have the timing working and you need to be able to raise your center of mass and the bike.


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## Muffinhead (Jul 30, 2012)

Thank you for the very long and detailed response +rep


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## jeffscott (May 10, 2006)

In reality there are several ways to bunnyhop....

I find that once the front is up much higher than you want the rear to be you extend you legs (jump up) and push the front of the bike down...while scooping with your feet.

this is the same feeling as riding up say a very steep 3 or 4 foot rise...once the front is over the top you push it to keep going and bring up the rear wheel.


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## zebrahum (Jun 29, 2005)

jeffscott said:


> In reality there are several ways to bunnyhop....
> 
> I find that once the front is up much higher than you want the rear to be you extend you legs (jump up) and push the front of the bike down...while scooping with your feet.
> 
> this is the same feeling as riding up say a very steep 3 or 4 foot rise...once the front is over the top you push it to keep going and bring up the rear wheel.


I think the various ways of people explaining the same concept in drastically different ways must be most of the problem for people learning to bunny hop. Everyone thinks about it differently, so to an extent the more ways you hear something explained then you might pick up on one which "clicks" to you.

I think that this advice is really solid but I always think of pushing the bars forward instead of down as was stated. As an adult, I tried to learn how to ollie a skateboard; I find that the movement is pretty similar.

First you have to make the front come up: on a skateboard you step on the tail, on a bike you shift your weight backward like a manual.

Next you have to unweight the back: both vehicles will require that you start to "jump" in order to get this to happen.

Finally, you need to level the thing out: on a skateboard you slide your foot along the board to level the two wheels, on a bike you push the bars forward (or whatever direction helps you think about it) to bring the back wheel along for the ride.

For both, the higher you get the front, the higher you will be able to get the back. If you can't get the front wheel of your bike off the ground without pedaling or yanking then you won't be able to do a hop. You don't need strength to do a hop, only a good weight shift.


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## BigKahuna (Jan 19, 2004)

Start small with a small object to clear. That way there will be no doubt if you got off the ground or not. As kids, we started out with things like pine cones, sticks, bricks, etc. We'd lay them in the street, accelerate and hop over them. Adding more or larger items to practice getting higher. Make sure your front wheel clears, and then work on getting the back over. It's probably a lot like countersteering a two wheeled vehicle, in concept it sounds impossible...but in reality, everyone does it.


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## Katz (Jan 29, 2012)

OP, confused yet?  If you are still struggling, try doing a side hop. Practice like on the first part in the following video and don't worry about kicking the pedal. Body motion is basically the same as doing a bunnyhop.






P.S. I've never ridden a 29" bike and you may indeed have to lift the front up like you do a manual, at least initially. Once you top out around a foot and a half and want to hop higher, you'll have to switch to the "stupid" way so you can spare the spring from your legs for the jump instead of using it up lifting the front


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## nemebean (Feb 20, 2012)

I just went through this myself not too long ago (maybe six months now). So here are my thoughts:

1) Don't get hung up on this one skill. It's a fairly advanced skill, at least from the perspective of a beginner because it requires a combination of other skills. I hurt both myself and my bike trying to learn to do this right off the bat, and if I had it to do over again I wouldn't start off with bunny hops. I'd concentrate on the front wheel skills others have mentioned first. Knowing those makes bunny hopping a lot easier (not easy, mind you, but easier).

2) Just ride. Getting comfortable with controlling the bike in general will make more difficult skills seem less difficult.

3) After learning how to get my front wheel off the ground by itself, the next biggest thing for me was to understand how to use my pedals to pull up on the back of the bike. Seems impossible, right? I mean, you're standing on top of your pedals, so how can you possibly pull up on them (sans clipless, of course)? The trick is the angle. if you tilt your feet slightly forward (in my experience this happens naturally to some extent when you pull up on the front end), you'll notice that you can push backward on the pedals without coming off of them. That's essentially how you get the rear wheel of the ground, except you push back and pull up at the same time. If you watch good bunny hop videos, you'll notice that all of their feet are angled down relative to the front of the bike. To me this is the most difficult part because if you have too much or too little angle at various times in the hop you can slip off the pedals and end up in a world of hurt. My cheap plastic pedals probably didn't help that any though.

Anyway, after gashing up my leg on a failed bunny hop this spring, I pretty much stopped working on them and concentrated on learning to wheelie and ride technical stuff like step ups and log piles better. Then I was out riding with a firend who just got a mountain bike and wanted to learn to bunny hop, and as we were playing around on the baseball field I discovered that I was able to bunny hop much better than six months prior, even though I hadn't been practicing. YMMV on that of course, but my point is that learning some more basic skills can be helpful before you move onto more advanced ones.

I didn't plan for this to get quite so long when I started writing, so I'll just stop here with the disclaimer that I'm still very new at this myself and everything I wrote above could be completely wrong.


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## Brenok (Sep 8, 2012)

I just started learning bunny hops a couple days ago. So far, I can only get about 4-6" high, but it's a start (and I'm using a 29er, if that makes any difference). There are two methods that I found work for me (although I won't go into any depth because they're covered much better elsewhere): the first is pulling my handlebars up until my front wheel is off the ground, then pushing them forward to get my back wheel off; the second is like nemebean described, tilting your pedals forward to give your shoes traction/leverage when basically lifting the back wheel with your legs. I haven't practice this yet, but now that I think of it, I feel like the key to getting higher bunny hops will be to combine these two methods (in addition to practice, of course).


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## nospamonline (Sep 20, 2012)

Without clipless pedals, it's in the wrists and moving your center of gravity of your body up in one motion.


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## Muffinhead (Jul 30, 2012)

Recent update: I have been able to lift both wheels up at the same time about 2 inches in the air with flat pedals. What do I do from here?


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## 50calray (Oct 25, 2010)

Muffinhead said:


> Recent update: I have been able to lift both wheels up at the same time about 2 inches in the air with flat pedals. What do I do from here?


Congratulations!

Anyhow, it really depends on your technique as to how to gain more air in my opinion. Here is a video that helps with teaching better techniques, just practice, practice.

Santos Bike Shop - Jeff Lenosky - Bunny Hop - YouTube


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