Heading Towards The Three-Foot Hop
A three-foot hop is a powerful weapon that most riders will never, ever possess. With a three-foot hop, you can go over handrails, go up onto the hoods of cars (not that you ever would, of course...) and accomplish a million other wonderful things.
I've never done a "three-footer", but I've brought someone who is on his way to doing it: Martin "Jamalama" Larrea. In the next sequence, we'll see how he makes it to the thirty-inch mark with no trouble at all!
 | What's this? It's that same hop stand from the last sequence, set six inches higher! And isn't that Martin, going into his crouch? |
 | Martin's explosion out of the crouch is much more dynamic than mine, but the principles are the same. |
 | He's got a little problem. It's not enough to just pull the front end of the bike up. To get thirty inches, he has to bounce the bike off the ground nice and early. |
 | Note that, unlike my and Rachel's hops, even with a near-vertical bike it won't be enough for his front wheel to clear. He has to vertically hop his bike before he levels out. That's the secret of super-high hopping. |
 | He's done it! At a time when I am leveling my bike, Martin is still pulling the bike vertically into the air. As a result, his front wheel is now nearly three feet off the ground. |
 | As he begins to pull with his legs, the bike is still moving vertically. His front wheel is now thirty-seven inches up. It's all up to his rear wheel now. Is his Back Hop as good as his outstanding Front Pull? |
 | Crunch time now. He's very close. A little more leg curl and he'll make it. |
 | Pull, Martin, pull! Luckily, he's got a lot of tuck room left, because unlike me he doesn't eat entire pizzas at a single sitting. |
 | And he's over.... but it gets me thinking. Earlier in this column, I told you that Martin would out-tuck me and make it to thirty inches that way. But when I look back at my tuck, I think I might have out-tucked him a bit, big belly and all. Which means that Jamalama should be able to tuck more and hit that elusive three-foot mark! |
 | Remember that story I told you about Dominic and flipping over the bars? This is how it starts. But unlike Dominic, Martin has full control of the bike. I bet he levels it out. |
 | Getting there... |
 | Leveling... Might as well take this moment to mention Jamalama's vintage 1979 Saab Turbo. It's a nice car. You can see it in the background. Sometimes, when he parks it there, the mailman doesn't deliver my mail. |
 | He actually touches his rear wheel down first. NICE. |
 | Time to absorb the shock of landing from thirty inches up onto blacktop. |
 | And off we go. Ho hum. Another day, another thirty-inch hop. |
Although it's slightly larger at 196K, I really recommend you watch the movie on this one, just to see the fluid ease with which he hops. When I hop, it's like watching a crane lift something heavy into position; when Martin hops, it's a thing of beauty!
Review Time!
Okay. Let's review:
- Anybody can bunnyhop.
- That includes you.
- We start by learning the Front Pull.
- Then we learn the Back Hop.
- By putting them together with a little tire bounce, we have a bunnyhop.
- Adding a full tuck helps us get into the twenty-inch zone.
- Learning to do a hard bounce on the way up, combined with safe landing procedures, takes us all the way to three feet and beyond.
There's more to learn, but we'll save that for future columns. I want to close this month with a really beautiful vidcap. You see, we closed the video session with a "long hop" contest - hopping across "gaps" created by placing a box at the beginning and the hop stand, set for eight inches, at the end. We set up an eighteen-foot gap for Martin. He hit it at top speed, clearing it easily. As you can see, he even had time to lean it over a bit:
Do you need any more inspiration than that?
