Well after almost a year and a half of MUni I have now been doing Trials
for about two months. Here are some thoughts.
Trials is very cool. It is hard to do well on the KH24 that I use for
MUni and is much easier to do on a KH20. I find that improving my
Trials skills has given my MUni rididng a definite boost!
I was having trouble tucking when hopping. I am now improving and
getting up onto park benches. The three things that I did were the
Baldwin Squats, jumping up stairs SIF, and jumping up inclines SIF. Let
me explain. When I got good at jumping up stairs SIF I started jumping
up the stairs while only raising my knees and not raising my upper body
until after my tire had allready landed on the stair. This taught me to
tuck my legs. In Spaced Out there is a realy good shot of Ryan doing
the same thing. Now for the incline. I was always afraid of not making
"high" jumps and falling bad when the tire gets caught on the ledge of
what I am jumping up onto. This can't happen when jumping up a ramp or
incline of 45 degrees. You just land where you land with the same
effect whether it is 14 inches up or 16 inches up. This has allowed me
to get a feel for how high I am actully jumping before trying the jump
on a rock or up a ledge. Also it allows me to to concentrate on the
jump without worrying about the potential biff.
Stand stills help with Rail riding and high accuracy hops. At FLUCK
Forrest Rowel told me to practice stand stills in order to do rail
riding. Now when I watch TV I try to practice stand stills. I am still
not very good at them but sometimes I actually do 5 to 8 seconds
without hoping! However my rail riding and hoping accuracy have
improved tenfold.
Until I started doing trials I could just ride off a picnic table. I
could not hop off. There is this trials rider that I ride with
sometimes and he could hop off picnic tables and other high stuff but
he could not ride off. Now after doing trials I can also hop off of
high ledges. It was quite interesting seeing the differences in skills
between trials and MUni.
Natural trials is harder because you have very few flat surfaces.
Learning to land on rough rocks and jumping up step dirt inclines with
little traction is much harder than jumping and landing on a flat
garden or fountain ledges. Also the skinnies in the woods are usually
rough logs. So much harder. However in Urban trials I usualy go bigger.
Also people are usualy around to watch and that forces me to try and
put on a show!
Unicorn
--
Unicorn
Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the pedals, and you will
accomplish great feats!
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