I'm terrible at getting air - can someone help me?
 

Hey everyone -

So I've recently been getting more into MTB and I love it. Just bought my first full-suspension last week (Ibis Ripmo AF) and I've been riding pretty much every day.

One thing that I am terrible at is getting air. I'm not trying to do any big jumps (at least not yet) but I'm talking about getting air off of little lips/ramps and stuff. I can get a little bit, but I feel like it's mostly through chance / luck and not because I'm actually doing anything right. I've watched some videos online but I'm not 100% sure exactly what I am doing wrong. I threw together a short video of a few jumps I did with a buddy yesterday at a local pump track and I'd love some feedback / constructive criticism. I'm the one on the silver full-sus with the red shirt.

Go faster. The suspension is going to make it hard to pump the bike for more boost, go back to a hardtail or rigid to learn.

I am no coaching expert, so take this all with a grain of salt.

First, you are not going very fast.

It looks like you are trying to do this mostly with your arms. Load the bike and push off with you legs more. It looks to me like you are not preloading (compressing) the suspension much before trying to spring off.

Are you dropping your saddle?

With a long travel bike like that, you are going to need to preplan and exaggerate the motions more to get the bike to pop. That bike is designed to soak up big bumps, so you almost need to trick it into popping of those bumps.

There are some good YouTube videos showing how to progressively manual. I'm on my phone so I can't link them, sorry but you can Google. Manualling helps lift the front end for jumps, ledges.

if you are the blue helmet, you are pushing off too late, it would appear, compared to the other rider. cool video!

Probably way too late, but it is all about timing. You have to pop at the right time and you are just not consistent yet. That is why it feels like luck. You got it every once in a while, but were late most of the time. Check the timing on your buddy in the video. He is more consistent.

When I watched the men's cross country olympic race, I noticed how much air they got without even trying. Pretty interesting.

I figured out why Americans don't do too well in that race, when they went off of big drops, they didn't turn their handlebars and then lift their arms over their heads. So weird to watch.

watching the video - you're buddy pushes off with his legs with intent - before the crest. You seem to be pushing with less intent, and too late.

Your buddy pushes hard with his legs just as the front wheel is about to go past the crest.

You are pushing less hard, after the front wheel is airborne.

Push harder sooner.

I'd say go faster and try to hop with the bike. And definitely work on your push timing!

This helped me a lot:

First of all, I always say light hands heavy feet. I feel that it is really hard to give advice on jumping without being there. Jumping takes a lot of work and building up your confidence. The Ripmo, from my buddies review, has said that it jumps great.