how do i keep or gain enough speed? now with pictures

TheTruth · Mar 25, 2011

I don't think you are putting enough thought into it. That's the problem.

What the actual problem is you are building trails by thinking the next jump will always be bigger. It is more the type of jump than size if anything. The best thing to do in your case is:
1) move the first lip back and make it lower and more shallow.

2) Lower the landing and use the dirt from the top to make the landing longer and extend it to the top of the roller.

(This way you get a nice long landing that you can get a good pump out of at the end.)

3) Shape back side of roller to accommodate the speed.

4)Ride.

It seems that your first jump may not have enough speed coming off of it thus making you not able to ride the second. With this change, you may find that you can make the second lip bigger and steeper for moar airzz.

In this picture, if you can see, halfway down the landing is a roller. Essentially, I want you to extend you landing long enough so you can incorporate your landing with the roller.

kidwoo · Mar 25, 2011

samtaleterapi said:
then i have a roller (maybe foot and a half high and two bike lenghts long)
there is about a bikes lenght before and after the roller

followed by a 5 feet high jump (same template) and about 12 feet to the landing that is maybe a foot and a half higher than the lip

trouble is that i cant quite make it across to the second landing

i have tried to make the roller lower and maybe this has helped
but im wondering if it actually makes me scrub speed instead on conserving it or maybe gaining a bit
(i also suspect that the roller maybe requires too much attention from me to set up proporly for the next jump)

maybe the roller should be even lower? or not rise up from the ground at all but only exist as a lowering of the ground level before the second jump?

what i could also do is build the first jump a bit bigger
if i wanted i could probably over jump it by 3 feet as it is, so more speed is a possibility

any ideas?
(i have never build any jumps with anyone with more experience than me, so im kinda reinventing the wheel)

thank you
rasmus

Ditch the roller, make the first jump bigger. A bike length on either side of a roller is sketchy. There's no way you're generating speed on that. Rollers rarely generate speed in tight places. A double bowl/pump down generates speed. Having to suck up a roller takes way more effort.

cmc · Mar 25, 2011

Like Kidwoo and TheTruth said, your first jump should be longer, so that it is also 12 foot gap. The first jump in a line generally sets the speed for the rest of the line. So unless you're on a decline or you have mad-pump step-ups, you're not going be able to clear progressively longer gaps easily. So you could make them both 10' or both 12' but a 10' followed by 12' is (generally) not going to work that great.

Kidwoo is also right--you don't have enough space before and after the roller.

The most common mistake with rollers is that they are too short in length and too peaky. If you have a roller in a line of bigger jumps, it should be more like a tabletop jump with a bubbled up lid on it. So there is a "peak to peak" distance on roller just like there would be on a tabletop or double.

I know it's probably hard to figure out from these videos, but check out the rollers at a couple of our local spots:
http://www.plussizebmx.com/blog/2011/2/24/paint-it-black-with-country-mike.html

At my spot http://vimeo.com/10436091 check the one at 0:13.

I drew this for an mtbr thread.... But check out the roller spacing. It's almost the same spacing as if it were another jump.

Kidwoo is correct: sometimes a double-bowl or "waterfall" is a better idea than a roller, because you need less space. Your body doesn't need the time to go up and then down . . . just flat to down again. Here's an example at 0:15 in this video I put together for the 9th street Halloween jam. http://vimeo.com/16744769

Dirtjumper999 · Mar 26, 2011

TheTruth said:
I don't think you are putting enough thought into it. That's the problem.

This.

Ditto to everything above. I am a big fan of putting a floater or a long & low at the beginning of my lines, even if there is a starting hill or a roll in. This way you can pump any extra speed you need off the landing. As far as altering the jump itself, if its a 4 ft lip you don't want it very steep, too abrupt and you are going to get bucked at high speed.

@CMC awesome little sketch, have you figured out any kind of template like that for satellite dishes/fruit bowls? I have been wanting to build one but I am not quite sure where to start with them.

FR4life. · Mar 26, 2011

Make the pumpdown low enough that it is easily pumpable when ridden and provides good speed. Making the pumpdown contour into the next lip similar to a ski jump is a good way to maintain speed as well since you can pump through the whole dip and up and off the next lip, great for boosting. As for the height of the next lip, I would make it about the same size as the previous, which would make the second lip lower in comparison to the first because of the pumpdown before it, but it will actually be the same height. This can allow for the second jump to be more of a step-up trickable jump with a slightly shorter gap, but taller and steeper. Hope that made sense.

nyhc00 · Mar 26, 2011

can you put up some pics of your spot? The more i read about it , the more interested it is becoming. Sounds like digging there isn't too much of an issue as far as the dirt is concerned.

cmc · Mar 26, 2011

samtaleterapi said:
but how should a pump down look?

i couldn't think immediately of another picture or video to show you . . . but just get on google video or vimeo and watch a bunch of bmx 'trails' videos, until you come across one.

waterfalls (or 'pump down' as you're calling it) are also in skateparks, like at 0:02 in this video. (although skateboarders sometimes like their rollers/waterfalls quicker and steeper, since they're riding such a short wheelbase).

TheTruth · Mar 26, 2011

Move the pump 3/4 of a bike length closer to the landing and then build the landing on to it. This way, you can have more room after the pump and a more gradual pump down with all of that speed. With this done, you shall experience moderate quantities of success.

cmc · Mar 26, 2011

once again, a kind of parallel with skateboarding. you need the roller to be equally far away from the next wall as the spine is. if the roller was any closer to one of the quarter pipe walls, it would feel cramped. . . .

here is the old Skatepark of Austin 69 wood bowl, with a waterfall, then the cement replica of it:

cmc · Mar 27, 2011

samtaleterapi said:
looking down the roll in

looking up the roll in

looking down the line

the first jump

where the roller used to be - and the waterfall

from the top of the first landing

detail shot of the flat area after the pump down

hey, that's a much better spot than i expected! did you build them? with that hill roll-in you should be able to go blazing fast.

what is the distance between the two big sets (the top of the landing to the top of the next lip) ?

sittingduck · Mar 27, 2011

Is that in Tacoma? My Aunt lives there, and my cousin took me to a spot that looked just like that when I was visiting last summer.

sittingduck · Mar 27, 2011

samtaleterapi said:
no denmark

Ha! Just off by a little bit... :rofl:

The dirt (and rocks) looks really similar, so do the trees.

nyhc00 · Mar 27, 2011

Holy crap!! With that roll in you could make the 1st set pretty big if you wanted to.

demo 9 · Mar 27, 2011

I would try to put (something) in that gap between the 2 sets, it looks pretty long, the longer your rolling without jumps or features, the more speed you will loose, maybe make a very small double (or 2 rollers)

cmc · Mar 27, 2011

demo 9 said:
I would try to put (something) in that gap between the 2 sets . . .

definitely. like maybe a mellow two-foot tall launch like 13 feet back from that waterfall so that you land into the waterfall as a step-down.

like 0:20 in the Jason Ball section of one of my favorite bmx videos of all time, S&M BMX Inferno (1995).
http://bmxmdb.com/films/152-Bmx-Inferno (Scroll down to the Jason ball section. It's vimeo.com private, so you have to view it through BMX Movie Database.... )

Dirtjumper999 said:
. . . .

@CMC awesome little sketch, have you figured out any kind of template like that for satellite dishes/fruit bowls? I have been wanting to build one but I am not quite sure where to start with them.

are you talking about something like this?

cmc · Mar 28, 2011

samtaleterapi said:
48 (of my) feet, and maybe it will be 45 after the first jump is bigger

im not sure there is room for a small double or step down
but that would be a good idea

how about this? i measured it out kind of to scale (40mm = 10 feet).

[disclaimer!: i and my friends have built a few lines very similar to this . . . but i'm not promising anything about these exact dimensions because all trails have to be tweaked and tailored to the spot....]

Here's another version with the "waterfall." It's like the second half of the roller.

sealclubber · Mar 28, 2011

build up the waterfall into a big a$$ roller, problem solved

cmc · Mar 28, 2011

samtaleterapi said:
more so than the waterfall, i still think the first jump needs to be longer. that is the main issue. the first jump sets the speed for the rest of the line. (it does look like you're going a little down-gradient though, so it's surprising you can't clear the second jump. not even with a couple of cranks? or you just mean you can't coast and hit it?).

you could make a new first set a little more like this: (a lower, flatter launch), then the second set can be the booster.

this drawing i did for the mtbr thread shows the 12----25---12----25-----12 design. so you wouldn't have room for a full double in between your first and second set right now.

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=402237&page=2

Dirtjumper999 · Mar 28, 2011

cmc said:
are you talking about something like this?

Exactly but with dirt, and on a smaller scale.

cmc · Mar 28, 2011

Dirtjumper999 said:
Exactly but with dirt, and on a smaller scale.

my friend Mike is planning on building one of those. we were talking about making the dish close to the ground to minimize the ridiculous amount of dirt it would take to make an elevated bowl (it seems like it would have to be at least 16' long but maybe as much as 20' depending). if the dish were close to the ground, then you'd dig super deep pits before and after it to make the step up / step down. . . .

i know i saw a dirt one in some video a few months ago, i can't remember where though.

i took this pic at the '09 Crankworx Colorado. you can kinda tell there are about two and a half sheets of ply, so i'd say it's about 20' long:

this one was at the top of the hill and was gnarly. i thought someone would sketch out and fall off it, but no one did.

oh yeah, there's one in the Madrid supercross video:

although it's almost more instructive to watch the failures:

demo 9 · Mar 29, 2011

Few last ideas for you-i think that your biggest problem is that they are spaced too far apart. That said, here is a few ideas

double roller for manualing (gap-able)
double waterfall (DOPE!)
little speed jump

Sonic Reducer · Mar 29, 2011

when reworking stuff you can use the current location of a jump to avoid moving all the dirt too far, you can just cut up a landing throw it a few feet back or turn it into the next lip or visa versa.

how do i keep or gain enough speed? now with pictures

Chimp

Turbo Monkey

Artisanal Tweet Curator

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Monkey

Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Chimp

Turbo Monkey

Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Turbo Monkey

Chimp

Monkey