TOP 5 BEGINNER BMX TRICKS (Street Edition + How to do them)

What's up guys, Douglas from Dougsterbob.com here and today we're going to be talking about

five of the most common, most popular, and actually the easiest beginner BMX tricks for

street riders. So this isn't going to include park tricks, it's going to include some beginner street tricks

I learned a lot of important things about how these tricks work when Nick and I were developing

bike school. So I want to share some of those golden nuggets of knowledge with you and hopefully help you

learn these tricks a little bit easier. Let's get right into the video

Now before we even start I want you to keep in mind that these are not in-depth

how-to videos of the tricks because that would just be a stupid long video

Nobody's gonna sit down and watch the whole video if we went really in-depth like we did in bike school for these videos

it'd just be way too long. So I'm gonna run you through the tricks, I'm gonna give

you some of the golden nuggets of advice and help you understand the concept and

then actually understand the trick. Yeah, the first trick, you guessed it, the bunny hop. This not only is the most

important beginner street trick but it really is the most important trick in

general. If you can't even bunny hop a teeny tiny bit you're never gonna be

able to hop up on handrails, hop up on ledges, hop upstairs. It's gonna really

limit your ability to progress. So you need to learn the bunny hop if you

haven't already. If you haven't let's go over some tips that are gonna help you

get it explosive. First we're gonna talk about the concept of it. Now a lot of

people say to pull back and push forward and that really is not the case. What

What you're actually going to want to do is compress your body and throw your chest

So compress your body, uncompress your legs and throw your chest straight up

This is going to send your body in an upwards momentum. Your arms are going to straighten out, lifting up the front end of the bike

And when this happens, it's going to start to pull the back wheel up too. Once it comes off the ground, you're going to suck your knees up and push your arms forward

This is what's going to maximize the hop. There's a lot of small little techniques that you can use to work your way into it

but that's kind of the general concept and a lot of people say it wrong

They say pull back and push forward and while it feels like that, that's not really what's happening

The bunny hop is one of those tricks where timing is so, so, so important

You need to suck your legs up and push your arms forward at the perfect time

The only way that you're gonna find this perfect time is through lots and lots of practice

The third little thing to help you out with this trick is to set a goal

So if you have anything small you can hop over once you get that first hop off the ground, find something small and try to hop over that

Find something a little bit taller, hop over that. And then a little bit taller, hop over that

I noticed for me, if I just bunny hop flat, I'm not going to get near as high as I do when I roll

at a picnic table and hop up on it. Like having something in front of you really forces you to

throw all your effort into it, all your explosive power, and it helps you get up onto or over

whatever object you're going for. Alright number two the manual this one is fun and hard a lot of people try this for so long they try they try they try they try and sometimes they give up and sometimes it just clicks So I promise you if you don give up you will

eventually get this trick. This is one of the tricks that takes a lot of practice and a lot

of goal setting. So you want to do parking spaces are a really good one. If you set a goal for how

many parking spots you want a manual pull up at the first one and try and get to that number

whether it's five, whether it's one, whether it's 1,000. You just need to start at one

and hold the manual for the whole thing. But let's break down the concept a little bit

This one went really in depth in the course, but it's like, essentially, this is how it works, okay

You're throwing your weight forward to get the front wheel up. You're gonna throw your hips back behind the wheel

When you initiate the manual, you're throwing your weight back as hard as you can

essentially trying to get yourself to loop out. Once your bike gets to that point of almost looping out

you're throwing your weight back forward. Throwing your weight forward is going to start to drop the

front wheel. Now once your front wheel starts to drop down you've got to throw your weight backwards

to counteract it and get it back up. So that's why you're doing a lot of this motion, moving your

hips back and forth because you're just constantly balancing where that front wheel is. You're

keeping yourself from looping out and you're keeping the tire from hitting the ground. There's

so many more things that go into it but that's kind of the general concept. So the best way to

start and actually practice this trick is to figure out where you loop out. Pull back as hard

as you can, start to loop out, and then say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That must be my loop out

point. And congratulations, you found that. Now spend the rest of your time manualing, avoiding

that point. So right before you get there, you're throwing your weight back forward to get the front

wheel back down. Now don't be too quick on this because there's a tiny, tiny delay. So you're

throwing it back forward and then get ready to move it back so you can get the front wheel back up

And again, like I said with the manual, set a goal. Try manual one parking spot, then try two, then three, then four

And you're going to constantly get better the more you practice, but it's not going to happen overnight

One day you'll figure out that balance point and it'll be like a subconscious thing

There's a lot of things that you do in life where you're like, this is hard and then all of a sudden you've got it figured out

Manual is one of those things. Just keep practicing on it and try and understand the whole concept

of why it works the way that it does. Number three is my most hated trick, the X-Up ride

There are a lot of half-decent street BMX riders making X-Up rides look cool

And I never thought I'd say that. But you can link a lot of these tricks to an X-Up ride

Same with the manual, same with the bunny hop. That's why they're so important is because you can link different things together with that

You can bunny hop bar spin, bunny hop tail, bunny hop 360, manual 180, manual feeble, manual ice

You know, there's a bunch of different things you can do with all of those tricks. And the X-Up Ride is one of those

You can X-Up Ride to 180 and just you can throw so many different things into it

I don't particularly love the trick, honestly, because it scares me and I'm not very good at it

I mean, I can do it, but I'm no wizard like Eddie Peraza. I just my arms don't work like that and then I'm in the X-up ride and it's just a terrible thing

But for a lot of new street riders, this is a fun trick you can learn in front of your house

You can learn in the driveway. You can learn almost anywhere. So here's what you're gonna do

You gonna be rolling flat and you gonna be able to pop the front wheel up Do this by throwing your weight back and keeping your arm straight You don want to actually lift up the front wheel because then you can get the X up So throw your weight back keep your arms straight pop that front wheel up

Once the front wheel's popped up, X your arms around and make an X motion

Then set it back down so your weight's going back forward. You're going to set it back down in that X motion

And then the most important thing is keeping your chest over the bars

So with your chest over the bars, you're going to be controlling it. And the reason you want your chest over the bars is that puts pressure on the front tire so that when you steer, it actually responds

If your weight's really far back, there's not much pressure on the front tire, so steering isn't going to make you go anywhere

So make sure you're leaning forward. Now, when you're ready to pop back into riding normal, you're going to throw your weight back again, pop the front wheel up, and uncross your arms

it's a it's a scary trick because you have to commit to the x-up but it's also not that bad

just because you don't crash very often you know you pop it up you land in the x-up ride you x-up

ride a little and then you're good then you get out of it life's good and this like i said you can

do this with parking spaces pop into it see how many parking spaces you want to go just like the

manual again this is another trick that requires a lot of practice the biggest tip for you is keeping

your chest over the bars. Keep your chest over the bars and keep your X, X'd if that makes sense

Last thing I got for you is when you do it, loosen up your grip. So instead of holding your bars like

this, loosen it up so it's just mostly your front fingers holding it. And this is going to allow you

to cross the X up a lot more comfortably and a lot easier. So if you're struggling with that trick

try loosening up the grip and then see how that works. Trick number four is going to be the feeble grind. This is one of the first tricks that I learned and

I think a lot of people really want to learn how to feeble. So the feeble is one that you can link

again you can link it together with pretty much all of the other tricks we just talked about

Imagine doing a manual to feeble to drop x-up ride right that'd be crazy. You can link this to

anything and it's just so easy and it's so simple that I don't see why you shouldn't be feebling

after this video. Now to be able to do this trick you need to know how to bunny hop. You need to

bunny hop high enough that your front tire can get on top of the ledge and that your back tire can

get about halfway up on the ledge. Not being able to bunny hop is going to make it impossible to get

your pegs on and actually do a grind. Now a couple tips for doing the feeble and doing it good is

think about what you're doing with your handlebars. So when you hop up on the ledge and you lock into

that feeble, sometimes you might turn your bars to the right or turn them to the left. This is

going to mess you up because your front tire is guiding you where you want to go. So when you turn

it to the right, your bike is going to try, I mean, let's imagine you're grinding on the right side

you turn it to the right, your bike's going to try and ride up on that ledge and it's just not

going to work because your pegs are on there. So what it's going to do is it's going to slide you

off the side and you're not going to get the locked in feeble that you're looking for. Same

thing if you go the other way, your tire is just going to drive off the ledge and you're going to

fall off the ledge. So you got to think about where that tire is. A lot of people look straight

at it and keep it perfectly straight so that they know that they are locked into it. Another thing

with your tire is when you hop onto the feeble if you get it farther away from your back peg it crooks out your bike So your bike tweaks out and it really hard for it to stay locked in Try and keep your front tire as close as you can to the front to the back tire

So like let's say this is your bike all lined up right if you feeble you move your front tire like

this okay you don't want to have your front tire all the way over here because it tweaks it out

like that. The last little piece of advice is when you're getting off the ledge it's going to be

really hard to throw tricks in there so and this is mostly because a lot of people kind of learn it

the wrong way if you hop into the feeble you can just turn your wheel and fall off the ledge

but the best way to do it is to compress your body and pop off if you learn this early on you're

going to be working into being able to feeble and actually throw tricks so you're locked into the

feeble you're compressing your body and then you're exploding your chest straight up just like a bunny

hop to pop yourself off the ledge. That's going to help you out a lot

All right trick number five, the bar spin. I love this trick and it probably should

not even be in this video. This is a, I'd say it's more of a mid-level trick

However, I see a lot of beginner kids learning this trick kind of the wrong way

but they're still learning it nonetheless. This is a fun trick. This is

one of my favorites and again you can link it to anything you can bar to feeble you can manual to

feeble you can 180 bar you can 360 there's so much to do with it so some of the most important

tips that I have on the bar spin is to pinch your knees when you're throwing the bars lock your knees

keep your hips back and pinch them this is going to give you enough clearance to toss the bars and

get it get them tossed and get them spinning bar spin okay the second thing for you is to keep your

chest forward. You want your chest over top of the bars so that you have more control of where

they're going and your knees being pinched keeps it from dipping over. The third thing with the

bar spin is to make sure you have a solid bunny hop. You need to be able to hop a decent amount

so that you have enough time to throw it, catch it, and land. If you're only getting a couple

inches on the bunny hop, you're going to have to throw the bars 6,000 miles an hour to make it work

and that's pretty unlikely. So work on the hop. If you're struggling with the bars, ask yourself

hey, am I hopping high enough? If the answer is no, work on the hop

before you work on the bars. You don't wanna jump ahead of yourself. There's so much that goes into the actual technique

of throwing and catching the bars that that would have to be a whole separate video

So stay on the lookout for that. If you're really excited to get into BMX

and start learning some tricks, check out Bike School. We have the full in-depth course

that has all these different how-to videos, but the best part is access to the private Facebook group

where you get interaction with me, Nick, and a bunch of other bike riders

that can give you personalized feedback on your attempts. And that's the coolest thing, right

You post a 180 bar spin and you mess up somewhere. I can look at that and I can say

hey man, you didn't pinch your knees, right? That's gonna help you. If you're serious about progressing

that's the best option for you. Otherwise, guys, have a great rest of your day

and let me know in the comments how many of these tricks can you land? Can you land five out of five, one out of five

Where are you at with it? I'm really curious to know so I can make more content like this

that helps you guys out. Thanks