Tail Whips

[pwpatton]

I think they are called Tail Whips (help me out here Shad). That's when you whip out the rear wheel of your bike during a jump right?

Well I've been trying to get better at these since I really need to learn some tricks to do over jumps but what I've been discovering is that it's much easier to attain a really big tail whip when I'm going slower.

One of the places where I like to do them is the double jump on dream 2. I'd like to be able to do something over the table top in the XX loop but I just can't seem to get the control or comfort going (since I need to get some high speed to clear the jump).

So I guess my question is: is this normal for these things to be easier at slower speeds? And how can I start doing tricks (I'll start with this one) over jumps that require higher speeds?

Thanks,
Phillip

[Kosk]

When you spin the entire frame around your body and bars, that is a tail whip, but I don't know what you call it when you kick the back end out a little and turn into it with the bars to counter...maybe just a whip, or a half-assed attempt at a table, anyway, they are fun as hell and one of handier things to learn. It promotes good bike control in the air.

As far as doing them bigger and with more speed I would say just find a good hit somewhere and just hit it over and over until you have the speed, kick from the lip, and landing dialed in. Then you can start experimenting more confidently with throwing the bike around in the air. Alot of my bike control I learned from getting up in the air all out-of-whack and having to haul it back in to save the landing, over time I learned what body movements / weighting NOT to do off the lip to avoid getting in these compromising situations. Then as I jumped more and more, I started to learn how to control them and do them on purpose to achive desired effects in the air.

Hip-jumps also naturally lend themselves to kicking the back end around, its just a matter of seeing one in the natural or urban landscape. There's very limited jumps on the xc trails around here, for reasons I fully understand. You'll have to make due or go find some actual DJs or find some urban landscape that lends itself to jumping. Good luck yo, and I'm sure there are a few other people around here with more experience than me, that'll have some advice.

[manual63]

The name of this trick varies. It's not a tail whip. A tail whip is a no footed trick where you take off both feet and whip the frame 360 degrees around the front of the bike and back under your feet again. You need a Gyro and Potts mod to do this so the cables don't get tangled. Something you can't do on a mountain bike because of all the cables involved.

The name of the trick where you kick out your rear wheel is called just that, a kick out. But, there are variations with different names. If you do a kick out and turn the bars the same way as you kick out the rear wheel, it is called a leary having been named after Harry Leary.

http://bmxultra.com/prosection/interview/pictures/zdwbmxa79.jpg

This is a very old trick and when it is maxed out, it looks like this picture which is from the late 70's I believe. Most younger freestyle riders will call this trick a turndown, but that's not correct. A turndown is this same trick, but with the bike vertical and not parallel to the ground. But these younger riders don't know anything about the Leary or who Harry Leary is.

If you saw the pictures of me jumping off of the wooden ramps at the party, you will see a table. This of course is not a full laid out table, but it's still a table. A table, or table top, is when you are trying to lay the bike out flat to the side. It looks similar to a Leary or kickout, but it's actually quite different.

So, please call it a kick out or a Leary if you want to be truely cool. It's not a tail whip.

To do a kick out, all you have to do is catch some air and push the rear wheel to the side. You can practice this on flat ground first. Practice picking up the rear wheel, an endo or reverse wheelie, and landing the wheel to the side. Don't use the front brake to do this and it's probably best to learn it without clipless, like I always suggest. Do small ones at first and build up to bigger ones. It's key to land soft and not land the rear wheel while your weight is still moving to the side. If you land really hard with your weight moving to the side, you will bend your rim. So start off small and get the technique right before you try to do bigger ones.

Once you have the motion down, you can do if off of jumps. The only difference is that your front wheel will also be in the air. You will need to push you front end in the opposite direction of the rear wheel to make it work better. Allowing the bars to turn towards the rear wheel while you push the front end of the bike in the opposite direction does help and that's why you always see the bars turned.

You don't need to wrap your whole body around the front of the bike, like in the picture, just yet. All you are trying to do is push the front end one way and the rear end the other way while you are in the air. This is a good prerequisite to doing a table because eventually you will need to push the inside bar, or grip down and in while kicking you legs out and up. Tables are very tough and defy normal motions, but they feel super cool.

The best jumps to learn these off of are ones with flat landings on the top and no downside to worry about. A table top jump is good because you don't need to clear the jump in order to learn tricks. Just land on the top of the jump. I used to go to loading docks with the ramped sides to practice tricks. These are good places to do them and you can jump as high or low as you feel comfortable doing.

Just remember, don't do a low jump and a big kickout. If you do that, you will not get the bike straight before you land and will bend a wheel. Make sure the air you get and the kickout you do work well together. You might need to work on getting higher airs before you do bigger kickouts if your jumping skills are not that good.

Have fun. This kind of stuff will really improve your bike handling skills.

[noise_is_life]

Don't they call it a tail whip in MX though, can't exactly do the BMX style tail whip on a motorcycle (yet).

[manual63]

Don't they call it a tail whip in MX though, can't exactly do the BMX style tail whip on a motorcycle (yet).

I don't care what they call it in MX. BMX used to name all their tricks after MX, but now MX is naming their tricks after BMX. They don't get it right and it annoys me. I think it's all these non-rider annoucer guys on TV that get the names wrong and then people start using the names they made up.......aarrrgghhh!!!

[noise_is_life]

I don't care what they call it in MX. BMX used to name all their tricks after MX, but now MX is naming their tricks after BMX. They don't get it right and it annoys me. I think it's all these non-rider annoucer guys on TV that get the names wrong and then people start using the names they made up.......aarrrgghhh!!!
Jeeze touchy! :)

I just pointed that out because it is probably the source of confusion about the term, and also since the BMX tailwhip isn't possible on a mountain bike.

[Kosk]

I don't know if I would say a tail whip on a 26" wheeled bike is "impossible". I've got videos where guys do bar spins and such. They just run ss so there is no rear mech and only a rear brake, no front brake, and they run the rear brake line extra long from the bars to the toptube. Of course they can only do one bar spin before they have to unwind, but theoretically, a tail whip could be done then too. (Of course the frame and rear wheel sizes would make it WAY harder.) Now some may say this is not 'cool' or not 'authentic' but it is progression, and hey, the BMX'rs were doing bar spins that way on rear hand-brake bikes until they invented the Gyro thingy too.

I'm not claiming to know a damn thing about BMXing, or what tricks are called, and I don't really care..I just like riding my bike and learning new tricks. So what do you call it when you meld a Leary and a Table together, a 'Lable' or a 'Tabeary'?? Whatever, they feel sweet...

Mountain biking is like wakeboarding. Wakeboarding is borrowing things from all other aspects of board sports, skate, snow, surf, and carving out its own niche. Much in the same way, the new wave of mountain biking (freeride) is borrowing things from BMX, traditional mtn biking (xc & trail), and MX (suspension technology). Who cares, as long as it has two wheels, some pedals, and a chain its fun. I'm sick of the labeling crap.

[But I still think motocross sucks, all the tricks look the same, and they need a motor, as far as i'm concerned I'd much rather watch a freestyle bmx or mountain bike comp any day.]

Sorry about the high-jacking, rant over, lets get back to riding tips, how do you do a 360 on a bike?!?!

[Buck]

OK OK, lets clear this up...
On a mountain bike it can simply be called a whip, or moto whip b/c that is what it is more like not a Leary or whatever the hell you called, just b/c you ride BMX doesn't make you god at Mtn. Biking! To do a true whip you almost want you entire bike perpendicular to the landing, very tough but looks SIC. I am just finally getting them to that point. to do it I start carving when I am going up the jump, keep the handle bars pointing forward, then kick you back foot out so that is forces the bike out more(damn this kinda confuses me so I hope this helps...) and kinda of steer the bike in the air in the direction you want it to go, but when you are in the air with MOUNTAIN BIKE(not BMX shad) you have to exaggerate your movements until you can get it smooth...hope this helps...some other tips, do what Kosk said, hips force you to turn in the air, maybe try to learn tables first, I have learned that whipping the bike allows you to clear bigger gaps, well it does for me over some gaps at the Sk8 Park I ride.
In the end have fun!!! If you start to get frustrated go to a different jump or try something different!
L8R
Buck
PS.tailwhips are possible there are a large number of Mtn Bike riders doing tail whips.

[manual63]

Yeah, but a whip as you guys are calling it and the ones on motocross bikes are different than a Leary or Kickout. You are doing a table and then pushing the back wheel forward and out.

As far as naming goes, if some moutain bikers are removing all the cables and doing real tailwhips, then how do you differentiate one from the other? If you name them the same thing, it doesn't make sense.

The tail whip name is from like a weed whip. The frame goes 360 degrees and thus is a whip. I don't see where MXers and Freeriders get whip from a slight variation of a table. Like I said, it was probably some bikeless TV anouncer who made it up.

Anyway, it really doesn't matter, I am just trying to tell people where the names came from and how they originated. Some people may like that, others may not. But it's all about riding. You can call it a humdinger if you want.....I don't care.

Hey Buck.......I don't have that BMX attitude you saw from Mark at Monkey last week, so don't push that off onto me like I do......... :) :p :)

[manual63]

Buck....

If you take your lookback image and turn your bars with the bike and also combine one of those verticle tricks you and I were doing at Buck Hill during the party, you can do a turn down.

Those are really fun and since you seem to tweak pretty well, I bet you can do one. That would look pretty sic on a big bike like yours.

http://i.timeinc.net/bmx/content/images/terra/1turndown.jpg

[Buck]

I hear I was obviously try to bait you...lol...;)
I cann't do complete turndowns b/c I run DC forks, but I have seen footage and pics, you guys need to explore beyond this little site for FR, although you get good feedback you can find even better beyond this website, once things get roolin this will catch up though.
L8R
Buck
PS. Nobody cares about the name, you know all the different names, horray for you, he was asking how to do it, not for a history lesson...:D ;)
And TAILWHIPS are do able on Mtn Bikes, hell I've even installed all the stuff you need to do it, like I said before expand beyond this site...hell even the big companies are specing bikes with needed set-up to do 'em.

[berrywise]

It is still singlespeed but you can do full on tailwhips with disc brakes.

http://www.identitibikes.com/identitibikes/products/bikes/666eco.php

[pwpatton]

Thanks for the great feedback guys. I've actually gotten the rear end out there pretty far on the first double jump on the dream 2 section. What's really cool is by the time you land the rear is already starting to come back in line so you just ride it out nice and smooth. It feels really cool.

My biggest problem is the doing the trick on the table top jump in the XX loop. To clear that jump I get quite a bit of speed. So I'm hearing 2 things for how to improve on that kind of a jump. 1. go slower and work on the trick and slowly speed up. 2. get smooth and comfortable over the jump and then add the trick.

I'm pretty comfortable over the jump except for the fact that I feel like adding a trick would make me squirly (maybe I'm not so comfortable over it). I hadn't really considered slowing down to do the trick comfortably and then adding speed. I think that might be a good way to go after it.

Thanks,
Phillip

[manual63]

It is still singlespeed but you can do full on tailwhips with disc brakes.

http://www.identitibikes.com/identitibikes/products/bikes/666eco.php

That's not a mountain bike, that's a 26" BMX cruiser.

http://www.vintagebmx.com/museum/images/gt24.jpg

This is an early 80's 26" wheel BMX Cruiser.

[Buck]

ok I'll prove to you that a tail whip on a mountain bike is possible along with abunch of other crazy sh!t! click on the link.

http://www.nsmb.com/videos/crankworx_vid_eastern_08_04.php

That should put the argument to rest, and specialized sells the P-street which is bar spin ready, I think that C-dale sells the chase ready also, there aren't many mostly they are a custom mod, but they are becoming popular and I would speculate in the next year many many more bike companys be releasing bikes with gyros and such!
L8R
Buck

[manual63]

ok I'll prove to you that a tail whip on a mountain bike is possible along with abunch of other crazy sh!t! click on the link.

http://www.nsmb.com/videos/crankworx_vid_eastern_08_04.php

That should put the argument to rest, and specialized sells the P-street which is bar spin ready, I think that C-dale sells the chase ready also, there aren't many mostly they are a custom mod, but they are becoming popular and I would speculate in the next year many many more bike companys be releasing bikes with gyros and such!
L8R
Buck

Arguement?

What arguement???

[Buck]

well did you watch the vid??? Pretty sic, eh?
L8R
Buck

[pwpatton]

Awesome vid, great stuff!!!

[noise_is_life]

That is such a cool course, it's nice to see riders doing tricks off something besides the standard dirt jumps.

And OK, I concede on the tail whip on a mountain bike thing. That was just crazy, he was so sketchy landing on that table and then does a tail whip off of it, madness.

[Buck]

Yeah man, now that is some SIC riding, from the krankworx comp this past summer, those guys are nutz the dude Timo that tryed to jump the whole scaffolding sturcture didn;t make it he broke his leg pretty bad I guess, and I believe it I've seen footage from other angles, he's lucky that he'll be able to ride again, but hell man that was one SIC move, he is known for his huge lines and that one MONSTROUS!!!
L8R
Buck