Mountain Bike 180 Tutorial
Let’s learn something utterly and completely useless; we are going to learn how to 180.
The great thing about 180 is that most people that ride mountain bikes could not do it. The truth is, 180’s can be done if you practice enough on just about any mountain bike but most of the guys at the trails can’t, so when somebody sees you do 180 they know you mean business.
Steps on How to do a 180
First, try to get comfortable with rolling backward.
- The way you’re going to learn this is getting your bike up next to something like a ledger or a wall and push back. Do your best to roll back as far as you can.
- Try and come out of that backward roll by kicking your pedal forward and pulling the bike. By pulling it around you can actually use your momentum to start rolling forwards again.
- Learn how to bunny hop. If you don’t know how to bunnyhop yet you’re probably not going to be able to 180, because 180 involves getting the bike off the ground. You’re going to get a comfortable speed, and you’re going to turn a bunny hop and all at the same time look in the direction that you want to spin.
Now the looking is crucial; you got to do with your head, and you got to do with your eyes. Your bike is going to kick out of the side if you don’t and it’s just not going to work. I can’t explain why, but you have to commit to the spin.
The first few times you land, you’re not going to roll out of it properly. Once you get comfortable and you get the spin down with doing the 180, rolling out of it is not going to be much of a problem. And once you get comfortable with it, you can try doing it on curves, ledges whatever you want.