Tips that I know will help you on your mountain bike jumping journey

Sometimes it takes just ONE tip to create a breakthrough. This is not a complete, start to finish, mountain bike jumping tutorial. However, what I talk about will offer additional perspective on the process that I know will make the experience more successful for you. #howto #jump
Slanted Ground is about the love for the sport. It's not about what we do on the trail. It's about what we've done on the trail and what that does for us. PASSION - PROGRESS - POTENTIAL.
www.slanted-ground.com
Follow Slanted Ground on Instagram: @slantedground
Location: Windy Ridge - Mt. Airy, MD
Thanks for watching and please like and subscribe. It means a lot to me!

[@Razzy_82]

I have watched so many videos on KZbin to improve my mtbing. This is by far the best. The way you explain it is almost magical 😂 im gonna put what you said in to practice as soon as i'm back on my bike. Edit - earned yourself a subscription

[@jasonnchinchen]

The advice starting at 9:20 is great. Always check the jumps from the side so your brain and body know they aren't a wall, but a mellow transition.

[@trevorerickson1409]

100% the best MTB tutorial on KZbin.

[@slantedground]

Hey thanks! Keeping it simple - I'm just a mountain biker sharing experiences on KZbin. I'm not a KZbinr sharing their mountain bike experiences.

[@justsayin3600]

I ran across The Shred Academy on YT. He offers some good tips on jumping.

[@bernardconnolly7927]

Thank you so much, brilliant teacher, can’t wait to get back to the trails and try to replicate your advice

[@slantedground]

Thanks so much!

[@gusguevara2472]

Such a good Breakdown💯💥🤟

[@johngreason9964]

I rode here at Windy Ridge for the first time yesterday. Great place. I can guarantee you come here, follow his advice, and you'll leave with loads of progression and confidence. Brand new to Expert level experience. Personally I came to ride the trails, which I did them all. But, found myself sessioning on the first bigger jump on IDLH and the first big table on BLEVE. With your advice, I relaxed my brain and it helped so much, even for a "experienced" rider. Thanks,

[@NS_WestBound]

Mate, you've hit it in 1 for an older novice trying to get airs...really strong tips, outsmart that brain - will use this week, cheers 😊

[@TheRideAbides]

Great video! You have so many catchy tips like, "small jump hero!" You're such a natural at explaining this stuff. Much appreciated!

[@slantedground]

Thanks Dan. No one video is going to turn someone into a confident jumper overnight. It's what they pull together from various sources over time and how they apply it on the trail that makes the difference. If one tiny tip from my perspective helps only one person, it was worth it.

[@TheRideAbides]

@@slantedground May have helped Sage and me already!!

[@brandonnewell4081]

Damn, this is exactly what I've been looking for now that I'm very confident on small jumps and starting to hit bigger medium jumps.

[@anthonysei]

"Come on brain"!! Awesome. I scope out sketch jumps and Drops and compare to others I do regularly. I have even measured them and gone home and calculated the speed needed to clear the gap. In reality, you don't need the speed so much as the push into the transition at a rate where as you're fully compressed you stand up/pop and you're uncompressed as the tires leave the ground. Bad timing is obvious. You feel it. Especially late. And worse if you're too far forward. Most of the weight should be on th rear wheel/BB as you push into the transition. . You're descriptions are great. I overengineer everything. And as an x bmx racer, from the 70's, I default to scrubbing the jumps. Took me a few days on the progressive jump lines to break that habit.

[@yannoswik]

Ramp hyperfixation :) So true..had this jump that I was having a hard time landing clean. There was a bigger one right after it that I wasn't hitting. When I started hitting the bigger one after, my focus shifted to that one instead. So I think I started thinking more of the landing of the 1st jump so that I would get a good pump for the bigger one. All of a sudden getting a clean landing on that 1st jump was just happening automatically. Funny how the body knows what to do once the focus is on the right thing.

[@ifitrollsrideit530]

Mate! This is the third video of yours I've watched on the trot. This advice is so useful. Thank you! Subscribed.

[@slantedground]

Thanks 🫡

[@NatureOnTime]

Great run sir. Glad I found your channel.. always puts me on a right frame of mind 🫡

[@kaneda4102]

So true, the baby self is spot on

[@mtbco]

I’ve been riding a very long time and watching skills videos for years (always room to improve). You are the most natural and effective skills teacher I’ve ever seen. Fantastic! One tip similar to not focusing on anything (around the 12:30 mark) that I’ve found very useful is to focus on the horizon or where the horizon would be if you could see through so the trees.

[@slantedground]

Thanks so much for the kind words. Glad you found it helpful! Great tip on focus too!

[@casestudymtb]

Oh man, so much good info here! Wish I had this when I was starting to learn how to jump! Great vid

[@MC50000]

Awesome tips thank you!

[@slantedground]

Super thanks for the super thanks! Appreciate it!

[@splooshmtb]

Windy ridge really is a great place to exercise all these tips. The wall one comes in handy for me quite a bit at certain bike park lips, great video dude🤙🏽

[@slantedground]

Windy Ridge is awesome. So easy to lap and build good habits. I'm guilty of it too. When blasting a new jump and it's big, I get lower and slide back more than I should without even realizing it...and then I wonder why my airtime was traumatic. Thanks for the watch.

[@joeshawcroft7121]

just found your channel, love what I'm seeing and hearing and think it will help me get to the next step in my jumping progression. subscribed.

[@cambilt1683]

Was just at windy ridge today for the first time. Had a blast. I’ve watched a ton of jumping videos and learned a lot from yours. Nice job!

[@slantedground]

Thank you. I appreciate the kind words and enjoy your MTB journey. Thanks for watching!

[@mikeyp3694]

Nicely done and well explained for us older/emerging jumpers. Removing thinking through reps and muscle memory is a good all around MTB ethos. Love it. More videos please.

[@slantedground]

Appreciate it! Thanks for watching! Tons more on the way.

[@andrewrivera4029]

Drop your heals when jumping, the steeper the lip the more you have to crouch (pre load the suspension )drop your heals so you can explode up, I’m actually pulling the handlebars back as I teter toter on the peddles balancing my weight.

[@Danny-nt6im]

good video man solid advice

[@dabber1]

I watched your video this morning then went out and did a ride. Picked some trails with some nice jumps (various sizes) and tried your advice.... it made a big difference and I was able to get some "nice" air,,... not massive air but a big improvement on previous attempts. I practiced the same trail (which had around 12 jumps of varying size) five times... each was a little better. So thanks. Can't wait to get out again.

[@slantedground]

That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing! Stick with it!

[@haraldbauer8585]

Focusing on what really works. Great!

[@TrailSage]

Love it Josh! So many great tips. This is exactly what I needed, thank you! Let me know the next time you go out to do one of these and I will help you get b-roll.

[@slantedground]

Thanks Sage. Appreciate you taking the time to give it a watch.

[@TrailSage]

@@slantedground Nah, we appreciate you brotha! We shouted this video out a few times in tonight's pod.

[@MTBKingLife]

Great vid on helping breakthrough the breakdown. Also great vibe to your video and really appreciate the non technical learnings (fully your brain). At 55 and 4 years under my belt I feel like your tips are really going to make the biggest difference. Look forward to checking out more from you.

[@slantedground]

Thanks for checking out the vid! The fact that you found value in it means a lot!

[@steveellul3928]

Some good points and advice here, I'm stuck and have been over thinking techniques, thanks for the solid advice.... subscribed

[@slantedground]

Keep at it! You’ll get to a point it so natural you don’t have to think about a thing.

[@davehowell6703]

Great advise - even the camera quality is amazing.. Thank you for sharing

[@slantedground]

Thanks for watching!

[@RonnRider]

Great vid bro! Totally different way to look at it

[@davehowell6703]

If you happen to have different views (other than from the riders POV) when you compress and when you stand up that would be helpful but honestly on of the best videos with easy to follow thought process.

[@slantedground]

What compression is and the timing of it may be the one aspect to jumping that most people misinterpret. I'll do a separate tutorial explaining how it works on different jump faces and will offer multiple POVs for every instance. Thanks for watching and I appreciate the comment!

[@ryancram1sn2s]

Dope vid, very helpful. Much props 🤙

[@slantedground]

Thanks so much!

[@Orchy500]

Man this is a helpful video

[@dennisrod5808]

Great approach to explaining how to jump in a more relatable way. The “rut” I’m stuck at is the “wall”. Do you still keep your knees over toes and compress the same way on steeper take offs? I tend to take off early “weaker take off” so I’m definitely going to apply the “wheels on your heels” to attempt to ride the whole take off. Many of these resonated a lot. Kudos to you. Thank you and Looking forward to the next tutorials. 🤟🏼

[@slantedground]

Hey thanks for kind words! The safest way to ride big/steep jumps I've found is still knees over toes. If you're trying to boost, you can leverage your weight back BUT that's only when you absolutely know what you're doing. When I'm not feeling confident on big jumps for whatever reason, I use this mental trick. As I ride up the transition and when my body is nearly at full stand up/pop, I envision my shoulders are breaking through an invisible vertical plane that extends straight up from the top of the lip. It sounds kind of whacky, but if you envision leading with your shoulders and breaking through that barrier, it sends your body mass on a controlled trajectory. That very thought process has gotten me out of the jumping doldrums so many times. I use this when I'm warming up too because having a confident warm up session on jumps is important when moving up to the big ones. Thanks for watching. Happy riding!

[@dennisrod5808]

@@slantedground thank you yet for another great tip. Not whacky at all. There are many ways to envision and pass on the information. Some of us need a visual like the “vertical plane”. In order to break through this plane with the shoulders, are the shoulders/chin in line or right over the bars? I see this happening on steep take offs and as a consequence, us shifting our bodies backwards as a defensive mechanism. Thanks again.

[@Paul-oe9sy]

wheels on your heels. never heard that before. nice.

[@bauke-LV426]

Question: any outsmarting-the-brain tips on fear when popping off the lip? I understand the technique and cancelling out the force that the jumps pushes onto you, but I think I hold back when actually trying to stand up straight and strong (cool comparison with the ski-jumpers). I think it's just fear... because on small jumps I'm the big hero indeed :) Helpful video again, thnx 👍

[@Impairedvisualz]

Applied some of these tips this week and I realized I have to focus more on pushing up the lip with my heels. I keep popping early

[@slantedground]

Awesome! Finding the issue is huge! Yes, you should still be in the process of "popping" "extending" "standing up" as the rear wheel clears the lip. This means you have the last say, not the lip. By having the last say, your body controls the trajectory, not the jump. Keep at it! I'll have a Part 2 in a few weeks.

[@MikeGlorfindel]

Awesome video, just the advice I was looking for. I have been trying bigger and bigger jumps because they were either new or part of a larger trail I wanted to do and got over confident so I tried a smallish gap for the first time when really i hadn’t even mastered the smaller tables! Ended up crashing and smashing my hip pretty bad so not been able to ride much since April. In the UK there are not so many free areas so each time I go to the bike park I just want to ride everything but when I can ride again I am totally going to put in the reps on the little jumps like you say.

[@slantedground]

Thanks for watching! Hope you heal up fast! I see a lot of people go straight to the big jumps and I believe they actually learn slower because they never learn the fundamentals.

[@MikeGlorfindel]

@@slantedground a lot of people have said, at the bike park I go to anyway, that the larger jumps have more mellow lips which is the case on some of them but the additional size is a little more intimidating so I think cranking out the reps on the smaller ones will get my confidence back up. The main issue I have is I want to ride lots of the trails as well as practice jumping so I might need to find a more jump oriented park to go to. 🤘🤪

[@marcodias5533]

Great video, great advice. Can i ask how is ur audio so clean?

[@slantedground]

Thanks. I wish I could sound cool and innovative and tell you I used some sort of cool mic setup or sweet audio post production techniques, but honestly, I just use the DJI OsmoAction3 internal mics. I find that when it's in it's magnetic mount bracket, the wind reduction is great. The camera location is either under my visor, on my full face chin bar, or on my chest. All sound great though the chin bar is slightly more muffled than the other locations. Thanks for watching!

[@marcodias5533]

@@slantedground i honestly thought u were using some sort of lapel mic recording to a voice recorder. Wow. Nice one.

[@OktaFierce]

Great video. One problem with the baby reference though, is that when jumping, you generaly don't get many shots at "falling down and getting back up again".

[@slantedground]

I suppose if you look at it literally but jump failure in my perspective is - not clearing/casing, discomfort, off balance, poor timing, dangerous technique, and a fear of jumping all together...rather than simply crashing every attempt. Thanks for watching! Appreciate the comment!

[@jeffsaraiva7099]

Your remarks are very instructional, and make sense. I liked the video because of that. But this is the very first video about jumping a mountain bike where the instructor does not show himself jumping. Weird. I would have liked to see some side shots of the jumps you were discussing. Cheers

[@slantedground]

Thanks for watching and commenting. I state in the beginning that this isn’t what you claim “the very first video about jumping” and that there are many other tutorials out there about the subject. This video is about what those tutorials don’t talk about and provides supporting/additional perspective.

[@WoodyBarrelson]

Learning to jump from Ryan Gosling

[@slantedground]

How dare you! Haha

[@WoodyBarrelson]

@@slantedground sound just like him lol knees over toes ftw!