Hello ONCE AGAIN people.

I can't figure out this preloading thing. People tell me to "Jump onto the footpegs like doing a bunny hop" and others say to "push down on the front and rear at the same time". Well I noticed while watching some motocross video's that I have actually NEVER SEEN A PRO literally jump up then push down on the foot pegs. I have only seen people kinda lean back before the face of the jump. It seems like they're seat-bouncing, but while standing up. Is that all ur supposed to do? Just put all of your weight on the back while standing about 2 inches above your seat? And please don't tell me anything about preference, because I know there's a RIGHT and WRONG way to do this, so please let me know what to do so that I don't waste my time trying 5 different things, or wind up getting seriously hurt.

You aren't going to learn riding techniques thoroughly by watching videos of people. If your not understanding it, it's a seat time issue because it's something pretty obvious and essential to riding. You don't need much to do it. Find some thing that you can jump a little bit on, even a single. It already needs to compress your suspension a bit when you hit the face. All your doing is using you arms and legs or butt to make the suspension compress a little extra so it rebounds a little extra.. You should be able to feel your self doing it and it happening and the popping a little higher/futher. it will come natually when you loosen up on the bike and become more intune with what you and your bike are doing.

How often do you ride.

Its not so much that you push down into it, rather you dont 'squat' your body on the up ramp. Most people will sub-consciously 'soak' up the force of the bike coming up toward them, ie lower their stance from a higher standing position, to a lower standing position. Much like you would do when you jump out a tree, you soak up the landing by bending your legs.

To compress the suspension more, you stay more rigid with your arms and legs, your body weight is more pushed into the bike.

Try this, get on a trampoline, get bouncing, then try and soak the landing up as you land from a jump, i guarantee you will either almost not bounce back up, or fall over. This is what you normally do on the up ramp of a dirt jump. Same principle applied, keep your legs almost rigid on the trampoline and you will bounce back up, because you have transmitted your weight/force downwards, and then it reverses and to pings you back up, just like the springs on your bike will do.

Make sense?

oooo that trampoline analogy is really good. and putting force down the trampoline to get bouncing is very similar the force you put to compress the bikes suspension.

Yea the trampoline analogy is good for sure.

So normally when you hit a jump face you soak up the impact of the jump with your body. Sometimes, I'll actually let the seat hit my butt, even though I left the jump face standing up. That is because I didn't need more boost then what I already had.

With a seat bounce (as described above), you need to take all that energy that your body has and instead of soaking it up as you leave the jump face you need to put MORE energy back into the bike itself. That doesn't just require you to be "stiff", but it requires a reaction from your body. As we've talked about time and time again, whilst standing on the pegs, whilst holding onto the bars, you literally use your body mass to push into the bike off the jump face. Obviously being "stiff" is critical because if you "absorb" then it won't work, you wanna to the opposite of absorbing, you want to give the bike input.

Seriously, it doesn't take a lot of time to figure this out. Find a small jump and literally put all your weight into the bike as you leave the face and it will do something entirely different then if you just roll up the face. You won't crash if you just practice safe and honestly, crashing is PART OF MOTOCROSS!!! There are a lot of skills that aren't translatable via video and text online. This is a skill that you will eventually figure out, it takes time.

Ok, Thany You guys a lot!

And just so u know, I am well aware that crashing is a part of motocross. If I cared much about getting hurt, I wouldn't be doing it. I nearly broke my neck 2 weeks ago. I crashed so hard on my head and back that I was out and couldn't see for a few seconds. Luckily I wasn't seriously hurt, I was just in a lot of pain (everywhere) all week. Thank god for a leatt neck brace! (I just don't want to crash because of the wrong advise)

One more thing... Have you ever "bounced" on your bike whilst just riding around the paddock or something? I do it all the time to make sure my suspension feels ok before getting on the track. Anyway, that "bounce" is done with hands and feet and is pretty much the same thing you do when preloading, just with less impact.

Ohh and I didn't just mean that crashing was part of MX, I was referring to TEXT responses to questions like this, are impossible to translate into skill. So even if the advice here is right, its up to you to translate that advice into a skill which will make you fly.

You might notice, I didn't spend much time on here asking questions when I first started riding, that was because my roommate at the time was a MX racer and he taught me everything one on one. Then I learned more about riding from a group of guys who had been doing it for decades. On-track learning is really the ONLY way to learn properly. We can "discuss" things and look through pix and video's of you riding, but everything we say needs to be translated and translating "feel" into words is almost impossible. Someone who doesn't fully understand the concepts trying to translate OUR translation, is just an accident waiting to happen sadly. This is why you need to look at video's and discussions as just a small portion of your learning experience. There are some skills that don't need translation, the clutch thread for instance, I think you got the point through the video's. But when it comes to jumping, its all done through feel and seat time.

Ok, I tried a few different things, and I got it. No more preloading posts.

kx910, on 14 February 2012 - 03:16 PM, said:

Good, well glad you understand... pretty straight-forward.

preload you say?

http://youtu.be/Al3f3REZAFY?t=58s

just like that