How to Bunny Hop on a Mountain Bike

The bunny hop is one of the most useful moves you can learn when you’re cycling natural mountain bike trails. Roots, rocks and the occasional bear are easily conquered when you can sail over the top of them with an inch of air between your wheels and the obstacle.

The principle of a bunny hop is reasonably easily explained, but it’s a lot harder to master. Also, a lot of mountain bikers currently doing bunny hops are doing it the slightly cheaty way, using the assistance of their pedal clips to lift the bike with their feet. Nothing wrong with that in general I would say, and to be fair it’s the way I do it most of the time, but recently I’ve been trying to learn how to bunny hop without clips just because I think it might improve my skills in the long run. So, this is how you do it, and hopefully the following instructions might help you along the way the same way they helped me.

1. As you see your obstacle pick your take-off point just in front of it. As you’re about to reach this take-off point preload the bike’s suspension by pushing up and then dropping all your weight down onto the pedals and bars. This pushes the bike into the ground and compresses both front and rear suspension.

2. Your bike will now want to spring up all by itself, lifted by the uncoiling suspension, but you need to give it some further help to get it and your lardy self off the ground. First lift the front end as quickly as you can, straightening your body and keeping your feet on the pedals. This means you’re standing vertically with the bike standing up underneath you, the front wheel high in the air. Because your feet are still on the pedals and you’re still essentially standing on the rear of the bike this keeps your back suspension (if you have rear suspension!) compressed and gives you a bit more bounce for the next stage.

3. Next, as the front end nears it’s highest point you need to lunge forward pushing the bars forward and rotating them. At the same time lift your feet and hopefully, if you’ve been a good little boy or girl this year, your pedals will come up underneath them. If you have rear suspension the rebound as you lift your feet will give the back wheel an extra little kick, but if you’re on a hardtail all the rear wheel lift comes from your rotation on the bars and perhaps a little bit of flex in the frame, wheels and tyres from your initial preloading. This means you really have to gun the rotation. Push forward hard and twist the bars as much as you can in the forward direction, as if you’re trying to flip the whole bike forward over the front wheel.

Anyway, that’s it - sounds simple but it’s not really. It’s a good excuse to get out in the street and mess about on your bike like you did when you were 10 though, trying to perfect those hops. If you’re not the kind of person that can learn by reading then check out this video by the guys at Mountain Bike Riders. It shows all the steps I’ve written above broken down frame-by-frame so you’ve no excuse. Good luck!

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