Learn the mountain bike back wheel hop: balance on the rear wheel, feather the brake, practise small hops. With prerequisites, milestones and fall protection.
The back wheel hop is a trials-style skill: you stand on the rear wheel, hold the rear brake lightly pulled and hop in small jumps to keep position and balance. It is not about height but about control in very little space.
The honest answer to “What do you need that for on the trail?”: almost never on the trail. The BASPO, the Swiss Federal Office of Sport, says something similar about the simpler wheelie: it is rarely used on the trail, but it is the basis for many other riding techniques and promotes balance and a feel for the rear brake like hardly any other technique [1]. That applies in an intensified form to the back wheel hop. I found no study and no association description of the back wheel hop itself; the technique below is scene practice and carries no source number.
What is documented is the value of balance training on the bike: in a study with 29 mountain bikers, one static and four dynamic bike-specific balance tests were related to performance on a downhill trail (correlation up to r = −0.78), whereas the single-leg stance and the Y-balance test with eyes open were not [2]. So you best train balance on the bike.
The back wheel hop does not train hopping, it trains the feel for the balance point.
The balance point, the “sweet spot”, is the place where the bike is balanced, with the centre of gravity roughly over the rear hub [1]. You find it by lifting the front wheel slightly and feeling when the bike no longer wants to tip forward or back. Milestone: 10 seconds on the rear wheel on grass without tipping backwards.
One finger always stays on the rear brake [1]. If you pull it lightly, it stops the wheel and brings the front wheel down. Milestone: you feather the brake at the balance point five times so that the front wheel sinks under control.
If the bike tips sideways, you correct with knees and shoulders: if it tips right, you spread the left knee to the left and tilt the shoulder slightly to the left [1]. Milestone: 15 seconds of balance without the bike tipping sideways.
Only now do you hop. With the rear brake lightly pulled, you push minimally off the ground with your legs, and the wheel hardly lifts. The practice figure: one to two centimetres. Milestone: five hops in a row without the front wheel sinking.
Your goal is to stay on one spot, not to travel forward. Repeat the hop many times until the wheel stays in place. Milestone: ten hops on one spot, the rear wheel moves no more than a hand's width.
The biggest risk is tipping backwards. In a video analysis of 534 mountain bike crashes, only 3.2 % were backward falls, and 55.2 % went over the handlebars [5]. The back wheel hop is still in the risk range: in mountain bike falls the head hit the ground in 52 % of cases, and dismounting instead of holding on lowered the odds of head impact clearly (OR 0.11, albeit on descents) [6]. That means: dismount early rather than fighting the bike. Always wear a helmet and gloves, practise on grass and avoid obstacles in the direction of a fall. This guide explains and motivates, it does not replace supervised training or a coach.
Practise the back wheel hop first with the saddle lowered. Then you have more room behind the saddle and can move away faster when the bike tips. This is scene practice, not a study.
A trials-style skill: you stand on the rear wheel, pull the rear brake lightly and hop in small jumps to keep position and balance.
There are no reliable figures. As a rule of thumb: first track stand and manual, then the hop. The BASPO describes even the wheelie as not easy to learn, requiring a lot of patience [1].
Rarely. But it trains balance and the feel for the rear brake [1], which helps on technical trails. In one study, balance on the bike was more strongly related to downhill performance than single-leg stance tests [2].
On grass, with a helmet, gloves and a second person. One finger stays on the rear brake [1], and if you are about to tip, you dismount early.
Usually the centre of gravity is too far back, or the hop is too high. Look for the balance point over the rear hub [1] and keep the brake ready as a safety.
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