Introducing the Super Rider 30-Day Bike Skills Challenge! One month of riding, with mountain bike skills and challenges every single day, to make you a better rider. We are going to slowly build up foundational skills to get you more control and confidence on the bike. Each day you’ll get a new drill to practice, and by the end, you’ll be on a whole new level! These bike drills and skills can be done on ANY bike. I’m demonstrating most of them on a dirt jumper because it’s the most basic mountain bike setup anyone can ride – but you’ll see clips in each video of me demonstrating the same skills on an e-bike, full suspension and hardtail as well. I hope you join the challenge and enjoy the ride with us. Each challenge has been specially chosen to help build up your riding slowly, safely and surely over the course of the month. Put in the time now and you’ll see what I mean when we get to the more advanced skills later in the month.

30 Ways to Become A Better MTB Rider

We just released a 30-Day Skills Challenge on the channel, and each challenge was designed exactly to help you learn new skills quickly and safely. Instead of making you hunt down all 30 videos, I pulled everything together in this one, so you can bookmark it and come back every day. Way easier! I’ve also put chapter markers in for each day, which should also help you navigate the video easier.

Each of the skills days are also below. 👇🏼

▶️ Bike Balance Basics: Skills Challenge Day 1

Day 1 of the Super Rider 30 Day Skills Challenge: Ride slow to a stop, using your body to balance out the mountain bike. The slower you go, the more effort you need to put into your knees and elbows to get the bike to stay upright. This drill is effective because it builds your slow-speed confidence, but also shows you how much your body can influence and compensate your balance on the bike.

It’s also a great drill because you are in 100% control of the process, you can slow down as much (or little) as you ease into it. We’re going to be using our body movement A LOT during the course of the thirty days, so while this might seem easy, we’re putting down a solid foundation to build upon.

▶️ Tight Turns: Skills Challenge Day 2

Day 2 of the Super Rider Skills Challenge and we’re continuing to develop our focus on our body position to continue balancing our bike. This time we’re adding in turns in both directions (and with switch stances) to get even more control and confidence on two wheels. Things are going to start ramping up quickly in the next few days, make sure you’re feeling super confident on the bike with your balance. We’re about to take it to a whole new level!

▶️ Front Wheel: Skills Challenge Day 3

Today’s skill challenge is going to focus on “unweighting” which is when we move our body quickly away from the part of the bike that we want to lift up. On day 3, we’re going to apply the unweighting to our front wheel, using our bodyweight instead of our arms to lift it off the ground. Unweighting is a key skill for all bike control and bike handling, this will come in handy over the course the challenge quite a bit!

▶️ Back Wheel Lift: Skills Challenge Day 4

Day 4! We’ve used our body to balance and move the bike, and now we’re going to get a little assist from our brakes. This is meant to help us get close to the edge of our comfort zone, and the more we practice, the closer we’ll get to pushing our boundary just a little further out.

Later in the challenge we’ll do this same movement without brakes, but today is about finding the line of your comfort zone (with a little help) and getting more confident over the front wheel.

▶️ Rolling Backwards: Skills Challenge Day 5

Rolling backwards, or “fakie” as it’s sometimes called, can be done on any bike. Sometimes riders see the backpedaling motion and assume that it’s a “special” wheel. In this video, I’ll show you exactly how it’s done and how you can do it on your bike. We’ll take that endo skill that we learned earlier in the challenge to set us up for success with the rollback.

This skill also comes in super handy when you get to trackstands (and more) – definitely don’t skip today’s challenge!

▶️ Pedaling Secrets: Skills Challenge Day 6

Pedal pressure plays a huge role in balance and power on the bike, and today we’re going to see what happens when we unweight the bike and simultaneously add pedal pressure!

This particular move can be super helpful on slow speed technical MTB trails, but it will also power some other moves later in the challenge. If you can get this figured out, you are in great shape! Really try to get a feel for easing off your brake while you add more pressure to the pedals – that’s the key. If you start to feel a little sketchy, just grab the back brake and let your front wheel drop.

▶️ Mini Manuals: Skills Challenge Day 7

Today’s drill is called “wheelbase” and it’s a way of practicing to stay in control on your back wheel for an entire bike-length. We’ll use the unweighting technique to lift our front wheel off the ground, and then sink down over the back of the bike to hold the wheel in place while you roll.

This drill will help you when it comes to bunnyhops, manuals and drop offs. This is the safest and easiest way to practice the technique and build up your confidence.

▶️ Bike Balance: Skills Challenge Day 8

Time to trackstand! If this is your first attempt track standing your bike, definitely watch the full length tutorial first and then come back:

• An Unexpected Way To L…https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ApBWhctf_j8&t=0s

Today’s challenge is a 30-second trackstand. Comment and let us know how long you were able to do it, let’s see who can trackstand their mountain bike the longest!

▶️ The Secret Pedal Trick: Skills Challenge Day 9

The Pedal Scoop technique is the secret to lifting the back wheel up off the ground, no matter what pedals you ride. If you learn this technique (even with clipless pedals), you’ll be able to apply it to ANY bike, and that’s awesome.

Tip your toes down, then push back and up on the pedals. The momentum of the bike will be redirected upward instead of forward, and that’s what gets our back wheel in the air.

▶️ Big Back Wheel Boost: Skills Challenge Day 10

In today’s challenge, we are going to smash together two of the skills that we’ve worked on so far: endos and pedal scoops. We are going to push our comfort zone on the front wheel as far as we possibly can – while rolling. The endo used our brake at a slow speed to get us moving in this direction, and now we’re going to use our body (and momentum) to do it instead.

This skill is going to help you lift the back wheel rolling – which impacts bunnyhops as well as riding up and over obstacles.

▶️ Up And Over Basics: Skills Challenge Day 11

We are over 1/3 of the way through the skills challenge, and today we are going to combine two unweight motions in succession. Mastering this skill will be a huge help to ride up and over obstacles.

Work on the flat ground skill of transferring from the front wheel unweight to the backwheel unweight. See how smoothly (and quickly) you can transition between the two!

▶️ Front Wheel Moves: Skills Challenge Day 12

Learn how to lift and move your front wheel, pivoting it from side to side. Today’s challenge is a drill called “Pendulum” and we use a line on the ground to go over and back with our front wheel. Keep your weight back and your back brake locked, that will help out quite a bit.

If you’re feeling confident with the Pendulum drill, try the next step – Clocks. Go in a full circle with your front wheel, keeping your back wheel in the same place for the entire drill.

Being able to redirect the front wheel of your mountain bike will be extremely useful on the trail when you want to quickly adjust the direction that your bike is heading. Wheel placement is absolutely crucial when we’re riding, and this will help give you more control over that.

▶️ Back Wheel Moves: Skills Challenge Day 13

Learn to move your back wheel in both directions, this skill is called the “front wheel pivot” and will help you lift and move the back wheel to put it where you want. Super helpful for wheel placement and for making tight turns on the trail!

▶️ Big Front Wheel Moves: Skills Challenge 14

Today’s challenge is going to be a drill called “Clocks” – getting around in a full circle using our front wheel lift. We practiced this a few days ago as part of the pendulum drill challenge, so you should have a solid start on this drill.

▶️ Big Back Wheel MTB Moves: Skills Challenge Day 15

HALFWAY! Congrats on making it through the first half of the Super Rider Skills Challenge! Today’s drill brings back the Clocks Drill with the back wheel. We’re going to use our endo and pedal scoop technique to lift the back wheel up repeatedly.

▶️ Wheel Placement Precision: Skills Challenge Day 16

We’re rocking it today! Today we are going to put together both the front and back wheel lifts to learn a skill called “rocking”. It’s exactly what you think it is – rocking up onto the front wheel, then back to the back wheel. Start big, and then get more efficient by making the move smaller. This skill is extremely useful for wheel placement, precision, and balancing the bike when a trackstand won’t work. It seems minor, but having this one on lock will help you out more than you think.

▶️ Win Any Game of BIKE: Skills Challenge Day 17

Take the rocking skill from yesterday, add in the front and back wheel pivot, and now all of a sudden you are UNSTOPPABLE at any game of BIKE that you play from here on out. You’ll now be able to balance and move at the same time, and this level of control over the bike is going to be huge.

Remember to think about making your movements as small and efficient as possible, that’s the way to get this completely dialed in.

▶️ A Different Way To Bunnyhop: Skills Challenge Day 18

We’re going to learn the “english bunnyhop” today, which is a quick hop that evenly pulls both wheels off the ground at the exact same time. Crouch into the bike to pre-load your spring, and don’t forget about your pedal scoop when you pop up! The biggest mistake people make is forgetting the pedal scoop, and then their back wheel stays on the ground.

▶️ Hopping For Balance: Skills Challenge Day 19

We’re going to dial in the english bunnyhop in this video – this can be repurposed on the trail to easy hop over challenging bits of trail, but it can also be used to balance in place. Don’t forget your pedal scoop when you pop up, you’ll need that to bring the back wheel off the ground.

▶️ The MTB-X Drill: Skills Challenge Day 20

This one simple X on the ground can be used for so many mountain bike skills and drills! Highly recommended to get some tape (or chalk) on the ground, then play with it and see what you can do. In this video, I give a few suggestions, but you can freestyle all you want – make it fun!

▶️ Up And Over MTB: Skills Challenge Day 21

Learn to ride up and over obstacles using the unweighting technique that we learned earlier in this challenge. Pallets, curbs and small logs can all be useful obstacles to practice this front wheel lift to make it easy to ride over obstacles. We’ve graduated beyond flat ground drills to now include pallets in our practice – now things get interesting!

▶️ The MTB Pedal Boost – Skills Challenge Day 22

Using your pedal pressure to lift the front wheel up and onto obstacles is a super useful skill to have when you are rolling through super technical terrain on your mountain bike. Today we’re going to use our obstacle to practice this exact scenario. Roll slow and get your body to the back of the bike, so the front wheel comes up easily when you apply pressure to the pedals. We practiced this skill on flat ground earlier in the challenge, so this one is about applying it directly to an obstacle and nailing your timing with the movement.

▶️ Controlled MTB Drops: Skills Challenge Day 23

Earlier in the skills challenge, we worked on riding super slow on flat ground. Today, we’re going to apply that same drill – but to riding off of an obstacle. We started riding over obstacles a few days ago, and now we can turn around and practicing riding off of them with intention, instead of just rolling off quickly. Spread your elbows and knees wide to make your bike and body the most balanced and controlled they can be – and don’t forget to keep your hands wide on the bars (with just one finger on the brake) to maximize your bike control.

▶️ Pivot Onto Obstacles – Skills Challenge Day 24

We’re going to use our front wheel pivot to start getting up onto obstacles – the same exact technique that we use for switchbacks and moving the back wheel around. It’s a combination of the front wheel lift (unweight), the endo, and the front wheel pivot.

Go back to that flat ground practice to get your pivots working, and then start this drill by trying to come as parallel as possible to the obstacle, so you minimize the movement of the pivot. This should make it easy enough to build confidence, and then you can go higher and farther as you go.

▶️ Balance Line Basics – Skills Challenge Day 25

The best part about pallets are their versatility, and just by turning them, you get a whole new set of challenges! We’re going to challenge our balance skills on a whole new level today, with precision focus on our wheel placement.

▶️ MTB Drop Basics – Skills Challenge Day 26

Use the unweighting technique for your front wheel to practice basic mountain bike drops. We’ve been practicing the wheelbase drill on flat ground, and all you need to do is build the confidence to try this off of a small obstacle like a pallet or a curb.

▶️ MTB Bunnyhop Basics – Skills Challenge 27

The truth is, you know all the individual skills needed to bunnyhop – you just need to put them all together. In this video we’re going to assemble all of your skills in the right order, and you’ll be bunnyhopping your MTB in no time!

▶️ Bunnyhopping Obstacles – Skills Challenge Day 28

Bunnyhopping your mountain bike isn’t really about jumping over a high jump bar, it’s about timing. You already know how to lift up your front wheel, and for most obstacles, it’s the timing that needs our focus. In this video we’re going to focus on our timing and we’ll use a small pallet to time out our take off to get it right.

▶️ MTB Manual Basics – Skills Challenge Day 29

Earlier in the 30-day challenge (day seven to be exact), we practiced a drill called “Wheelbase” where we used our front wheel unweight technique to roll on the back wheel for one full bike length. Now, we’re going to stretch that out to two full bike lengths to see if we can get the feeling for a basic manual.

▶️ MTB Manuals – Skills Challenge Day 30

We made it! Day 30 of the 30 Day Skills Challenge!! Congratulations on making it to the end of the challenge, I hope it was worth all the time and effort that you put into practicing these skills. These past 30 days were meant to help you pick up new skills and spend time practicing ones that you had overlooked, but if you want to dig back in to any specific skills, check out the rest of the channel. There are MUCH more in depth tutorials here to help you out.

If these videos were useful, please consider subscribing to the channel and sharing this series with another rider. That would be the best way to say “thank you” – and it helps out another rider in the process.

Categories: Lifestyle

Tags: bicycle, bike, mountain bike, mountainbike, MTB, Northwest, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, pacific nw