A BikeTrial Beginner's Training Bench

Recently I made a few benches out of wood pallets. I published three posts on what I was doing with those benches and why I would go driving around with my pick-up hunting for abandoned wood pallets (Learning to Pedal-hop up a Bench, Homemade BikeTrial Training Park and FRIM, BikeTrials and Snake Bite?: BikeTrial Progress).









After riding and training on these wood benches, I strongly feel that they are the perfect training accessory that every BikeTrial beginners should get... LOL.

Basically, the bench is about 20" high and 43" long. The width is about 12" at the top and 30" at the base. And so today, I made a short video to demonstrate what one can do with a single bench.



I am pretty sure that anyone else can probably do more than what I have shown in the video... LOL.

To a beginner like me, just repeatedly doing some of the basic moves will cause me to huff and pants like mad... LOL. Although my stamina is improved, there is still a lot of room for improvements... Hahah.

Nevertheless, I do hope that other BikeTrial beginners will make it a point to make one, two or three of these mobile wood benches for their own learning and training.

I am pretty sure that they will also come to appreciate the wood benches like me :-)

Rear Side Hop and Pedal Kicks

I finally managed to learn the Rear Side Hop in the "correct" way... LOL. That is... if I am right footed, I should side hop to the left. Previously I managed to rear side hop as well... but to the right... hahah. After being told my a friend, I decided to stop practicing the side hop all together... so that I could restart and learn all over again... HAHAH.

And today, I managed to do it!!! Three times, nonetheless... LOL.



Of course, I still need a lot of practice to be able to rear side hop consistently and also HIGHER!!! LOL... from watching the video, I could tell that I need to get a nice balance on the rear wheel first, before hopping up. And that I should maybe bend my knee more too.



I have also been trying to learn to pedal-hop up a bench and then pedal-kick from one bench to another. The tough part was to balance on the first bench before pedal-kicking to the next bench. Those pros made it look so easy!!! And here I am struggling :-)

Anyway, it was a great Sunday for my trial progress. Salute!

Learning to Pedal-hop up a Bench

Managed to get some quality ride time today. Started late in the evening and then heavy rain prevented me from training on my usual wood pallet sections.

So I decided to practice pedal-hopping up a narrow bench. Pedal-hopping onto a stack of wood pallets is not a problem, but pedal-hopping onto a narrow wooden bench required more finesse... LOL.



Basically, I wanted to be able to do the static pedal-hop up the bench and the more dynamic pedal-hop onto the bench and then balance with only the rear wheel on the bench before pedal-kicking down to the other side.

Do the Monkey!

So while I was practicing, I told my 9 year old son, Joel, to help me take some videos so that I could analyze and see what I was doing wrong later. But as I was watching the videos later, I realised that he was singing a song lyric over again and again, "do the monkey"... LOL. It was hilarious... so I decided to make a short video clip... Hahaha.


Hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did while making it... LOL.

Anyway, my goal is to be able to pedal-hop onto the narrow bench, maintain balance on the rear wheel, and then pedal-kick to another narrow bench about 3 to 4 feet away. Gonna try it this weekend... :-)