pedal

A pedal kick is simply a short, sharp 1/4 pedal stroke. It can be used in two ways; as a technique on the trail to pop your front wheel over objects, or as a trials move used to assist in hopping forward, or clearing a gap.

Pedal kicks on the trails:

Out on the trail you'll encounter roots, ruts, rocks, mud and terrain of all sorts. You must be able to handle your bike properly in order to clear these sections. Many inexperienced riders think nothing of it and just ride over things such as roots or rocks. Most feel that since they have a suspension fork, they should put to use. Nothing could be further from the truth. With a proper pedal kick technique you can easily clear these sections with much more control and speed, rather than just running into or over them.

Lets take a section of bulging roots for this example. Instead of riding into and over the roots you should incorporate a small pedal kick to pop your front wheel over the roots and allow the rear wheel to freely roll over.

Pedal kick as a trials move:

When it comes to trials, a pedal kick has numerous important uses. It can be used to maintain balance on the rear wheel, to pop your front wheel up when dropping off a small obstacle, and to add the aggressive forward movement needed to hop, specifically from the rear wheel to an object.

Another form of the pedal kick is known as "lurching", which consists of many continuous, pedal kicks from the rear wheel position.

Here's how a simple pedal kick is done:
(from a rear wheel position)

The basic concept of a pedal kick is a combination of brake control, powerful short pedal strokes, and body placement.

Once on the rear wheel, release the rear brake, lowering your front wheel. As the front lowers, give a quick 1/4 to 1/2 rotation of the pedals. You need to be in a gear that will give you power, such as the "middle ring/biggest cog." On the kick, your bike will shoot forward. As the bike moves forward you must bring your own weight forward in order to land square on the back wheel again. If you were to ride it out without shifting your weight forward, you will definitely land too far back, resulting in injury. (possibly flipping back)

The Lurch aka Pedal Kick

The lurch is one of the most functionally important moves in Trials, and is the basis for a whole variety of moves you'll probably need if you want to progress beyond the Beginner level. I think it's also one of the most tricky moves to learn (it's not hard to do, but until that light clicks on, it's hard to figure out).

The pedal kick movement can be used all the time, to get up an object, to get down something, to clear a gap between objects, etc. It's an important one, and is also one of the most impressive looking moves. The first tme you drop off a picnic table in front of the local BMX kids you'll get a lot of slack jaws.

There are probably a good dozen ways to learn the lurch. One of the easiest and best that I learned is as follows. This is really an extension of the pedal stroke movement from above. The movement we went over the for the pedal stroke is used here almost exactly the same way. They key to adapting it to learn to lurch is to practice stringing a few pedal stroke movements together without putting your front wheel down the ground. It looks a little funny, but doing this gives you a great feel for how the bike and your body are positioned, as well as giving you the timing for the brake modulation. Practice this motion, lifting from a stationary postion, then ratcheting through as many pedal stroke motions as you can, letting the front wheel drop a little each time, then pedaling again to lift it back up. Once you can do this easily, you're just a very small step away from pulling off a full blown lurch.

The real lurch is exactly the same as what you just did, except you add a little more body english and pull of the arms to get the rear wheel off the ground at the same time that you initiate the pedal stroke. This will just take a little bit of practice to figure out. The best way to start is to do one pedal stroke to lift the front wheel, then do another one, getting the rear off the ground. Just concentrate on doing one lurch for right now. Once you get used the feeling, try to string a few together. It's also important to learn how much pedal motion and bike motion is necessary to go a certain distance. Eventually, you'll know by feel exactly how much to do it, so that you can hit a target within an inch.

Another point to make here is that for distance there is a basic formula to follow. In general, the lower you let your front wheel drop before giving the main pedal kick, the farther you will go. This is rather obvious if you think about; if your front wheel is near the ground, all that pedal energy will be translated to forward motion. Conversely, if your front wheel is really high, you will mainly go up instead of forward. Just keep practicing, and eventually you will be able to stay on your rear wheel all day, making little adjustments to keep yourself upright.