How to...Hit drops with confidence

Matt Jones & Chopper Fielder show you how to plummet with poise

- By Matt Jones and Chopper Fielder

Whether manmade or natural, drops are a feature you'll find on many trails. Some won't reveal themselves until you start to ride faster - so that what you once rolled off, you now have to jump - but at some point, we all have to face them. Here, Grant Chopper' Fielder takes us through the kind of natural drops you're likely to encounter on your local trails, while over the page, Matt Jones explains how to step this up and tackle the bigger manmade ones you'll come across in bike parks.

1 NATURAL DROPS

If you think about it, a drop is technically half a jump - you're just skipping the 'going up stage and falling straight into the landing. However, you do have to take care of a few things before you leave the edge.

The main idea is to stay upright. Why people want to get their nose into a landing is beyond me! When you see people going over the bars on a drop, that's always totally avoidable.

Make sure to scope out a drop before you ride it. Stop and have a look so you know what the landing is like, as it's easy to be deceived by the size of a drop. If it's rollable, then you could roll it the first time to check it out, but if not, you need to know that, so you can set yourself up to take the drop. Also, check out what's coming up next on the trail; it's not just the landing you need to deal with.

It's important to get your speed right well before you reach the edge of the drop, so you can take off with both feet horizontal. How fast you need to go will depend on how far you want to jump before landing, but make sure you aren't going so slowly that your front wheel drops towards the ground before your back wheel has left the edge. Leave a few bike lengths before the edge to have your feet level.