What are some moves you choose not to do with your age/injury?

[Sam Song]

I am sitting in my room after a botched attempt at learning a bunny hop 180 and having twisted my right knee. Although I haven't broken any bone, there may be some ligament injury. 

I seem to get my worst injuries from doing spin moves, (since I have never been good at them). Although trials can be quite dangerous, I never got many serious injuries doing a traditional pogo trials riding since there is very little speed; and the movements are in a single linear plane with little to no rotational forces involved.

Although I fortunately have a job with paid sick time; and I always have topped off overtime banked vacation hours to use, I do not want to risk getting serious injuries that could affect my longevity to ride trials bikes, or for activities outside of biking, especially at my age of 30. 

I am almost considering making a conscious decision not to learn spin moves to reduce my chance of getting injuries. There are other aspects of riding I could improve on and still have fun. 

Even within my small riding social circle, I have friends who have injured their back, or ankle and knee sprains from doing the rotation moves. 

Any of you made the similar decision to not do certain moves so that you can ride for longer?

 

 

 

[Swoofty]

You sound like a much more prudent individual than me! I'm nearly 49 and I'm still learning new spin moves. My 180s are spot on, but 360s and some 180 combos still put me on my back from time to time. When I got into trials 14 years ago, my goals where big up to rears and gaps. As I progressed, I moved decidedly towards street over pure and spins were some of the most fun parts. I was a snowboard instructor for a few years before trials and we were trained to teach our students to spin in both directions even though 99% of all people have only one natural spin direction. I carried that idea over into trials and it has been very worthwhile. Nowadays I can usually gauge how a  ride is going to go from my warmup. If all feels well, then I can try new stuff with more confidence. If I'm not feeling it, then it's a good day to polish what I know and lay off the new stuff.  For spin training you need serious mental focus. Visualize what you're doing and when you're ready you must commit fully to the move. If you're not focused or you hesitate; the chances of ending up on your back increase. It doesn't hurt to practice some bail out strategies either. I'm also not afraid of armor anymore. When I ride the skatepark, I wear the padded shorts, hard knee pads and even a full helmet if it's not too hot. Definitely do what you most feel comfortable with. As I've gotten older, there are definitely sketchy lines that I just can't bring myself to do anymore because the risk/reward ratio is too high. I'll leave you with a 'manly-man' cliche, "The pain of crashing is bad, but the pain of giving up is worse." It's only a cliche 😉 

[aliao]

lol I've told you this before Sam, but in my opinion you're not even close to being old enough to complain about age yet. From watching your recent videos, you've made a lot of progress on your street bike, but I think you maybe have a bad habit of throwing yourself 200% at moves when you haven't quite gotten the fundamentals down and this is making learning things more "risky" than they need to be. We haven't ridden together in ages, but if we did I would probably be that annoying guy that tells you to slow down and take things step by step first.

[Swoofty]

Ooh yes! Ride with Albert! That's definitely a good way to improve.

[javimic]

Hello Sam! What a bummer dude, speedy recovery! I started the trials journey at the age of 43 almost 3 years ago. I never worried about my age. I will be 46 yo next November. Baby steps is what I recommend because a micro victory it is a victory, but not what I actually do. 😂  Keep riding bro!

[Phantom87]

I have a bit of a unique situation due to a medical condition that makes all my joints garbage and super injury prone. I started at 35, after a very poor and botched attempt in my late teens. For me, it's not necessarily a type of move, but more the size of thing I will ever attempt, and the time it takes to work up to it. Not a huge issue right now since I have only been at it a year, and am taking it super slow. But in the long run, assuming I can keep riding, I don't realistically think I will ever try to tackle anything over waist height. No big gaps or big drops. Probably won't be too into spinny moves if my abilities ever get that far.

The nice thing about going into it with that attitude is that I don't have a lot of expectations about progressing. I basically just look to see if I am doing a bit better or a bit more than a few rides ago, and if I am having fun. My goal is to be able to go to one of the local riding spots I have scouted out, and have enough skills to go have fun and challenge myself for a few hours. This is one of the few things I have done that has been more about the journey than the result, and it's been really fun and rewarding.

[bikeperson45]

I'm basically the same @Phantom87, had a few too many injuries in my late teens to really want to push myself to progress. I ruled out a lot of spin moves for myself after tearing my ACL doing a 180, and I realised that because of some hypermobility I spent half my time between 18-22 being semi-injured basically. Hard pill to swallow but I just ended up making peace with the fact trials isn't worth sacrificing that much injury time for.  

[sgodtrailangkol]

On 8/10/2023 at 5:13 AM, Sam Song said:

Any of you made the similar decision to not do certain moves so that you can ride for longer?

Spin moves can be a wild ride, and it's smart to play it safe, especially at 30. longevity is key, and there's still a ton of fun to be had. 

[Sam Song]

On 8/9/2023 at 9:05 PM, aliao said:

lol I've told you this before Sam, but in my opinion you're not even close to being old enough to complain about age yet. From watching your recent videos, you've made a lot of progress on your street bike, but I think you maybe have a bad habit of throwing yourself 200% at moves when you haven't quite gotten the fundamentals down and this is making learning things more "risky" than they need to be. We haven't ridden together in ages, but if we did I would probably be that annoying guy that tells you to slow down and take things step by step first.

You make a good point Albert. I will keep the safe progression in mind. 

Let's get together for a ride sometime when I get better!

[Sam Song]

On 8/9/2023 at 8:42 PM, Swoofty said:

You sound like a much more prudent individual than me! I'm nearly 49 and I'm still learning new spin moves. My 180s are spot on, but 360s and some 180 combos still put me on my back from time to time. When I got into trials 14 years ago, my goals where big up to rears and gaps. As I progressed, I moved decidedly towards street over pure and spins were some of the most fun parts. I was a snowboard instructor for a few years before trials and we were trained to teach our students to spin in both directions even though 99% of all people have only one natural spin direction. I carried that idea over into trials and it has been very worthwhile. Nowadays I can usually gauge how a  ride is going to go from my warmup. If all feels well, then I can try new stuff with more confidence. If I'm not feeling it, then it's a good day to polish what I know and lay off the new stuff.  For spin training you need serious mental focus. Visualize what you're doing and when you're ready you must commit fully to the move. If you're not focused or you hesitate; the chances of ending up on your back increase. It doesn't hurt to practice some bail out strategies either. I'm also not afraid of armor anymore. When I ride the skatepark, I wear the padded shorts, hard knee pads and even a full helmet if it's not too hot. Definitely do what you most feel comfortable with. As I've gotten older, there are definitely sketchy lines that I just can't bring myself to do anymore because the risk/reward ratio is too high. I'll leave you with a 'manly-man' cliche, "The pain of crashing is bad, but the pain of giving up is worse." It's only a cliche 😉 

Thanks for the tips! I am enjoying seeing your videos time to time. 

The point you make about full commitment is really important. You really get your worst injuries. 

I would also add learning to read your body and when to just go home or play it safe. When I injured myself, I knew I wasn't in the best condition but instead of just going home I just tried one more move. And that is when I got my injury. 

 

[Swoofty]

27 minutes ago, Sam Song said:

I would also add learning to read your body and when to just go home or play it safe. When I injured myself, I knew I wasn't in the best condition but instead of just going home I just tried one more move. And that is when I got my injury. 

 

Very true. I try to practice new stuff right after my warm up or toward the middle of a ride; never at the end of a ride when tired or even just fatigued. I know from experience that my body can usually do a new move, but my mind mucks it up. Any pro athlete can tell you that the mental side of a sport is just as or more important than physical conditioning. 

[La Bourde]

Fully agree.

 

In addition, I guess in trials you can learn or improve the basic without taking much risks.

You can fine tune your precision or body movement basically on each kind of lower obstacles (riding along a curve, riding some small stones,etc)

 

You can also try to decompose the movement. In the 180° case:

• you can learn to rotate your hips  and shoulders first, for example when doing some hops on the rear will, or doing some 90° with pedal kick on some marks on the ground
• you can learn to stat the movement correctly, by trying to manual in a turn
• you can learn to use your arm in the first part of the impulse by trying to do the same during a simple, straight bunny hop
• you can do some 180° in place first
• you can try to do some 180° as slow as possible, to improve the execution

[Ross McArthur]

I recently pulled my right shoulder doing a drop to flat from maybe 10-11foot. I say to flat, it was actually to a slight slope, and the issue with that was that my body/bike was fully expecting the front wheel to hit the deck but instead kept traveling that little bit further than normal and yanked my shoulder along with it. I now have a bit of a fear of doing that same drop during trials shows in case the same happens again, so I've been shying away from it which is a shame as I did enjoy sending big drops!

[cwtrials]

2 hours ago, Ross McArthur said:

I recently pulled my right shoulder doing a drop to flat from maybe 10-11foot. I say to flat, it was actually to a slight slope, and the issue with that was that my body/bike was fully expecting the front wheel to hit the deck but instead kept traveling that little bit further than normal and yanked my shoulder along with it. I now have a bit of a fear of doing that same drop during trials shows in case the same happens again, so I've been shying away from it which is a shame as I did enjoy sending big drops!

I never really did drops over 9ft.  I could, but if the technique wasn't perfect the potential was pretty bad and it just didn't seem worth it.  After I tore my achilles that dropped down to about 7ft, which was reinforced by gaining 30 lbs.

[Chakers1998]

My dads riding trials at 57! you're still a young spring chicken.

[MadManMike]

This post got me thinking about Trials Forum from back in the day...

When I joined, lots of people were wondering what to do when they leave college. These days we're talking about kids going to college and how our joints ache. Mad how long this place has been around really