Do a Footjam on a BMX
ramps are the easiest because you have enough speed to be balanced once you land.
Contents
Steps
- Be comfortable on a BMX and have had practiced putting jamming your foot in your front wheel and lifting your back end up. It's best if you practice doing a bunny hop into it while turning a little bit cause it's safer to get used to doing this on the ground than on a ramp.
- Try turning around like this on a mellow flat bank, not on the deck on top. Halfway up the ramp, do a little hop while turning a bit. Jam your foot in the wheel, then pull it out with a little hop and ride away straight down the ramp. This gets you used to doing it on a transition, turning around, and riding away from the track.
- So once you have that down, and you found a small quarter pipe to learn on (around 3ft is perfect, sheet metal works but wood or concrete is best because it's grippy), go ahead and give it a shot. You want to go about as fast as you would for a double peg stall. If you don't run pegs just a little slower then you would ride up onto the deck. The real trick to doing a foot jam is the angle you go up the quarter pipe at. You don't want to carve into it because then your weight winds up rotating over the deck instead of over the transition. It takes a little more commitment, but you want to either go straight up or slightly olly-oup.
- If you came it at the right angle, you're probably on the deck, your foot in your tire, and your weight and back wheel hanging over the transition. You want your front tire as close to the coping as you can so it's easier to get back in, go around {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} onto the deck. All that is left is to do a little hop out and put your foot on your pedal just like you practiced while turning around on the flat bank.
Tips
- Either they approached at the wrong angle, think of it like this, if you carve hard into this trick and your back end swings 30 degrees too far so it's over the deck, doesn't it make sense that if you come in at 30 degrees less of an angle so your back end will be where you need it? Go olly-oup, you want your back wheel hanging over the quarter pipe, not the deck so when it's time to ride away you just have to move your front wheel over into the tranny. Once you have the trick dialed you will be able to get into or out of it however you want without really thinking about it.
- Countless people try this trick, where they get up into the foot jam on the deck, but their back end swings around too far so when they try to hop back in they usually only get until around their sprocket in the transition, this is because of one of two things:
- The other thing that makes a lot of people have trouble with this one is they don't fully commit. Sure they get up onto the deck in the foot jam, but if you're not keeping your weight over the transition there is no way you can get back into it, and if you somehow manage to, you're probably going to just slide out.
Warnings
- Be safe, wear your pads, especially your shin pads on this one as it's really easy to get a shiner coming back into the ramp and while learning the trick, wear a helmet, knee, and elbow pads too because it's pretty easy to slide down the ramp on your side.
