When you are out on the trail enjoying your favorite section of downhill, pumping your mountain bike will greatly increase your speed and control on the trail. By using the bikes suspension and the weight of your body, you will be able to control the bike with greater force and grip as you blast in between trees, through bermed turns and off small drops. For those of us that are used to this motion, there is a term coined “arm pump” when your forearms and upper arms are just tired as hell when you get to the bottom of the hill. It is from that pumping motion coming down that increased every last bit of speed and control out of the mountain bike.
Controlled pumping is a necessary skill for conquering technical trail. As you pump the suspension with your arms and body weight, you keep traction through technical mountain bike trail terrain preventing bouncing off and around obstacles on the trail. By making your movements on the bike more fluid, you increase both speed and control on your mountain bike.
The absolute best place to practice pumping is on a local pump track like you see in the video below. If you do not have a pump track local to your area, you can practice on sections of local trail that you know really well by focusing on looking ahead, pumping into the terrain with your arms and shifting body weight back in forth and sessioning that section feeling for the differences in speed and control.
Now that you have the right mindset, check out this video on how to pump effectively from Mark Weir and the crew over at Bike Skills (bikeskills.com).
Image by DoolJ from the Bike198.com Flickr Pool