Let me just talk about really hard landings here, not easy, soft landings on 30 foot jumps, but wheel-breaking landings where wrists could be broken if everything isn't optimally executed.
While you're flying through the air with good balance and fore/aft centering with your body, you have to be in control, and the bike should be flying level at the apogee, and the axles should basically be tracking through the trajectory in the same path. However, you have to do several things at the same time, or overlapping and blending them:
1. Twist the throttle wide open right before you land to let the engine rev into the meat of the powerband by the time the rear tire touches the ground
2. Pull the bars back
3. Push your pegs down
4. Upon landing, meet the ground with equal force with your legs
5. Pull on the bars so the front end doesn't slap down so hard (this doesn't mean you get the front end too high)
6. Power through the landing and beyond
Let me talk about why the "goobers" land and get bucked over the bars or out of control. First, they lack quality experience (motocross background). They lack the endless repetition on myriad jump shapes and/or ramp shapes that motocrossers have to push through. Knowing that, let me say that they are afraid when they jump, and it shows when they can't keep the front end down. A jumper, when fear-stricken, tends to pull the front end up too high. A novice, or beginner, tends to pull the front end up too high. When a rider reaches their upper limit, they either pull the front end up too high, or they simply aren't doing enough to keep the front end down, so it comes up too high.
Keeping the front end too low isn't really good form, but it's better than having the front end too high; but a good rider can put the bike into whatever attitude he wants. For super hard landings, though, well...let's continue.
What you want to do is be in perfect fore/aft balance all the way through the trajectory. The goobers tend to be behind that perfect fore/aft balance. The front end comes up too high. They're hanging off the bars, too far rearward with their CG (center of gravity). Their arms are too straight, their back is too straight, they're too far back and their butt is too far back.
At this point, it's hard to come back from that position. Even if they try to move forward, the whole bike/body CG is too far back.
To correct normally, you should anticipate the corrections and make them before you need to.
Okay, now let's continue talking about how it's done right. While you're still flying through the air, just before you land, you twist the throttle wide open so you can tractor forward upon landing, which accomplishes several things. It keeps the front wheel from slapping down so hard, destroying front wheels and breaking your wrists.
Goobers tend to land without the throttle on like that. They land, the front end slaps down, but since their arms are straight and they're too far back, first the rear tire touches down, then the rear suspension starts to compress, the whole bike pivots off the rear axle to bring the front end down violently, but the rider, being too far back, reaches the end of his rope. His arms are not telescopic. Once his arms are pulled to the breaking point of his ligaments and tendons, it pulls the shoulders forward to the breaking point, then the rider gets whiplashed, and his butt lands into the seat, compressing the seat foam, compressing and bottoming the suspension, then the tire sidewall, then flexing the swingarm.
If the bars aren't ripped right out of one of his hands or both of them, and sometimes they are (for example, EK @ Caesars), right about the time that his butt digs deep into the seat, that tire sidewall, seat foam, swingarm flex and suspension rebound kick him up the butt like a mule as his hands are being jerked downward as he's being whiplashed. This puts the rider into a front flip type momentum, pivoting off the handlebars.
Staying centered fore/aft of the bike's CG, and being forward for that full-throttle landing, enables the bike to tractor forward on landing, gives you full range of motion with your arms to ease the front end down gradually (as gradual as it can be within about 1/100th of a second), keeps your butt from digging into the seat and getting kicked like a mule, keeps your arms from being pulled out of the sockets, and makes everything go smoothly upon landing.
Now let's talk about front wheel first landings. Again, they're better than a goober-style loop-out, but not as good as a perfect rear wheel lander. As you land, first the front end starts compressing, then the rear wheel lands, the front continues to compress because the rear tire has yet to gain any traction. This is putting more stress on the front wheel and your wrists. The front end continues to compress, the rear end continues to compress, and it takes forever for the rear tire to get enough traction to ease the impact of the front end. It hurts the arches of your feet when the rear end compresses on a landing like that. It just doesn't feel as good or work as perfectly, and it's a little harder on the bike and the footpegs.
I could have taken more time writing this, but I have to get some sleep. My schedule is tight!
JA
--Previous Message--
: Are front wheel landings more favourable than
: rear wheel landings ? When you see the likes
: of ramp to ramp jumpers and the rear wheel
: landings they make when it all goes wrong
: they are sprung out of there seat and
: catapulted forward and because the bike has
: slowed they actually are going faster with
: the forward momentum resulting in being in
: front of the crashing bike. In a front wheel
: landing as long as the rider is not
: positioned too far forward they seem to ride
: out better, what's anyone's view on this ?
:
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