Freestyle Tricks and Tips

[Josh Matta]

Flatter the landing, the faster you need to be traveling to reduce shock and impact. But, not off a big steep kicker.. You can hit a small lip, fly pretty far, and land on a fairly flat area softly if you are traveling fast. If the landing zone has some decent pitch, you don't need as much speed to fly far and land softly. In fact, you want to be sure you don't outjump the landing.

forward speed will have no affect on landing.

if you drop a mass from 10 feet not moving on to a 5 percent grade, and accelerate the mass to 35 mph from a 10 foot height its downward force into the ground would be same.

The translation is weather is terrain park, jersey booters, or natural terrain feature like cliffs and wind lips ALWAYS land on transition, if you like your body.

 

[crgildart]

forward speed will have no affect on landing.

Wrong.. you are skipping across the flattish landing when traveling at speed. If you drop 5 feet going 5 mph it hurts a hell of a lot more than dropping 5 feet traveling 30 mph. Same reason falling down when standing still on the snow hurts more than falling down when you're cruising..

In other words.. at speed it isn't going straight down.. it is going down on a flatter angle, more across than straight down..

Jump

Land X________

Versus

Jump
----------------speed traveling>>>>>>
_________________________Landing same drop at speed_X_________



Moving fast to the right decreases the shock because you aren't falling STRAIGHT down. You are gradually dropping across the plane instead.

 

[Josh Matta]

can someone else tell this man he does not understand physics.

 

[crgildart]

can someone else tell this man he does not understand physics.

What is a bigger impact.. dropping straight down from the chairlift with skis pointed downhill or skiing at 20 mph off a cliff the same height and landing traveling at 30 mph with skis pointed down hill?

 

[Josh Matta]

how steep is the hill?

 

[crgildart]

how steep is the hill?

Pretty flat. You hit the ground harder with more force when traveling STRAIGHT DOWN than you do when you are traveling across the horizon at speed. It is less direct contact with the ground.. same reason rocks skip across a pond when thrown right but will never skip when dropped straight down.

 

[crgildart]

Speaking if physics, also the same reason you float better in powder traveling fast than you do standing still.. think water skis.. skipping across the horizon instead of smashing straight down vertically.

 

[Josh Matta]

If you dropped a ball from 10 feet and you tossed a ball out at exactly a 90 degree angle which ball would hit the ground first?

 

[hbear]

Dunno, I happen to like landing on the down slope and avoid flat landings whenever I can. Doesn't matter what speed, flat landings suck....

 

[crgildart]

Definitely sucks off a kicker at any speed, what goes up steeply comes down steeply even with some speed, but off a drop not so bad at speed. If you drop a car off a 10 foot cliff straight down to a flat road it will sustain more damage than if you drive that car off the 10 foot cliff at 100 miles per hour. Odds are a car would land quite nicely traveling 100 miles per hour off a 10 foot drop. Dropping it straight down at 0 mph would not end well though..

 

[Xela]

Where's the smiley for physics popcorn?

 

[crgildart]

Let's try this. Falling straight down to flat ground is flat out falling straight down and landing on flat ground. However when traveling across the plane with speed it creates the same effect of landing on steeper ground.

Here. a diagram to illustrate what I am talking about.

Note that the angle of impact is head on for the straight drop at zero speed, but the angle of impact on flat drop at high speed is the same as the angle of impact for a steep landing at slower speed.

Dean's landing zone here doesn't look all that steep, but he is carrying enough speed to smooth it out just fine. If he were to drop straight down with no forward momentum he'd have to suck up a lot more knees..

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Definitely sucks off a kicker at any speed, what goes up steeply comes down steeply even with some speed, but off a drop not so bad at speed. If you drop a car off a 10 foot cliff straight down to a flat road it will sustain more damage than if you drive that car off the 10 foot cliff at 100 miles per hour. Odds are a car would land quite nicely traveling 100 miles per hour off a 10 foot drop. Dropping it straight down at 0 mph would not end well though..

You should try that for us and let it know how it goes.

 

[crgildart]

You should try that for us and let it know how it goes.

Can I use your car?

 

[Josh Matta]

yeah that picture of Dean is taken with a Go pro and the fish eye lens will make it appear less steep. My guess is Dean's landing is at least 30+ degrees...

 

[Superbman]

The skipping rock on water was the right analogy.

Josh, you're right, of course, about the downward acceleration of gravity being the same regardless of speed (like the old high school physics example of a bullet shot from a gun or dropped from the same height hitting the ground at the same time). But, 9.8m/s 2 is only one of the forces at play...and forward momentum is certainly another that absolutely has an effect on what happens to an object when it hits the ground (which is why the dropped stone into a pond versus the thrown stone sinks vs. skips is the right analogy in this case).

For me, I'd never be going fast enough to land a 3 foot drop onto flat without knee cringing pain...soft and steep only for this slow moving object.

 

[crgildart]

Thanks for theSuperbPhysicsMan! End rant. To get this thread back on track I can try to frame this sidetrack in the form of a question maybe @dean_spirito can give a high level answer to.

We've established that for a flattish transition (drop) to a flattish landing a little extra speed can facilitate a softer landing. We know that too much speed in to a steep kicker usually doesn't end well, more moderate or even kinda slow speed for a steep kick to a steep landing with little/short tabletop is all you usually need to hit the sweet spot of the LZ.

I can just look at the set up and landing and feel the right speed approaching just out of experience and gut feeling. How does someone kind of new to jumps know now fast to be going approaching the feature??

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Simple. Watch other people hit it.

 

[crgildart]

Simple. Watch other people hit it.

True, if you aren't sure, or at least reasonably confident wait for someone else to hit it first. I'm mostly talking about natural stuff, not a man made trauma park fixture so you might be waiting quite awhile for a demo.

 

[hbear]

Simple. Watch other people hit it.

More like, watch the dude knuckle and make sure you go faster than that!

#crgildart for natural features it's really taking a look at the feature and LZ closely and trying to marry that information to what/how your prior experience suggests you should approach.

For many features there is also a conservative way and a more aggressive way to hit them (usually involving different speeds) so like most things, first crack = more conservative. I