onetrack said:all i'm saying is setup hops don't help you at all. The reason you see
more in ryan's earlier vids is he wasn't as controlled as he is now. if
anything, it'll help your timing not to mention the energy those little
pogo hops waste.
I appreciate that point of view, but I don't agree that it's necessarily
true, for at least three reasons:
1) for a given person at a given point in their development, setup hops
may be the way for them best to handle a situation. So, in a
competition, which takes place in time, the rider should handle a
situation in whatever manner gives him/her the best chance of winning.
2) setup hops do cost energy, but they may have benefits too, such as
buying thinking time. They use a slightly different muscle set than
the bigger hops. They allow blood to pump through your legs better
than a still stand. They allow one to change one's mind mid-line.
They may give your legs a better feel for the terrain you are on at the
moment in preparation for the next move. They can help you get your
pedals in a better position for the next move. So it's not obvious to
me that "they don't help you at all."
3) in Ryan Atkins' short interview on Defect, he says that when he
wants to make a line harder, then he tries to do it in fewer hops. I
don't have the disk in front of me, but I assume that includes setup
hops. His typical line now includes up to 1-10+ setup hops per
location (See Rails, Big Moves...). The implication here is that the
ability to use setup hops makes the line easier. Ryan hasn't stopped
using setup hops as he has developed. Eliminating the setup hops,
then, has to have justification, which is primarily aesthetic - it
simply looks better - and may actually hurt one's trials/technical
performance in a given place/time.
To me it's clear that setup hops play a valuable role in riding and
that a blanket "manifesto" to eliminate them is inappropriate.
However, the effort to do so may be very instructive and add a valuable
tool to one's riding - a tool that can be used when it is the right
time to do so.
--
U-Turn
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-- Dave Stockton
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