Neet site. You said the suspention was stock on your EX. I was doing some jumps on a table top the other day. By the pix a friend took I was only getting about 5' up, and it landed offley hard. I guess what I'm trying to ask is is there some thing I'm doing rong?

 

maybe i can help. what setting is the suspension on? my friend had his on the hardest and i'be had that thing way more than 5 feet in the air and landed on the front tires and not bottomed it. now its on the softest setting and i bottom it from a flat landing from about 3 foot high. are you using a landing ramp?

 

Well... Sometimes you are limited by the jump and the landing. The suspension was stock on many of the jumps, on some of them it was not, but all the jumps pictured can be landed with stock shocks.

Some jumps will allow you to get more air and land it then others, but there is some technique involved as well...

If you're jumping onto a slight uphill grade (even very slight), that will really limit the height you can attain without bottomming harshly. Conversely, a slight downhill grade will make a big difference in the other direction. Flat landings are hard on things - if you'll notice, most of my bigger jumps are on doubles or large tabletops where I can land on a steep downhill landing ramp - believe it or not the "big one" on my maingpage landed like I never even left the ground.

Some techniques that you can try are, to land with your rears ever so slightly before the fronts, landing on the fronts first will many times cause the rear end to slap and bottom harshly, landing on the rears slightly will cause the same thing to happen to the front shocks, but it can be controlled. About the time you land, hammer the throttle. This does 2 things, it stiffens the rear suspension and when you land it will transfer torque and ease the landing on the front tires.

On many of my more flat landing jumps, I land with the throttle pinned and hit hard enough and am transferring enough torque that the instant the suspension begins to rebound, the bike pulls a significant power wheelie. You can see this in action if you look closely on my video of the sand jump on my website.

Of course this technique can only be used where you have lots of room.

Also make sure you are using a lot of your leg strength to help absorb the landings.

Some of this will change with aftermarket shocks. For instance, with my TCS's I like to land on the fronts when doing doubles and landing on a down ramp.