Everyone who gets into BMX ultimately wants to learn how to barspin. For some people, this is a very easy trick to catch on to but for others, it’s very difficult to get over the fear of letting go of the bars, slinging them around, and catching them. I had no problem actually throwing the barspin. But I did have a problem with landing the barspin.
Most Helpful Tip
One of my biggest problems was that I would throw the bar and then I would catch the bar with one hand but my throwing hand would never actually be able to get back on the bar so that I could land. This would cause me to land with one hand on and I could never roll out. I’ve tried this so many different times to no avail.
Fortunately, my grandpa would come with me to the skate park and he gave me a few pointers. It’s really crazy that he was able to help me learn barspins but the biggest thing that helped me out was keeping my throwing hand touching the bar. This is called “bus driving”. The way I started to learn this was rolling on flat ground without picking my bike up and just busing the bar spin around. After doing this a few times on flat ground I tried in the air and landed the bar spin.
Get Ready for Haters
Doing a barspin this way is kind of frowned upon because it doesn’t look very stylish. So if you want to take this route and learn the barspin this way, be prepared for people to talk about it. All I did is I learned it this way, I practiced it that way, and then when I was ready to I could alter the way that I barspin to have really nice looking barspins. I mean it’s a barspin regardless so it really doesn’t matter.
Other Tips
A few other tips to actually outline the barspin for you is when you’re in the air pinch your knees. Pinching your knees keeps the bars from going to one side or another. The other thing is keep your chest over the bars you want your hips back your knees pinched but your chest over top of the bar that way you’re in full control of how the barspin comes around.
The final tip I want to give you when you’re learning barspins is practice. Every time you go ride you should be throwing and practicing barspins when you’re just standing there you should be throwing them out of the fly out, you should be setting a goal of how many you’re going to attempt per day and don’t give up until you actually land that trick.
I designed a whole course that teaches you how to do over 60 different BMX tricks. Barspin is definitely in there and we set a huge focus on making sure that barspin was super helpful. If you’re interested you can join Bike School
to take your skills to the next level and get personalized tips and feedback on your attempts from nick and me. Check out Bike School here.
