Ideally avoid Halfords. Their bikes are really fucking heavy. My boy had one at first, had to sell and buy something lighter. Not a good learning weight at all.
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This. Most kids bikes are ridiculously heavy. Can’t remember what brand we got but had to go to an independent bike shop and ask them to order something in. The weight makes a massive difference at that age when the wheels are so small. If I remember tomorrow I’ll go look what it is
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An oodie, no?
Investigate a bike wtih a coaster / back-pedal brakes. A 5 YO will usually find it hard to use normal hand brakes due to size/strength and the coaster brake just needs to pedal backwards. Used a lot in Netherlands, etc. where bikes are used for transport rather than racing.
I was looking at Isla and Frog a few years ago and they seemed pretty good, Puky was another which came up and that was what I got for an 8YO.
I got my son a bmx from Halfords for Christmas. Cheap and cheerful. On the heavier side admittedly, but he can handle it fine.
He worked out how to pull a brake lever to slow down in the first 10 seconds.
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I just noticed @Les_Zeppelin ’s profile pic change 
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Back on chucklevison airways today, let’s see what random French city I end up in this morning.
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On time surprisingly punctual. Awful flight fucking all over the place for 40mins at the end.
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Very be much liking the reclaimed materials used to build this and will be used for future projects rather than the skip .
Street league / xgames take note.
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What do you guys reckon is the most legit way to do 5050s, on transition and on rails, frontside and backside: cross locked or heel side?
In my mind it’s like
- frontside on transition, cross locked
- backside on transition, heel side
- frontside on rails, heel side
- backside on rails, heel side
Doing the cross lock thing is probably easier on flat rails though. Hhmmm…
So, where do you stand (no pun intended)?
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Every frontside 50 Iv done on transition Iv always had my weight in the ramp. I don’t think I could purposely cross lock if I tried.
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I was doing frontside 5050s on a mini quarter pipe both ways the other day and thought about Ben Degros’ theory about street skaters doing them heel side (like you would on a ledge) and transition skaters doing them cross locked in the car after the session, not knowing what technique I preferred. Cross locked feels safer, heel side feels more natural but then again I suppose I am a street skater, or at least grew up being one.
Led me to think about doing 5050s on round flat rails again.
#midlifecrisis #hallowedbethynameinspotify
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I guess I’m heel side then!
unless you are consciously putting your weight on the balls of your feet then your weight will naturally be on your heels. on transition (and on a ledge) i think you relax/more naturally do everything (50:50-wise) with your weight heelside. if you 50:50 a ledge/transition consciously with your weight on the balls of your feet then its gonna feel fucking horrible and probably look sketchy
not sure about flat rails because fuck that noise. all the youtubers go on about cross lock
@franc i’ve seen that Ben video you’re talking about it and i thought it was weird. back when i used to skate a bit of transition i did a lot of front fifties and i don’t think i ever cross locked deliberately once
Yeah of course.
I don’t give a shit about YouTubers, I want to do them like I’m the love child of Tom Penny and Wade Speyer.
Yeah I do them heel side naturally but a friend I was skating with told me cross locked was better. Hhmmm.
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I think I was 30 before I even heard the term cross locked. I don’t think I’ve ever done it intentionally.
Is it a relatively new technique (hence the increase in massive triple kink 5050s the last however many years), or have they always been done, it just didn’t have a name?
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Both techniques always existed but from what I remember Muska, JT and people who could do gnarly 5050s on rails in the 90s usually did them heel side.
I just watched Drehobl’s Krooked Kronichles section again. Funnily enough, in the intro, the Gonz himself and Drehobl argue about something kind of similar (how to do a pivot stall correctly). Later in his section, Drehobl does multiple 5050s on transition, heel side when done backside, cross locked when done frontside. This video came out in 2006 I think.
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