Freestyle BMX is the name given to people who perform tricks and stunts on a BMX. It consists of five disciplines: "street," "park," "vert," "trails" or "dirt jumping," and "flatland."
Origins
Freestyling can be traced back to San Diego teenagers Kyle Miller, Bob Haro, and John Swanguen. In the late 1970s, the three spent a lot of time on their BMX bikes at Skateboard Heaven, a concrete skatepark in their hometown. They were giving the skateboarders a run for their money, duplicating and topping a lot of the insane tricks. Soon they moved out of the skate pools and onto the streets, where they started developing new tricks that became the discipline known as "flatland", with the objective of blowing people's minds.
In the fall of 1977, Haro, then nineteen, left San Diego for a staff artist position at BMX Action magazine in Torrance, California. Every chance he got, he would practice his freestyle moves. It wasn't long before Haro's pastime caught the eye of fourteen year old Robert Louis Osborn (known as "R.L. Osborn"), and the two became friends and riding partners.
With all the trick riding going around the BMX Action offices, how-to articles started popping up in the magazine. Here's a quote from the first freestyle how-to ever printed, which appeared in the January/February 1979 issue: “Trick riders are the ballet dancers of BMX. They are a concert of perfect control; rider and bike joined in a symmetry of choreographed fluid movement.”
The how-to showed how to do a “Rock Walk”, spinning the rear tire around 180 degrees and pulling the front tire back around another 180 degrees to complete a 360 degree circle, so it looks like your bike is walking. The article included photos of Bob Haro demonstrating the trick.
Towards the end of 1979, the first organized freestyle team was created — the BMX Action Trick Team. That came about when Kyle Miller, BMX rookie who made it into the spotlight with his special move the "Kyl-a-mov-a", and Bob Osborn, BMX Action's publisher and R.L. Osborn's father, and Gene Roden, who was with the American Bicycle Association (ABA), had a conversation about what to do for a BMX show scheduled during an intermission at a motocross event in Southern Califor nia's Anaheim Stadium. Roden was in charge of coordinating the presentation.
Bob Osborn and Kyle Miller were best of friends and had the idea that Bob Haro might do some tricks at the intermission, but that was quickly dismissed when he remembered the trick rider Kyle Miller was injured while showing his signature trick. But R.L. Osborn, Bob Osborn's son and Bob Haro's protegé, had enough tricks to handle a show on his own. As it turned out, the demo was scrapped at the last minute. But the trick team idea was firmly planted in the minds of Bob Haro and the senior and junior Osborns, and the BMX Action Trick Team was born in the winter of 1979. Their first public appearance — the first time that organized freestyle was introduced to the general BMX public — was in February 1980 in Chandler, Arizona, at the ABA Winter Nationals.
For most of 1980, Haro kept busy doing freestyle shows, making TV appearances, and giving benefit performances. But late in the year, the Trick Team and Bob Haro parted company, and fifteen year-old Mike Buff, one of BMX Action's bike testers and an above-average freestyler himself, filled the vacancy.
After the BMXA Trick Team became known, other organized trick teams started coming out of the woodwork. Haro formed a team under his own name and began to work on some heavy-duty freestyle products, most notably a freestyle frame and fork kit which Tony Davis started to ride and went to Las Vegas in 1983 and won world championship of freestyle. This was unheard of at the time.
The freestyling movement at this point was very much underground. Although several BMX manufacture-sponsored freestyle teams were touring the US, they were promoting the sport of BMX in general, not specifically freestyle. What many people at the time didn't realize was that freestyling was catching on like wildfire at the grassroots level. Kids who had come to see the trick teams perform in their hometowns were out copying the latest freestyle moves and inventing ones of their own. Everyone was doing it — and it hadn't been labeled as a sport or market yet!
Bob Osborn sought to change all that with a slick quarterly magazine devoted solely to freestyle. In the summer of 1984, Freestylin' Magazine made its debut. The BMX world suddenly noticed the sport's massive potential. Manufacturers hurried to the drawing boards to develop new freestyle bikes, components, and accessories, and began searching for talented riders to sponsor. Bike shops began stocking freestyle products. The American Freestyle Association (AFA) began to put on organized flatland and quarter-pipe competitions. To keep up with the sport's skyrocketing growth, Freestylin' Magazine quickly became monthly.
During the years from 1981 until 1988, the sport of freestyling was at its peak. During this time period, the sport progressed with new bike models being released all the time, as well as new components and accessories designed strictly for freestyle.
Disciplines
Street
Street riding involves maneuvers on obstacles that are typically manmade and not designed for bicycles. They can be, but are not limited to, stairs, handrails, ledges, curved walls, banks, unusually shaped architectural designs and even a simple curb.
Through online surveys and magazine polls, it has been found that a large percentage of riders today participate in this discipline. As in the other forms of freestyle riding, there are no specific rules; style/aesthetics, skills, and creativity are stressed. Street riders tend to have no brakes. Usually they have front and back pegs on one side of the bike. They also have a tendency to ride without flanges on their grips. Some people like this because this because the flange gets in the way when they are doing a barspin trick. Other mostly just like it because of the clean look.
Park
Skateparks are used by BMXers as well as skateboarders, inline skaters and freestyle scooter-riders. Skateparks themselves can be made of wood, concrete or metal. Styles of riding will depend on the style of the parks. Wood is more suited to a flowing style, with riders searching for gaps, and aiming to air higher from the coping. Concrete parks usually tend to contain bowls and pools. However, it is not unusual for riders to merge the two styles in either type of park.
Concrete parks are commonly built outdoors due to their ability to withstand years of exposure to the elements. Concrete parks are also often publicly funded due to their permanent and costly nature. Parks made from wood are popular with commercial skateparks due to ease of construction, availability of materials, cost, and the relative safety associated with falling on wood instead of concrete. Parks designed with BMX use in mind will typically have steel coping that is less prone to damage than concrete or pool coping.
Vert
Vert is perhaps the most extreme of the freestyle BMX disciplines. A half pipe consists of two quarter pipes set facing each other (much like a mini ramp), but at around 10-15 feet tall (around 2.5 to 3.5 metres) high. The biggest ramp ever used in competition is the X-Games big air ramp at 27 feet tall. Both ‘faces’ of the ramp have an extension to the transition that is vertical, hence the name. Coping is a round metal tube at the lip of the vert that helps freestyle BMXers do grinds, and stalls on the lip of the vert.
Riders go up each jump, performing tricks in the air before landing into the transition having turned 180 degrees (assumptively. variations include 540, 900). A typical run involves going from one side to the other, airing above the coping each side. Also possible are 'lip tricks' - tricks on the platform at the top of the ramps before dropping into the ramp.
In the early days (1981 through 1989), legends like Dennis McCoy, Brian Blyther, Ron Wilkerson, Mat Hoffman, Mike Dominguez, Martin Aparijo, Joe Johnson, Eddie Fiola, R.L. Osborn, Woody Itson, and Josh White, paved the way and popularized it into a crazed passion. Interestingly, most of the best BMX Freestylers and pioneers started out with and were sponsored by Haro Bikes.
Mat Hoffman repopularized the sport in the early 90s with a new generation of kids, until recently holding the record for the highest jump of 27' out of a 25' ramp, beaten by Kevin Robinson in 2008 (a total of over 15.5 metres from the ground). He achieved this by being dragged along a field by a friend with a motorbike and hitting one face of the ramp. On one attempt, he lost control at the peak of his jump, and the resulting crash caused life-threatening injuries; he lost his spleen. Remarkably, despite his age and history of injuries, he still competes to this day.
The danger of the discipline (and scarcity of full-size vert ramps) puts most riders off, and so there are a small number of top professionals who remain at the top of the sport for many years. Notable vert riders include Dave Mirra, Chad Kagy, and Jamie Bestwick (who has won the majority of all the major international competitions in six recent years). Other up-and-coming vert riders include 18 year old Zack Warden, who landed
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