Follow our ‘How to whip’ guide and you’ll be laying it flat. As long as you’re an expert, that is!

Pitching your bike sideways in the air is not only the best way to celebrate a significant race win, but expert riders can use a whip to cut faster lap times. It can give you more line choices, lower your trajectory over jumps so you can keep your speed high, and even help you change direction in the air to avoid carnage. And staying in control of a bike that pitches sideways is always a key skill to have.

SEE ALSO: Whip It Like Kristian Whatley

Brought up on tracks that have lots of man-made obstacles, the talented young riders of today are more confident that any other generation about getting air time.

And once they are confident in the air, and of clearing every jump on the track time after time, the next big step is the whip. To pitch the bike sideways in the air to get a speed advantage on the track. And a rider whipping it sideways in front of an opponent suddenly makes his bike “wider” and harder to pass.

Whipping over a jump means that the trajectory of the bike will be lower. So this means a rider can hit a jump at a faster speed, without fear of over-jumping. They can whip it and land perfectly on the down-slope of the jump, so can get on the throttle harder once more. Take the whip to the next level, and do it harder and faster on the face of a jump, and you pretty much have a scrub. Except the bars are turned down in the scrub to keep the bike even lower while they’re turned outwards in a whip. The scrub is the ultimate in keeping it low to avoid over-jumping, and getting it back down to earth as soon as possible.

The essentials of pulling a whip are that you turn the bike on the face of the jump so it goes sideways in the air. Then a blip of throttle, your bodyweight and turning the bars straight should pull it all back in line again for a smooth landing. Sounds simple, of course, but it takes years of practice, skill, confidence and bravery!

Most people have a natural preference for which way the feel comfortable in whipping. But if you can do it both ways equally well, you can use the whip tactically depending on the lines of the track. If a jump is not far out of a left hander, for example, it can be beneficial to turn the bike to left up the face of the jump so it kicks out to the rider’s right. If that’s the case, you’ll often see a line or even little groove appearing which automatically gives more grip and lets you carve up the face of the jump anyway.

If the jump is followed by a right-hander, the rider may wish to kick the back end out left so on landing, you’re already lined up for the next corner.  Being able to use lines more creatively and put the bike precisely where you want it is a key advantage of being able to whip it sideways.

A slippery and unforgiving track, where traction is at a premium, is the hardest place to whip – just like on our photoshoot. Get on the gas hard and the bike just kicks sideways. The lack of grip meant that throttle control is crucial, running in a relatively high gear to avoid wheelspin and to keep the suspension working well. You don’t want to be going up the ramp with the engine screaming it nuts off in a lower gear. If you take off with the bike already revving high then you have no extra power on hand to accelerate up the face or rev it harder in the air to bring it back around. A decent speed, with the bike in the middle of the rev range, is perfect – especially when it’s hard and slick.

Line choice is also important – whether you want turn the bike to left on the face of the jump, so the bike would kick out to the right. Also, pick a smooth take off point.

Just before hitting the face of the jump, many riders just back off the throttle a tiny bit. Then get on the gas again and accelerate up the face of the ramp. This is a gradual acceleration, not a huge handful of throttle as that could send the bike sky high or slipping sideways.

The little off-gas moment is a fraction of a second when a rider can change body position and get in the right place for starting the whip. This is when the real fun starts.

What you then do is start to lean the bike over, just like making a turn. The bike is then carving an arc up the face of the jump, rather than just hitting it and in a straight line. It’s this carving on the face that makes a bike go sideways.

Over the jump in our shots, our tester is leaning the bike to left as it he’s making a slight left had turn. You can see his body lean and the bike actually being over at an angle even though the track is straight. This leaning over on the face of the jump is the key to getting the bike to whip sideways.

As the bike is leant over, there is less pressure on the left hand and footpeg more on the right hand and right footpeg and knee which is pushed into the tank. You are really using your right hand and leg to force the bike to lean over.

Going up a ramp with a bike leaned over when the track was really slippy is a tricky move. The back wheel actually starts to slide sideways as the bike goes up the ramp, which makes pulling whips in slick conditions like this even more tricky.

As the bike goes up the ramp and into the air, the angle of lean means the back end pivots round to the right hand side to pull into the classic whip position.  Relax as the bike does this, rather than fighting it and tensing up.

As soon as the rider is in the air and the bike is sideways, he starts to think about getting the bike straight again for landing. The key is turning the bars into the whip – rather than down like in a scrub – and to keep your body and head as straight as you can

To get it back as straight as possible, a blip of the throttle makes the back wheel spin faster which creates more gyroscopic forces. This really does bring the bike back towards vertical again. And in combination of the rider pulling the left side of the bars back, the bike will straighten up ready for landing.

It’s not crucial that the bike is perfectly straight for landing, but it helps. However, the key is to try to land on the downside of the jump, with the front wheel slightly before the back and – this is really important – the front wheel pointed in the direction you want to go in.

If you land on the downslope a bit sideways, but the front wheel lands first and is pointed in the exact direction you want to go, then the back wheel will straighten up and follow.

Landing straight is the prefect scenario, of course, as there’s no risk of you sliding out and it also means you’re back on the gas earlier. Which, of course, is what it’s all about.