pushing the bike forward when jumping

The push on small jump faces is a result of the bike rebounding and you letting the machine go where it wants. That sounds odd but you don't want to fight it. It happens when you feel like the handle bars are about to be jerked out of your hands. Instead of resisting you go with the flow and almost look like your going through whoops.
The next time I do a push is when I want to get the front end down and am sucking the bike up to me to cancel lift.
These are advanced jumping techniques and if you are still working on basic flight, which it sounds like, you have to just become more comfortable with jumping before you are going to fully understand the push principle. Sometimes you don't even realize you are doing it.
The two photos are of the same jump. Upon landing I gas it for another jump that has its up-ramp 15-18 ft from the landing ramp. When I land I am more forward than in the photo. I don't have one to show you. But you can see that you don't get to the pushed position all at once, it flows.

When you say "pushing" are you talking about as you leave the jump extend your arms and sort of stand up in a position that your arms are fully extended and lead with your head?

I gotcha now. :thumb:

jim7411 said:

I really don't seem to fly very far. I think that it is in my body positioning.

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It is not, it is in your speed when you take off.

Do I need to hit it faster and push the bike forward, then land with the gas on or what?

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You need to hit the jump faster. You body positioning makes a small difference (which can be significant cases where you really can't get up to as much speed as you would want to because the previous obstacle or turn is so close to the jump). You should almost always land with the gas on.

Pushing the bike forward has more of an effect to push the front end down. When hitting a jump on the gas, you are (by necessity) fairly far forward and the front end may still end up rather high in the air. Once airborn, pushing the front end away from you pushes it down. Similarly, pulling the bars toward you pulls the front end up.

I couldn't find any really good pictures, but here are two of the same jump. The first just after takeoff with an old, fat guy still fairly forward on the bike, then the second closer to landing with the bike pushed forward (down) to match the angle of the landing:
http://20-20racing.com/Gomer/Gomer_barrel5.jpg
http://20-20racing.com/Gomer/Gomer_barrel6.jpg

jim7411 said:

I really don't seem to fly very far. I think that it is in my body positioning. By staying in the middle of the bike, I have a tendency to pull the bike up to me. So I pretty much go up and then drop straight down like a rock and land pretty hard.

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I feel like this when I back out of going the entire distance of the jump. Although speed is involved, it is power that gets you the distance. When approaching the jump you have momemtum and if you are slightly accelerating you have power. If you keep that acceleration constant and hit the ramp you will be slowing down on the ramp because you were slightly accelerating.
**** Now don't grab a handful of throttle on the bike.
What bike do you ride? But when going up a hill or ramp your bike is now fighting other gravitational forces and thus slows you down and robs power from the bike.
I think you really need some one to video tape you going over these jumps so you can see what is really going on. Landing on the flat off a ramp is a very hard landing. Landing on a table top is better and I hope you are not doing doubles since it does not sound as you are ready to tackle them.
When guys land on the back side of jumps they are not getting the stopping forces of landing on flats. To improve the ride even more and feel less impact they land with the gas on. By having the gas on, the back suspension stays stiffer and then does not bottom you out. Plus your forward momentum is not slowed down either.
I would like you to tell us if you are completing jumps such as the ones gomer has provided, how do they compare?
Subscribe, and you can see my thumbnails in the previous post. I made the pictures specifically for you.

If you have too much room before the jump and are running up to it and then slowing down, then accelerating to jump,,, this is tricky when going the maximum speed on every point along that route. What I saw the GP guys do is accelerate very hard, brake very hard and then let off the brakes about 20ft before the jump. The of course have timing down. I get very nervous when I am rapidly acclerating to a jump face. At a distance it is hard to judge how much speed you need. So I would advise going slower up to the jump and getting the feel for the speed/acceleration needed to clear.
Or just barrel up to it and whip the heck out of it on the face like Bubba. It looks easy enough when he does it. There is a reason why he is a champ you know.

If you have too much room before the jump and are running up to it and then slowing down, then accelerating to jump,,, this is tricky when going the maximum speed on every point along that route. What I saw the GP guys do is accelerate very hard, brake very hard and then let off the brakes about 20ft before the jump. They of course have timing down. I get very nervous when I am rapidly acclerating to a jump face. At a distance it is hard to judge how much speed you need. So I would advise going slower up to the jump and getting the feel for the speed/acceleration needed to clear.
Or just barrel up to it and whip the heck out of it on the face like Bubba. It looks easy enough when he does it. There is a reason why he is a champ you know.