Trackstand is one of the most popular tricks in the fixed gear world. We would say it’s not even a trick, but an elementary brick you need a 100% to master. Whether you’re searching to have more control on your fixie or want to get into freestyle riding, you’re in the right place.

Concept

The concept of the trackstand is to be able to stop your bike without putting your foot on the ground by keeping your balance. Whereas other bikes, it is possible on a fixed gear thanks to the ability to go forward and backward.

Also, the second element that allows you to keep your balance on the side is front wheel being turned.

1. The first step is to determine your dominant foot. If you’ve ever skidded on your fixie, it is the foot that comes forward and pulls the strap upward.

It can be the same as the foot you use to kick with when you play soccer, or the foot you prefer to start pedaling with. If you still don’t know yet, continue reading and try the trick with one foot.

In case you don’t feel confortable, give a try to the other one.

2. As soon as you’ve determined it, you can slowly start to pedal forward and try to stop with your feet at horizontal (pedals at the same level, like 9-3 on a clock).

Try to keep as much as possible your ass on the seat. At the beginning it will weird, but keep on repeating this.

3. Once you can decently slow down to your balance point using your feet, turn your frontweel to the side of your dominant foot.

4. At this point, all you have to do is to keep to look forward, front wheel turned, horizontal pedals, well sat on the seat. To keep your balance, you have to push alternatively forward and backward without moving from the seat. Otherwise, you will loose the balance point and trigger a chaotic situation will be hard to get back to it.

It’s weird, but it’s important to feel confused with the balance point sometimes. Getting back to balance as much as you can is a very good exercise.

Remarks

Don’t forget to correct with the back pedal. If you're struggling with trackstand, we really recommend giving a try to ride fakie. This way, you should feel more confident when it comes to correcting the balance backward: you'll be going backward and forward too much but you will progressively fine tune it till you standstill on your bike.

Again, the common mistake while learning trackstand is to loose your balance while doing a backward/forward correction. Try to keep your bottom on the seat as much as you can, especially when you correct backward. Relax your front foot, being tensed leads to loss of the balance point!

We hope to see you stopping and standing on your bike at the next red light, but there's more chances that you'll burn it…

If the tutorial helped you in any way, you can follow @after.spin on Instagram!

Video Tutorial

Here is a video tutorial by Jackson Radshaw, the founder of FOAD Gang :