The brakeless trend in freestyle now is stirring up almost the same friction as clips/flats. I was completely, entirely against it at first, but figured hey, if they`re doing it to improve their riding, power to `em. I hate trends, and it irks me to be a part of one, even accidentally.



Yet I found myself pulling my lever and cable off this evening, rendering me brakeless. In racing it`s your arse if you loop out. You could at worst loop out and rupture a disk, at best lose the race. I have riddin with a finger on the brake for a few years now, and found myself feathering it at the park and while street riding, scrubbing speed out of irrational fear. I spoke with a friend who is an AMAZING park rider, and he doesn`t ride brakelss but he did for a while. He said it improved his flow tremendously, and he learned how to use body english to regulate speed and hang time instead of brakes. 

I rode around for an hour or so with my 3 year old, just doing manuals and bunnyhops in front of the house, and it was strikingly liberating. I`ll need a little while to get 360`s down without brakes (bunnyhop 360`s that is), but 180`s were actually easier once I manned up and did one fast. manuals aren`t any harder, just gotta pay more attention to keeping the wheel a scoatch lower. I`ll hit the park tomorrow for the true test. So far I like it. I still like to do fufanus and wall taps, which require brakes so I suspect they won`t stay off long. But for now, I`m one of those trendy a-holes I can`t stand 

Stupid dumb trend but (I guess) I can respect the commitment.

I don't know about this one. I think I just get tired of the way trends work in BMX and this one just seems so ridiculous. I can remember kids coming over to ride the jumps in my backyard and telling me that 23" wide bars "make it easier to do barspins". Now the next generation of kids is (was) coming over and telling me 30" wide bars "make it easier to do barspins". I'm older than ever and all these "trends" in BMX make me feel more out of place than ever. It's hard to go to the skatepark in sort of baggy pants with a pretty normal looking bike with a little seatpost showing and feel like I'm supposed to be there with all the tight panted scooter kids. Some changes make sense and some just don't to me. I know the irrational speed scrub and I know I shouldn't do that but I don't think I'll ever take my brakes off. I just like racer-inspired bikes with smooth lines.

I'll tell you this though, I like the look of a bike without brakes more than I like the look of a bike with a gyro on it.

Well, I rode the park brakeless tonight and I hated all but about 4 minutes of it. It was neat to putter around in front of the house, but my brakes went right back on before I even changed out of my sweaty clothes. I suppose it would be ok if I rode all day, every day, but I don`t. Brakes aren`t holding me back enough to be worth the learning curve without them. I can do smith grinds, and 50-50`s, and icepick grinds with them. I can do cross ups and turndowns and 360`s with them. I can`t do fufanus or wall taps without them, so they will stay on.

I tried it, didn`t like it, so I`m back to riding Foster style, brakes on and fully functional. Not to buck the trend, but to be me. (and i`m good with that)

I think with the new generation of riders it's almost unusual TO run brakes. To a teenager just starting riding, running 2 brakes is about as current as running forkstanders in 1998.....


I'd say only half of the pro street riders run brakes (which seems weird, considering you run a lot better chance of running into, say, a semi or a bus out riding street. Most new school flatlanders don't run them either. At first watching either ramps or flat was weird when someone was brakeless, because they were so limited that they couldn't do half their normal tricks. Now guys like Jim C., Edwin, Chase Hawk, Simon Tabron, Hoffman, Chase G., etc. have figured out how to do almost every trick without brakes. I think most of the really good park riders still run a back brake though.

I saw a kid at a local park in Philly do a tailwhip tailtap on a 6' quarter brakless! That's hard enough WITH brakes!

Now the worst part of this trend is tons of kids at the park who have no bike control anyway crashing into everyone because they can't stop. I'm sure people have been hit by cars as well. Of course, people could just NOT pull the lever while doing tricks. Sometimes it's good to be able to use brakes for their original purpose, which is to stop the bike. Ruining shoes and tires is stupid.

I don't think I'll ever take my brakes off, because I like megaspins to decades too much.

That's totally true. It's getting rare to see them anymore.


Amen, that's what really bugs me. The fact that it is a trend and most people doing it don't really even know why they're doing it.

Brakes for me... I am just old school like that...

My only issue with the brakeless trend is at crowded public parks.. Too many people in one place, a lot of them have no control anyway, adding brakeless riders, especially those who just took off the brakes, can just add to the problems bike riders have with park access...

Brian

BS-- it's funny you mentioned that about the bars-- back when everyone was riding with their hands on the curves, i had mine cut to 26inches, a nice comfy place for me, and kids were like "man, look how wide his bars are?!?!?"

i hopped on my nephew's bike the other day and his bars were mega-wide, he hopped on my bike and was like"dude, what's up with the skinny bars?"

i'll always run brakes-- but i also ride my race bike for everything. i've considered getting a street frame and racing it, they have gotten light enough these days. i might get solid to weld some 3/8 drop outs on a killing machine for me. we'll see what happens at the end of this race season.

I ran narrow bars, went back to the wide bars, I can't or will never ride brakeless. Chase G started this in the 90's for flat, and for spinning around in a parking lot it is cool. But 6 years ago I watched a kid almost get killed(brakeless) while we were on a "rouge session" Almost got taken out by a car. And yes when I mean taken out I mean for good.

There would be spans of weeks or even a couple of months when I was a kid where I`d have no brakes because I snapped a cable and couldn`t afford a new one, so riding around the streets and using my foot in the tire would be second nature.

Of the dozen or so kids I see regularly at the park who ride brakeless, 2 or 3 are pretty good, one is very, very good. The rest are not good at all. The REALLY good cats out there run rear brake and a gyro.

Personally, I think a ton of the brakeless kids are just too dumb/too lazy to get a set of brakes to work properly so they just take them off.

haha, agreed

So where are the buttons for "sometimes" and "brakeless for life"?

I rode brakeless for a couple of summers when I was only riding street, but have them back on now. I took them back off a couple of times, but felt squirelly. I think one brake, no pegs is my favorite setup to ride, and how my favorite riders run their bikes. I like the way my bike looks without brakes, but having brakes is just more moto.

Bitd, you could usually tell who the best riders were because their brakes WORKED. Knowing how to dial brakes was a point of pride and a show of your skill and devotion to being a serious rider. If you were going to be doing even the most basic flatland from 1984-1998, you pretty much HAD to have brakes that worked great.

This is a sign of my age, but I think it's weird when kids think I'm the kooky one for riding brakes, considering when I was a kid, the typical goof was just rolling around on his older brother's discarded 1986 GT Performer in 1990. The guy never knew how to do anything beyond jumping curbs with it. His bike ALWAYS had a.) a broken top gyro cable sticking straight up from the gyro b.) the front calipers and lever with no cable at all, c.) a rusty chain, d.) rusted spokes, e.) a pair of Chicago'ed bars, and finally f.) torn through grips pushed all the way to the crossbar. That was the typical transportation of 3/4 of the kids I went to school with..... It's no wonder they never learned to be good riders.

I ran just a back brake for a few years and it was alright but i still like to do can can endos .

I typically just run a rear brake. I never found a reason to run a front brake. However, I do go brake-less depending on the riding I plan on doing. If I plan on flowing at a park (park depending) then I will remove my brake. If I ride street, then I keep them on. The prospect of getting hit by a car is not really my thing. I live in Japan so probability of getting swhacked by a car is high.

As for bars;
I still get a lot of "omg man your bars are wide" (Peregrine Q's uncut 28") yet at the same time i see the current "trend" is going toward wider bars, no? and i fully get the kick out of it now that everybody is regretting for cutting their bars a few years ago and sporting some 28"s now. It seems to go back and forth. Maybe in a few years time they go back to 23"-25" again, who knows. I have cut my bars once back in 1996 when i took one inch total off my Q's and hated it. It did nothing for me, only made the bars feel weird and narrow and ruined them.

As for brakes;
A lot my (flatland) friends have been taking off the last remaining brake, the front brake. I won't even mention the street park whatever riders that's another story. Well, it improves your riding skills and control everyone says, but only, only IF you're actually ready to put in some effort 110% everyday with 6-8hrs straight riding, otherwise i'd say you're just making things harder for yourself if you're an average rider. I see kids riding brakeless only when they've just started and without the basic skills and control over the bike. That's stupid.

The rear brakes been long gone, we all know that, which is another irritating thing i could never understand as to "why". This quote is one of my alltime favorites, "if you want to ride brakeless -TAKE YOUR FINGERS OFF THE LEVERS". It's really that simple. It takes quite a bit of self disclipine to actually not use brakes while the brake(s) and levers are still there. Try it.

Some say the brakes weigh too much so that's good enough reason to take them off. Why not leave the cool keychain and ipod home, those are just extra weight, too.

People are ready to volunteerly miss out on many rear wheel tricks and techiques because they don't "allow" themselves to use rear brake because it's not in style right now. And here we have a few thousand kids doing the same front wheels tricks everyone else is doing. Is that supposed to be cool?

Maybe we see the brakes come back eventually. Also, we can't deny the peer pressure plays key role if all your friends ride brakeless or with just front brake that is, if you're a younger person. And you don't want to be the only kid on the block with both brakes do you? OMG!!!111 YA STIL GOT DEM BREAKS ON!!??!?!?! U RETARDID OR SUMTHIN?!?!?

Bottom line, to each its own but i think the brakeless trend is silly.

"flow"... haha!

Good post, Timo. Yeah, I agree, modern flat seems to have forgotten about the back brake. Wilhelm still rides one though and he's as good as anyone else. I was amazed when people started taking off the back brake. it was funny, because the brakes came off just a few years after back AND front 990s w/chrome rims and good cables became standard, which meant for the first time ever brakes actually WORKED. I would think that some kid in 1986 trying to get a Spinmaster 2 to work with a cheap caliper, a non teflon cable, and mags would've thrown the brakes in the trash way back then......


It started with Osicka worship in the late 90's, but people seemed to forget that he pretty much only did FRONT wheel tricks. There are a few riders that have adapted nearly everything on flat they could do WITH brakes to brakeless riding, but most just drop almost all their old routines and adopt new ones. I think it makes most modern flat look very similar. Sure, it is possible to do an undertaker or a decade brakeless, but in a way those are almost totally different tricks than doing them with brakes.

I think a big mover in the brakeless trend is that it's easy to maintain....a bike with no brakes, mid bb, integrated headset and sealed everything probably takes less than 30 minutes to put together and requires basically zero maintenance. No bearings to repack ever, nothing to adjust really....you spend more time pumping up your tires than putting the entire front end and the cranks together combined. Kids don't want to spend time working on their bikes and I would imagine that most of the younger brakeless guys don't have clue as to how to set up a solid 990.

ah... peer pressure, do you realize how old this makes me feel?

Very?

my son rode all the time but when he worked on his brakes he would be so stoked when he got them just right and would just have to go ride no matter what time it was. i never understood that but now i do. i sure wish he were here to show me how to get mine just right in less than a couple hours. not really but i swear it takes me forever to get them set up right.

I run front and back brakes. I like brakes because they give me more riding possibilities. The last few times I went to the park, I really paid attention to how I use my brakes, and I found that I only use them when I am doing flat tricks or slowing down to avoid people and obstacles.

I was brakeless for a few years, but that was because I got back into riding, but I gave my brakes away and took a long time to buy new brakes.

If you think riding brakeless is a somewhat new thing you are waaaaay out of touch with Freestyle (I hate that term it is too generic for this sport now) Brakless has been around as a staple for well over a decade. Hoffman and most of the vert riders started doing it back in the early to mid 90's. The fact that you see a bunch of punk kids at the park doing it is because people are sheep. If 3 pros wore maxi pads on their foreheads in a bike video or in a magazine, 3 monthes later tons of kids would be sporting the same thing.
As far as flatland goes, the flow style of riding brakless is now the norm. Nobody does hopping or stall tricks anymore, its all about linking tricks together in a smooth fashion. Its too easy to get locked in to your own personal era of BMX/Freestyle and when that happens its hard to appreciate what the guys are doing. I ride with a back brake at the park, Im too old and it hurts too much not to have that extra piece of security but bagging on people that do ride brakeless is silly. I remember when the gyro came out in the late 80's and the older guys I rode with always laughed at it because "It was'nt needed to do freestyle". Change is hard for us oldtimers but you change with the times or you get left behind. Kids only create drama about riding brakeless because they think they invented it, most younger riders have no clue about their BMX roots but on the same hand alot of older riders lack the will to accept that most 14 year old are better riders than they ever were.

The brakeless trend is an interesting one. I think a small portion of riders who do it are doing it to truly challenge themselves. Another small portion is doing it because brake maintenence is a pain in the heiney. I think a large portion are just doing it because that is what is "normal". Think back to when you were 13 unless you were someone who had a real strong personality you just kinda cruised along and did/rode what most of your freinds or idols did/rode. IF someone is goin brakeless or removing their pegs for a legit reason I think it is great. Strangely enough I have been seriously considering adding 2 more pegs and a front brake to my new school park bike. And leaving my bars the same width they have always been since I built it.

As hard a i try to remember back in time to mid 90s, i honestly can't remember a single pro riding brakeless, but maybe those riders never got coverage in magazines? Hoffman? Really? Can't remember that at all.

And, we all know what flatland is these days, but thanks for the recap! What?! no hopping tricks!? no balancing tricks?! NOOOOOO!! My bubble just broke!

Change unavoidable but not always good, especially with the moronic fad to take off both brakes before you can even do your first trick or put your bike together without dad's help, or mom's for that matter.

Like it's been said, guys who challenge themselves by learning to ride brakeless makes much more sense than simple just not having them for ridiculous reasons like, "they are too much extra weight" or, because it's the current fad and that's what kids see in magazines.

As for keeping up, I for one, am perfectly aware and comfortable with the fact that my skills are nothing compared to what the kids are doing on their bikes these days. But at the same time it's too black and white to say you either follow the times or get left behind. I personally don't have the ambition to try and keep up, and physically it would not be even possible. I would only end up hurting myself more than necessary. I feel sad for some of the old riders trying to keep up with the times any way they can, most of the time it just ends up looking weird. I will be 36 in november.

Ive been riding brakeless for the past 7 years and I dont plan on ever adding brakes again. Lots of deck tricks, like tailtaps, just come out of the ramp a little alley oop. I do lots of 360 tail taps and putting pressure on your pedals will keep your front end up. I like it also because you learn to use body english to control your bike in panic situations. You learn to flow better on street and park.

The word is freestyle, do whatever you want. You wanna ride brakes, ride brakes, but don't be hatin on us who don't

eh... flow is flow. You might flow better, but I don't. Riding brakeless doesn't make you flow better. Brakeless just makes simpler tricks harder. maybe ya like that, its cool. My bro Adam wears goggles in shows to make the tricks harder for him to pull, he was bored with 3 whips and such. I view it like that. You wanna go brakeless, just dont use your brakes, lol. There is no automatic skill improvement from taking of a cable, lever, pads and brake arms. lol. I love it when people make this claim. hahahah.

I love how people try to inforce their beliefs about riding skills on others. I dont care if people ride with or without brakes. Its called freestyle for a reason.

I had the same opinions as you do about 2 years ago, then I put together a new school bike and started riding about 4 hours everyday again. Guess what happenednext? I started progressing again after a few months. I could have sat in my midschool ways and tried to be happy putting around on a bike that I spent way too much restoring. No I went out and climbed back into it. Kids have a huge advantage over us, they have a skatepark on every corner and parents who like to help, so the progress at a very young age. Everyone likes to complain the new school riders need to learn their roots, why should they? Old and mid school riders bag on them just about every chance they get. BMX/Freestyle may be on TV but not out heritage, its just contest so they dont have alot of avenues to learn their roots. Magazines dont really cover anything about the golden years of freestyle. They dont come in droves to oldschool sites because they see threads posted that complain about what the love about riding, yeah its no brakes and a slammed seat but its still riding. As far as trends go, their only trends if you havnt been aware. Brakeless has had a following for a long time. Bikes and riding styles will change and complaing about it means we have officially turned in to our parents.

You nailed it Jaybrand. I could care less how somebody else sets up thier bike. Mine is mine.

it seems like some of the pioneers of it (at least with street riding video coverage) were Troy McMurray (colorado), Butcher (PA), Ratboy and Gonz (Phoenix), which was mid to late 90's.

Well, what I hate about the brakeless trend is that most NEW bikes so anymore don't have F & R brakes. The Eastern Metalhead was the ONLY bike in Danscomp's lineup that had F & R brakes! The 09 GT Performer had F & R brakes; now GT's entire 2010 bmx bike lineup has NO FRONT BRAKE! Totally sucks as now many mfgs leave out the front brake and there are less fork options with 990 mounts.

Some people will never give up F & R brakes so Mfgr's should have at least one good bike in their lineup with F & R brakes.

But brakeless tailswhips are hard and impressive to do! If you can do everything brakeless that's so much harder and impressive!

Go buy a set of forks with 990 mounts and put them on your complete. Or go out and get a 990 plate to mount your brakes. If they dont have complete bikes with front brakes, add your own. Times are changing and you either go with it, or keep griping and be left behind

Great points!