Cow Maneuver

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Cow Maneuver

COW MANEUVER

The Cow Maneuver (often called a Smith Decade) is a pretty good ending trick for several tricks. It is possible to do them out of Rope-a-Ronis and Pinky Squeaks. It is possible to do them while rolling and there are hundreds of variations of the trick.

Why is it called a Cow Maneuver here? Because Pete Brandt was the person who came up with the trick in the late 80's and came up with that name. A few months later there was an AFA Masters event in which Gerry Smith debuted the trick in a national contest. Once again the magazines misrepresented the sport and started calling the trick a Smith Decade. If you have any doubts... the VERY FIRST Cow Maneuver done in a contest is (or will be) in the video section of BMXTRIX- check it out!

Prerequisites: It is good to know how to do cross-footed half lashes to ashtrays (see Gerator how-to).

Begin by rolling at a slow/medium speed with both feet on the back pegs and your left pedal most of the way toward the ground (not all the way).

Put your right foot on the front left peg and push the frame around like you would for a whiplash or a smoothie- exactly like you do for a gerator.

When the back end of the bike hits the ground put your left foot on the right back peg and coast forward in a circle... Forward is the direction you are facing... the bike itself is actually going backwards. It is important that you feel comfortable doing this so you should spend a few hours (days) learning the balance on this.

When you feel comfortable with your coasting, put most of your weight on your right foot (on the front peg) and pull your hips slightly back. Grab the rear brakes HARD.

At the exact same time let your weight go almost entirely onto your left foot on the rear peg. The bike will travel upwards toward vertical.

Keep the brakes locked and your right foot on the front peg... Push off the rear peg and pull your body over the top of the bike.

As with a decade, you are not going OVER the bike, you are going up and pulling the frame underneath of you. Actually, because you are not just jumping up but can put your body weight against the front peg and the handlebars it is not too difficult to stall this trick at its peak.

To begin with just try to get the bike underneath of you... When the bike gets entirely underneath of you the front end should be falling to the ground. At about the same time that your front tire hits the ground your left foot should land on the left pedal that was set in position for you to land on at the beginning of the trick.

If you land to the left of the pedal or are landing way to the left of the bike then you are trying to go over the bike instead of drawing the bike underneath of you enough. If you are not able to get over the bike then when you push off the rear peg you are pushing to far out to your left (the right of the bike). You should just grab the brakes and let your body travel almost straight toward the center of the rear axle.

Since you land this trick with your foot on the pedal and front peg just pull your foot off the peg and put it on the pedal... ride away.

Cow Maneuvers are not that difficult but they are kind of different. If you can do decades then it helps out on this trick a ton. You will already be comfortable with the whole concept of going over the top of the bike. This is one of those tricks that you can be REAL close to for a few weeks and all of a sudden you will be able to land them and you won't ever mess up doing them. In the end this is one of those 'fun' tricks to do. You can practice a bunch of different ways into and out of them. You can see how long you can stall one at the top. You can be bored and just use it as an easy way out of tricks. Whatever you want!


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