BMX How To Barspin

Barspins are one of the most popular tricks in BMX today. It is such a versatile trick that looks good on it's own and can seemingly be added anywhere. Here, we break the barspin down step by step and provide some very useful tips on how to learn them properly.

Clockwise or Counter-Clockwise?

While the beauty of BMX is that there are no rules, there are still common ways of doing things. If you ride with your right foot forward, we suggest tossing the barspin in a clockwise direction. If you ride left foot forward, toss it counter-clockwise. This helps keep your bike stable while the bars are rotating and also works better once you're ready to add barspins to spins, such as 180's and 360's.

Throw With One Hand, Catch With The Other

If you ride right foot forward and spin the bars counter-clockwise, you will want to throw the bars with your right hand and catch them with your left.

DO NOT THROW WITH BOTH HANDS! I mean, you can do whatever you want, but this will certainly make the trick much more difficult and look sloppy. We see a lot of riders learning barspins doing the "two hand throw" or "X-up throw" (see gif below). Learn them properly and throw with one hand. This allows the other hand to move in to position to catch the bar and stop the spin.

Wrong

Correct

Pull Up Bars...Only To Learn!

To get comfortable with the body position needed and tossing the bars, a lot of riders like to do pull-up bars. This is where you lift just the front wheel to execute the bar spin. This is a good stepping stone to actually bunny hopping and learning the trick, but does not count as a trick itself! We kid, do whatever makes you happy, but be prepared for some hater to say a pull up bar doesn't count.

We mentioned body position. With the barspin, it's all about getting your legs straight, back, and out of the way to avoid hitting the bar as it rotates. While doing this, you need to hinge at your hips to keep your upper body over the top of the bars. Basically, the lower body goes back and out of the way while the upper body goes forward to keep your center of mass on the bike rather than falling off the back of the bike.

The Higher The Easier

While your instincts may be to just do a small hop to stay close to the ground and be safe, this makes the trick much more difficult. You need some time to get the bars around, catch them and be ready to land. This is why you need to bunny hop pretty high if you're doing them on flat or out of a wedge. If you're flying out of a transition this is a bit easier. As mentioned, learning on flat ground is a bit safer but takes the most effort.

Regardless of if you're doing a bunny hop or throwing them out of a ramp, you want to start the toss at your peak. Get your height, level the bike out, and as you are leveling the bike, this is where you toss the bars.

Pro Tip:

When you let go of the bars, gravity likes to take over and the front end of the bike wants to drop. This is a very common issue riders deal with when learning to barspin.

What helped me with this is to not just rotate the bars, but slightly toss them up. Not a drastic amount, just slightly up and around keeps that front end where it should be. Of course many riders, especially back in the day, would pinch the seat with their knees. These days most riders seats are too low for this. You can pinch your cranks with your heel and toes to help a bit, but for me just thinking about slightly tossing the bars up and around helped me the most.

And of course...HAVE FUN!