How to ride fakie on a BMX: rolling backwards step by step

Riding fakie means rolling backwards: the bike travels backwards while you look over your shoulder. It sounds like a minor skill, but it is the bridge skill of freestyle: every 180 lands fakie and most street tricks are linked by rolling in or out backwards. Without a calm fakie, every 180 ends with a foot on the ground. If the bunny hop is the base for jumping, fakie is the base for rolling between tricks.

Before you start: what you need

• Confident riding and braking without thinking. You need no tricks first, but you do need the attack position built in: cranks level, arms and legs bent and eyes up. If you are still busy not falling off while rolling forwards, fakie will feel uphill.
• A helmet, no discussion. The first fakie falls happen backwards and without warning: exactly the hit a helmet exists for. And practise away from kerbs and bollards: you have no eyes behind you.
• A flat, wide, empty spot. Rolling backwards you cannot see what is behind you, so the spot is half the session: an empty open space, a car-free car park or the flat area of a skatepark first thing in the morning. If you share the space, read the skatepark and track etiquette and tell people you are practising backwards.

Rolling into fakie: the two doors

The rollback, the classic. Roll forwards up a gentle ramp (a bank), the low lip of a quarter or to the top of a wide kerb. At the top, stop pedalling and let gravity bring you back: the bike rolls down backwards and you are already in fakie. Start very slowly: the rollback works even at walking pace.

The wall push, the first contact. If there is no ramp around or you want your first two metres without a slope, roll slowly front-first towards a wall, let the front wheel touch it gently and push yourself off with your arms and body to roll away backwards. It only gives you a few metres, but it is the safest way to feel for the first time how the steering behaves going backwards.

The key: the bars work “in reverse”

Rolling forwards, correcting is instinctive: if the bike drifts right, you steer right and it straightens. Rolling backwards the geometry flips and the correction that works is the opposite one: to straighten up you turn the bars towards the side opposite to the one your intuition is shouting for. You do not need to understand the physics; you need many short metres until the move becomes automatic.

• Look over your shoulder, towards whichever side feels natural. Staring at the front wheel or the ground locks your body up, just like in the 180: the information you need is behind you.
• Weight centred over the bottom bracket: not hanging off the bars (the front wheel gets twitchy) and not sitting over the rear wheel (you lose steering).
• Small, constant corrections, not big swings of the bars. A calm fakie is a sum of micro-turns.
• Low, steady speed: too slow and you fall sideways before you can correct; too fast and the corrections arrive late.

Your pedals: cassette or freecoaster

Here the bike matters. With a cassette hub (the one on most BMX bikes), rolling backwards makes the cranks spin backwards with you: you have to go along with them, backpedalling at the wheel’s pace. If you resist, the chain brakes you dead and knocks you off line; if you pedal faster than the wheel, the same thing happens. The right rhythm is the one the rear wheel sets, no more, no less.

With a freecoaster hub (common in street), the cranks stay still while rolling backwards: no backpedalling and a freer-feeling fakie. Its toll comes at the exit: when you pedal forwards again there is a small dead spot before the hub engages, and that fraction of an empty pedal stroke has to be anticipated. For learning, whichever hub you already have will do; neither is a shortcut.

Progression: from the wall to 20 metres

1. Wall push: 2 metres without a foot down, five times in a row. This is the step for feeling the reversed steering with no slope and no speed.
2. Rollback off a kerb or gentle bank: 5 metres roughly holding your line, even if the exit is still a foot down.
3. 10 metres with one look over your shoulder without the bike twisting as you look. This is the step that takes the most sessions: give it time.
4. 20 metres and a controlled stop: almost coming to a halt while rolling backwards, with no foot down until the very end.
5. Ride out 8 times out of 10 with the pivot exit (below). When this works, your fakie can already hold a 180.

How to ride out of fakie

• Roll to a stop and put a foot down. The ugly but safe exit of the first days; fine while the metres are short.
• The pivot with half a pedal. Rolling slowly, turn the bars in the direction you want to swing round and give half a pedal forwards, leaning on the pedal: the front wheel pivots half a turn and you are rolling normally again. It is the same exit the 180 uses when it lands, so it pays to learn it here.

  

• The half cab: the next level. Riding out of fakie with a bunny hop and a half turn, that is, a 180 born backwards. Do not try it until your fakie is automatic; once it is, you have already done the groundwork in the 180 article.

Common mistakes when learning fakie

• Looking at the front wheel. Your body locks up and the bike twists. Your eyes go over your shoulder or at the ground a few metres behind you.
• Stiff arms and clenched grips. Every wobble goes straight into the steering and gets amplified. Bent arms, firm but relaxed hands.
• Rolling in too fast. With speed, the “reverse” correction gives you no time to happen: roll in slowly and let the distance come with the sessions.
• Trying to spin out in the first metre. The exit is step 5 of the progression, not step 1: hold it straight for a few metres first, then turn.
• Fighting the cassette. Resisting the backpedal brakes you and bends your line; go along with the cranks at the wheel’s pace.

Find an open space or a nearby skatepark in the directory to practise with room and no traffic.

What comes next

• Half cab: the bunny hop with a half turn to ride out of fakie. It is the trick that turns fakie into the entrance and exit of lines; it builds on the 180 and the bunny hop.
• Fakie on ramps: rolling up a quarter and coming back down backwards, chaining metres together, the faster version used in park riding.
• Linking tricks: 180 to fakie and a half cab out is many riders’ first complete line; from there, most of street is built the same way.

Frequently asked questions