The Era Of MTB Freestyle In India: From Then To Now

Do Exercise, do cycling and keep yourself healthy and fit.

Do you have a bi-cycle? Do you know about the modified versions of a bi-cycle? Yeah, you are right, it’s the Mountain Bikes. Mountain bikes were created to make it easy to ride on rough trails or on off-roads. It clearly has improved controls, balance and precision. These parameters make MTBs available for many more things including stunts. From the basics of these stunts, evolved the idea of freestyling.

The Problems: Hurdles

MTB freestyling needs a customizable Mountain bike, a suitable place to execute stunts and lots of skills. The equipment costs a significant amount of money and there are always maintenance and modification expenditures. In India, MTBs were not familiar until recent times. There are not so many accessible large spaces available here. Furthermore, people trying to do freestyle with MTBs often couldn’t find others with the same interest, delaying the process of learning.

Scenario Now: Evolving

When you were a kid, with whatever cycle you got, you must have tried to do some wheelies or stoppies. So, you see, the interest was always there. Nowadays the kids are getting some scopes too. Social media has helped a lot in this process too. People are overcoming the barriers and are getting involved in fun activities with other people they don’t even know. There are so many self-taught freestylers who inspire the newbies directly.

Places: Streets to the Stadiums

Lately there are people who manage to use vacant parking lots and sometimes large dead ends of roads, large staircases, parks with concrete streets etc. for freestyling. Freestylers have turned literally anything into their stadium for stunts. In Kolkata in the parking lots of Eco Park, In Jaipur near Malviya Nagar people are practising. In Bangalore there are parks dedicated for stunt-based activities like roller-skates, skateboards, freestyling, etc.

Community Building: People Involvement

In these kinds of activities, community building is always essential. We need more people together who are interested. We can learn from each other and help everyone grow. Freestylers are arranging MTB meets all over the country. In Kolkata, Assam, Bangalore, Jaipur, Himachal there are these kinds of events happening where foreign people are participating too. YouTube and other platforms have enhanced the exposure on this field greatly.

Future Potential: Upcoming Days

Most of these types of activities are self-supported and based on commoner’s interest. MTBs are getting available here in India; People are learning things altogether and it may be said that MTB freestyling is going to be far more popular than it is now.