BMXTRIX - How-To Bar Rides

Bar rides are one of those tricks that really can blow people away once you learn them. What's more important is that they are incredibly fun to do. Basically, what it boils down to is that standing on the handlebars simply looks incredible, and feels incredible. But, as to be expected, there is a price to pay for all this fun - namely you must deal with the fact that your bike will hit the ground around 10,000 times before you will be able to roll this trick for more than a few feet without falling. You must also get over any fear that you may have of falling backwards and landing on the bike. This is possibly the toughest thing to do with this trick - so don't think you are alone.

It is very important to be comfortable with barhops prior to making the additional step upwards to the bar ride. Because the prerequisites are so low, it is possible to start learning bar rides very early - but typically a rider will learn a dozen other tricks before they actually get the bar ride dialed in.

Begin by rolling at a slow/medium speed - exactly the same speed that you are comfortable with to ride into a barhop. Both feet on the pedals in their normal position and both hands on the grips.
EITHER - Jump up onto the bars and balance for a moment (as you would for a barhop - except you land ON the bars)
OR - Put your right (or left) foot on the top tube of your bike and put your other foot on top of the handlebars. Now put your weight forward and put your full body weight on the foot on the bars AND your hands while you bring your other foot on top of the handlebars.
Your feet should be as far out to the edges of the handlebars as possible without you stepping on your hands that are still on the bars.
It is possible to balance like this FOREVER - crouched down on the bars holding on with your hands and is pretty impressive on it's own. But this is just the first part of the trick and will probably take several weeks to feel at all comfortable with.
When you are in a comfortable balance position stand up. The point where you are 'comfortably' crouched on your handlebars will come faster and faster as you practice the trick.
WHAT? Just stand up? That really is about it. The hard part now is that you will fall forward over and over and over again because you are afraid of falling backwards and getting over this fear is really what makes the trick possible to do.
Once you can balance a few feet concentrate on shifting your body weight slightly left and right. This will control the handlebars and allow you to 'steer' the trick. It is possible to steer bar rides around turns and in circles when you get better at it - but for now you just want to keep the bike from falling immediately to the right or left. This is identical to how you would do it for a barhop except you are using your feet for control instead of your butt.
To ride out crouch back down and grab the grips and jump forward into a barhop position. Then ride out of the barhop as you normally would.

So you think that it sounds incredible? Well there are riders that took this to new levels when it was at it's height of popularity. Some riders could do a 'scurfer' which is a surfer where you take your foot OFF the seat and balance a bar ride. The 'Jump Of Doom' is riding into a bar ride by jumping from the back pegs of the bike straight into a bar ride - no hands used to ride in EVER. Taking the scurfer a step further - some riders learned to do cross-footed surfers (very hard) and then take their foot off the seat and put it out in FRONT of them!

Just because it's an 'old' trick doesn't mean that it is completely easy. Have fun.