I will probably take you up on that offer at some point but need to get the basics down first. Think I'm struggling to get my weight far enough back as the front doesn't seem to come up very easily. Going to setup a camera from the side which I hope will help figure out why I can't manual, etc.
Are you trying to manual or rear wheel hop?
I think holding a manual is crazy hard -- but to get the front up for a manual is pretty easy: drop but down to compress tires and then sharp body back - these are separate moves -- *NOT* a diagonal down-back -- you want to be really really low and arms straight -- it's all body *NO* arms. You should be really really lizard brain reactive with your rear brake -- though I just saw a YouTube video (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cUTakfZT00) that recommends that you forget about the rear brake and learn to bail off the back -- just started practicing bailing off the back yesterday and it's kinda sketchy -- I'm pretty lizard brain with the rear brake though (maybe too lizard brain).
For doing rear wheel hops to get the front up there are at least two options: 1. get on both brakes and rock forward slightly and then back. 2. Do a sharp pedal up and catch yourself on the rear brake. Option 1 is the easiest to start out with but Option 2 is better to learn in the long run so I would quickly move from or even skip Option 1. I've been practicing this for over a year riding daily at the local skatepark -- getting up took a couple of weeks, learning to do more then a few hops took most of the year -- I just "got it" about a month ago -- now I'm trying to learn to hop up onto things from the rear wheel which I thought would come easy after I was able to hop on the rear almost indefinitely -- but so far not so much. Some tips: *STAY RELAXED* cannot emphasis that enough. It's all body and legs/calves -- if you find that your arms are strained you are doing it wrong. I find it easier to *NOT* get the front up too high but get back super far with a low front -- though when you start getting comfortable it's actually easier to have the bars close to your chest and the bike standing tall (but just forget I said that because I spent a *LONG* time trying to get that and if I did the low front end I would have probably picked it up faster). There is the whole pedal kick thing that kinda helps you stay in place or adjust your position, but initially you may want to forget about that and just hop backwards or control your hop with your body -- I insisted on using the pedal kick and that is probably another reason it took me such a long time.
Anyways, excuse the long rambling post. I'm really loving bicycle trials (and moto trials) but I have pretty much never ridden or barely even talked to anyone about it so I'm getting a little excited I guess. I think it would be super fun to get a bunch of the moto trials folks and do a bicycle trials meetup. I've got extra trials bikes for the curious -- though I set my brakes up moto style (rear brake on the left).
Get the full size moto first so we can do some hard enduro type riding lol.