Why did you go brakeless?

[Stubbleduck43]

Well, I see beginner riders that ride with no brakes and just makes me wonder why.  Is it because of the brakeless trend?  My opinion is that you need to learn bike control before taking off your brakes.  These excuses make me laugh.  "Oh, they don't work on my rims" or "I don't know how to work on them", or "I keep hitting my knees..."   If you know how to work on a bike, then all these problems can be solved.  In reality, it's a "Well, alot of pros ride brakeless, so I think I should do the same to "fit in".  I see kids at the skatepark ride with their seats slammed and no brakes because so-and-so does.  But, they just sit there on their bikes and just b.s.  All of this makes me think of a young boy taking their training wheels off because the older more experienced boy rides without them.

[Oltorf]

No mounts on the forks I won at a contest and jeff D.

[SNOOP]

Because of the lack of money i spend towards flatland i guess? All second hand parts from this site. Aside from going through a few frames last year to see what i liked my first year back in the game, i really dont change anything. Every part ive came acrossed has been mountless/hacked off..Or id probably be running two. Been without for so long, it would probably feel strange to go back to brakes.

[Pat]

what happened with me was, i rode with two when i started, then at my first jam i broke my back cable so i decided to ride with only a front brake cause i was too little to really have any back wheel control anyway, then when i moved i quit for a year, then i couldnt make it back cause i got too bored (lol) so i decided to just take the brake off to hopefully get reinterested back into it. it worked 

[GRFN.FLAT.]

personally i don't want to go brakeless. i don't plan on running a back brake on my new setup (big ups to misterwhite and pat from FF!) for two reasons: 1, my frame doesn't have brake lugs, and 2, the only tricks i could imagine using them for are decades and...stopping.

and i don't really list decades as a high priority on my list of tricks. i figure if i want to learn them i can just take way longer than necessary and either learn them footjam or ondo style and start out with rollaids.

but i think full brakeless can close lots of doors to your riding. people always talk about the flow of riding brakeless, but viki gomez rides with a front brake and his flow is unreal.

[MokiCzech]

Because they always broke up and because I find it cool - I keep my front break though. But now, I'd like to have them back, so I can practice Decades and similar things you simply can't w/o them.

[Flatland-Cris]

ive never rode with brakes rode street breakless then started flat and thought brakless was more smooth looking i dident have brakes on my street bike for the reson i couldent chicken out at the last minet  haha

[ortho]

EDIT: Moved my slightly off-topic response about brakes being a pain in the butt here:

http://www.global-flat.com/smf/index.php?topic=36557

[2flat2furious]

  In reality, it's a "Well, alot of pros ride brakeless, so I think I should do the same to "fit in".  I see kids at the skatepark ride with their seats slammed and no brakes because so-and-so does.  But, they just sit there on their bikes and just b.s.  All of this makes me think of a young boy taking their training wheels off because the older more experienced boy rides without them.

Even if this were true, if the kids are learning tricks and learning bike control brakes or not, I don't see how this is any different than riding with both front and back and learning the same things. If they aren't learning anything that's one thing, but to point at kids being "trendy" to "fit in" without looking at who has influenced you, how you ride, and what era you are from is kind of hypocritical.

We all get our influences from somewhere, it's the degree that we let those influences take hold over the paths we put ourselves on that matters.

How is your set up unique? How is what you do different from what others are doing? Gotta ask yourself these questions before you start slinging insults about who is "trendy" and who isn't. Just because decades with brakes are out now doesn't mean that everyone was doing fire hydrant to decade out of every combo known to man at some point.

[metalbmxer]

Lardyard barflips! Lever got in my way while I was learning them and also I kept breaking levers. I will never go back to brakes since I like being brakeless so much!

[AddisonM]

1 less thing to fix.

[khe killah]

I was'nt progressing as i wanted to so i tried it to see what it was like... Got plenty of new tricks dialed without them and feel no need to put them back on... Finding the balance point rather than feathering into it has made me a better rider imo...

[pucker22]

Ever since my brakes broke, I heard a lot of people riding breakless at the time and decided to go breakless and never looked back since!

[Ultraman Zoffy]

Several reasons, really, on why I decided to take off my back brake:

1) Biggest reason: my fingers. Over the years, riding and piano have eaten away at my fingers on my right hand to the point where the pain in my middle finger (caused, I think, by scar tissue build up) just got too overwhelming. The slightest lateral movement would be excruciating, and a lot of it had to do with how many back brake tricks and links I would do. Since removing the brake altogether, my finger actually works again. See? I just flipped my computer screen off as a demonstration! lol

2) I'd always been able to do most of the tricks I like doing without the brakes, but I'd lose a bit on consistency without them. Since I don't get to ride much, I really just want to go out and pull stuff and not have to keep retrying things brakeless when I could hit them 1st try with my brakes. I finally just sucked it up due to reason #1 and now my consistency is back to fairly normal rates.

3) Footjam decades looked really fun and I'm close to getting them. Taking the brake off was liberating for the learning process.

HOWEVER, most sucky thing about not having my brakes: doing high speed wheelies any and everywhere around town. It's a thoughtless trick with brakes, but requires a little more caution and concentration without them. If and when I put the rear stopper back on, it'll be for this reason alone.