ok basically ive noticed that im starting to do prehops before everything instinctivly. eg stairsets, up and down. sidehops and rollings. so i was wondering if this is bad and i should break the habit or whether it is possibly useful.
Prehops don’t have to be bad, if you need them for your concentration it’s okay, also if you don’t use prehops you sometimes tend to go to fast. I don’t have the patience for real trials so I keep it to some street and urban trials, I like to use as few prehops as I can.
I find it better to do one setup hob then stand still for half a second then hop 
(with the exception of stairs)
i used to always prehop and now i tend not too, cause i just compress the tyre… but with a prehop i do get slightly higher… doesnt matter just in some situations you cant prehop…
Wait a second…
There seems to be a confusion of pre-hops with set-up and corrective hops.
Pre-hops are good. They help you to hop higher.
Set-up and corrective hops can get annoying. They can destroy your concentration and use up energy. Your riding is more controlled and your head more in focus when you eliminate as many of these little hops as you can. They can really get in the way for certain trials situations, especially for riding along or gapping anything narrow, like a rail.
yeah, i was about to say the same thing.
-Destroy your corrective hops
-destroy your set-up hops
-do all the pre-hops you want - they can add feet to your hop 
Riding without pre-hops is like Manifest Trials or something, I forget the exact name…
However, riding without set-up hops is just good trials riding.
Manifesto is the word you’re looking for, Matt.
Gordito, the more hops you eliminate, the better your riding will look.
… I haven’t posted in this thread yet…
Hehe…oops.
*Gabe
I don’t think a pre-hop gives you any advntage for little stuff. It would look better with out a pre-hop too. I try to reserve the use for big stuff when I really need the comression out of the tire…
Yeah up to around a foot compressing the tire doesn’t really matter. It’s all pull.
it’s hard to say that you don’t need a pre-hop for up to 1 foot…but it’s personal.
I don’t need a pre-hop up to around 95cm, so it’s personal. "it’s all pull up to 1m… 
"
And I agree, don’t pre-hop unless you need to. And keep the set-up hops to a minimum.
However, in some cases, it’s harder to do problems with a few more set-up hops, and kind of good in a way, because if you rush too much, then it’s almost like the section wasn’t totally in control. But that’s just a few situations, like hopping to a post, hop once or twice, to know that if you needed to, you could change direction or something, instead of just flying off the other end of it.
-Ryan
I would disagree there. Doing a trials line without setup hops takes a lot more concentration, planning, skill, and practice. They help position your take offs and can save a move. Im not saying they are good, i try to do every line without them, but it deffinatly takes more effort to do a line without them.
yeah i can only hop like 2 feet or so with a pre hop and about the same without. im just worried about doing stairs and rollings that way:(