Neil's freeride session

Neil came to me at the end of July and the session really opened his horizons in mtb.
He contacted me after getting a new transitionbikes tr250 and wanted a skill session on it to move him into the freeride spectrum of mtb.
Neil said of late he'd been suffering with his jumping after the session and the skills check showed that he had dropped his looking skill so I corrected this first before moving onto the dirt drops and the 6ft tabletop.
Neil was so happy with how the bike felt in the air that he asked to move onto the woodwork, so that's what we did.
I first used a 2ft high ladder to get him used to the peripheral fear of being higher off of the ground and I demonstrated the correct way to dismount if he felt unbalanced at anytime. Once he felt in control he then began dropping off of the end and linking it to another up and down ladder with ease.


We moved on to a ladder 7ft high and I worked on Neil's mental skill set and immediately rode the drop and landed perfectly. Now he was smiling ear to ear and off he rode for another few goes.
We then worked on a wooden berm and soon we linked the drop into the berm too. Neil was really buzzing and wanted to see what came next on the trail. It was a step up and step down and once I had demonstrated it he then used his 4 mental questions to decide whether he should look at riding it. The answer was positive so off he went linking the drop into the berm and then the step up/down jump too. AWESOME!!!!!
I throttled the session back a bit to control his enthusiasm and we worked on riding ladders back and forth before moving on to pumping a roller coaster.


In our previous session I had shown Neil how and why we pump trails undulations and he applied it here also.
Our session came to its planned end as Neil had to pick up his children although I could see he wanted more.
Great session and progression Neil!