Keeping up with the Jones!

John came to me for a one to one session and brought the bike he loves riding, a Jones fully rigid 29"er!
I began with the skills check and I identified the present and also the missing skills. After a few set up tweaks I set to work.
We moved onto the drops and applied the mental and physical skills that I teach and immediately John began landing perfectly.




After a while we moved onto the skills trail and began working on the fourteen sections contained within it and linking them together. Flat, bermed, off camber and switchback corners were linked to pump bumps, rock gardens, steps, fly out jumps and drops. I broke the trail into bite size chunks and we worked on those sections before moving on. Each segment was linked to the previous and the flow and smoothness began to show itself.
I focused on body positioning and looking skills as well as the four mental questions i get riders to ask themselves when faced with something new.
The end of the trail involved linking John's drop technique and his cornering together and I worked hard on line choice here too before finally getting John to ride the entire trail end to end.
Each run was more fluid and faster than the previous one and John commented on it feeling slower but knowing He was traveling faster. After nearly five hours mental fatigue really began to show and our session ended. I gave John a demonstration of the same skill set in use in my own riding on a line on the herts woodwork that involved the same elements as the skills trail.
This ended an awesome session and i look forward to John's riding updates of his future rides.