Wednesday 5 October 2011

Simon's 1 to 1 session



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Simon has been riding for over 40 years and wanted to feel more fluid in his riding and especially in corners and anything involving wheels off the ground as when this has happened previous to our session it was luck whether the outcome was ok.
The skills check revealed foot, looking and body positioning faults so I focussed on the footwork and looking at first and after a few set up changes we could move on.
We moved onto the drops and Simon used his new skill set, both mental and physical to ride the drops perfectly from the word go and remarked at how easy it all felt.


From there I moved onto the skills trail and I separated the 14 sections contained in it into bite size chunks so we could work on them. First it was pumping and the speed gained was used to ride the trail. Flat, bermed, off camber and switchback turns were linked to fly outs, rock gardens, steps and drops. As we worked on each new segment, we added it to the previous ones and soon Simon was riding smoothly and controlled.
I worked on line choice when riding drops into corners and he rode them confidently and committed.
I moved onto the pump trail and worked on pumping undulations in a trail to gain speed and connect the rider to the trail. This was something he could feel and when the timing was right he was propelled forwards. Simon was visibly tiring by now but we had time to move back to the skills trail and the break did him good as he began riding the entire trail top to bottom faster and more fluid than before. Little errors began creeping back in as mental tiredness hit home and the session came to a close. It's an awesome feeling to be able to see riders improve exponentially in front of me so much and i can't wait for Simon's riding updates.

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