Vic, Mark, Lyndon, Matteaus, Keith, Andy and Jim made their way to me on a windy Saturday and Although I had coached 3 of them before I could see it would be a progressive session and challenge on a few levels mentally too. The skills check told me what was missing physically and mentally in their skills sets and I set to work. I made set up changes and showed them "why".
We began with the drop technique and soon the lads were riding them and using their body position and looking to land perfectly.
After a while i moved us onto the skills trail were we began linking the 14 sections on the trail together. Pre jumping, rock gardens, steps, jump and drops were linked to flat, off camber, switchback and bermed corners.
We began on half of the trail and methodically linked those sections together by their correct braking areas before adding the next sections on the trail too. It wasn't long before they were riding the entire trail end to end and faster and more controlled than before. Errors were now being self diagnosed as they moved from conscious reaction into unconscious action and the flow was there for all to see.
It wasn't long before it was time to move off the skills trail and on to a massively psychological technique, jumping tabletops.
Vic wasn't feeling it and couldn't answer his mental skills positively so sat this one out and the rest gradually got to grips with the physical side of things and sailed over not only the 6ft tabletop but also the gap side too!!
The smiles on their faces after sailing over it makes me burst with pride and buzzing, we made our way onto our final technique, steep drop offs. I demonstrated different ways of rolling into these and the body positioning required and Nathan demonstrated dropping it by the drop technique. All of them now chose to rode the steeps using their mental skills and the simplicity of it was something they found astounding. Our session ended soon after as mentally they were done so we retired to the local pub for a celebratory pint.
High5!
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