Monday 10 September 2012

60 years of riding and still loving it










 Keith has been riding bikes for 60 years and at the young age of 65 he wanted a mtb coaching session with myself. On meeting, we chatted of his past experiences and his aspirations for the session and he said he had no interest in airtime but wanted to be more confident overall with his riding. The skills check showed me that I had to work on his body positioning, footwork  and also looking skills. I made a set up change that is a game changer in his control and showed him why and the change was immediate. 
 To Keith's surprise, we moved to the drop sections first and I worked on applying the physical and also the mental skill set that I teach and he got into the air and landed perfectly and he loved it! He didn't want to move up but wanted to consolidate his learning and nailed it over and over before we moved on.
 On the skills trail, I worked on linking the 14 sections that are contained within it together by their braking areas. Pumping was used to connect to the trails energy and linked into flat, bermed, off camber and switchback turns, rock gardens proved no issue any more and neither did steps and drop offs. We worked along the trail methodically, taking regular breaks as it is mentally very tiring getting your brain re-wired and soon Keith was riding the whole trail end to end with me and loving every second of it. Each run had less errors than the previous and any error was self identified by Keith too. After 4 hours I could see Keith was mentally tiring and our session came to a close. I can't wait to hear how Snowdon and the rest of the rides he has planeed goes.
High5!
 

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