Bringing on Dave's riding again

 Dave has been coached by me once before and wanted to push his riding on further. I could see he had a body position issue in corners and that I needed to work on his mental skill set too.
We began with the drop technique and styling it when in the air and quickly moved onto the skills trail to work on his cornering before moving to riding steeper terrain. I showed why the skills  sets applied to drop offs.

  As he was going to the alps, I worked on alpine style switchbacks  and natural drops where I worked on his peripheral fear of height.

 I worked on his management of speed when faced with jumps and we moved from the 6ft tabletop and gap to another trail to develop his pumping and manuals. We linked the whole pump and jump trail to a 7ft gap jump and now things really began to take off.

 Over the next hour I broke his peripheral fear down more and gave him control so Dave was able to ride a ladder drop with a gap and link it to a wooden berm too. From there we linked the 7ft gap to a wooden gap drop and into a 9ft gap jump and Dave was smiling ear to ear with his progression.

 I knew he was tiring but I wanted to work on his judgement of speed to jump some more so we worked on a 15ft tabletop. In no time at all he sailed clean over it and landed on the transition perfectly.
Awesome session and I'll be buzzing from it for a while yet.
See you soon Dave.
High5!

Polishing Jon's skills

  Jon came to me as he was tired of crashing and feeling on the edge in his riding and not knowing why. I found he was missing looking and body positioning skills and I changed his set up too. The drops we began with sailed by easily and smoothly so we moved onto the skills trail. Pumping, steps, rock gardens, jumps and drops were linked to flat, off camber, switchback and bermed corners. We moved down the trail methodically and soon he was riding the whole trail end to end with way more control than ever and way faster too.

 We moved off the trail and onto riding steeper terrain and It stunned Jon how easy riding near vertical drop offs were with his new mental skills and body positioning.

 We moved onto jumping as he has proc as a nearby riding spot and for that reason he wanted to learn to jump. In a few small steps he was sailing over the tabletop and then used his mental skills to ride the gap jump too!
We moved onto a new single track to link the vertical drop off in and we worked on linking trails together that had sections closer together. After a few runs Jon declared himself mentally done as he could feel unable to make decisions fast enough so our session ended there.
Brilliant riding Jon.
High5!

Neil and John's skills session

Neil brought John a skills session for his birthday, so after they arrived I began the session with the skills check where I discovered that Neil had perfect footwork, I just needed to work on body positioning and looking, and John had perfect body positioning and footwork one way, but needed work on looking, as well as the other skills in order to corner in both directions. After a few set up changes, we moved to drops, where they were both putting these physical skills together, in order to land both wheels together of a drop of their choice. I then gave them a quick cornering exercise where they could feel for themselves how body positioning is such an important part of cornering. I then took them to the skills trail, where they linked bermed and flat corners, rocks, fly outs, steps and drops, and where soon riding the trail from top to bottom. After a quick lunch break, I then showed them the table top, where they both began to get both wheels in the air. I then showed them a much larger table top, where they could experiment with their speed and push, in order to jump further. I then showed them some steeper roll downs, and got them to use their mental skill set in order to choose which they did. I then showed them a start of another trail, where they began to link roll ins, corners, and fade away jumps, but mental tiredness took over and our session came to an end.

Good one guys!

Nath.