James, Tom, James and Later on, Richard arrived for their skills session and I began by running the 2 James's and Tom through the skills check and Found they needed work on their mental skills but first their footwork, looking and body positioning needed correcting. We moved to the drop technique and in no time at all they were riding all 3 drops and landing perfectly and the smiles never left their faces all day! Richard arrived late and Nathan ran him through the skills check and got him up to speed with the others and then after a break we began working on the singletrack and linking the fourteen sections on the trail fluidly and controlled. Flat, bermed, off camber and switchback turns were linked to pumping, absorbing, rock gardens, steps and drops. It wasn't long before they were riding the entire trail end to end and every run was faster than they ever rode before and it got better.
We moved onto riding steep terrain and they were stunned at how simple and easy it all now felt as they used their mental skills to decide to ride down a near vertical drop off. Now, none had ever jumped before but I was about to change this as we moved to a 6ft tabletop and began slowly working on applying the same skills sets to this technique. They were amazed when in a few small steps they sailed over the tabletop and then moved to the gap jump and rode that too!
We finished the session on anther trail working on using all the techniques covered and choosing whether to pump, jump or absorb sections on a trail and carrying the speed into and through the end berm.
Amazing session guys.
High5!
Follow us on twitter
Tony @ukbikeskills
Nathan @ukbike_nath
No comments:
Post a Comment