1st coaching session of 2014

 Katie was given a voucher as a skills gift and today was the day. Blue skies greeted us as I put Katie through my set up and skills check where I found she needed work on footwork, body positioning and looking skills and once corrected, the mental skills too!
 Much to her amazement, we began with the drop technique and I demonstrated and broke the whole thing down for her and slowly but surely she got it and knew it!
 Katie wanted to work on her cornering and I identified a weaker right hand turn as opposed to her lefts and we began working on that. We spent a long while on a grassy hill to begin with before moving to a trail to work on an isolated berm to apply the skills. Soon, Katie was riding the sections leading to the berm and carried that speed through the turn with elevated confidence and control, later linking a 2nd berm in too.
 We broke the skills trail down and worked on each individual part and identified valid control areas and soon she was flowing down the trail. Rocks, pumping, absorbing, drop offs and steps were linked with flat, bermed, off camber and switchback corners and although the final berm proved an issue the others above in the trail were becoming better and better.
 Katie's tiredness grew quickly and we finished the session with a run down the pump trail and she ended it with a perfect turn in the final berm. Great start to the year.
High5!