Taking Paul's riding to the next level

Paul had been coached by Tony before, so to start, i just ran him through the skills checks to see what skills where present. I could see he had been working on his previous session, and that i needed to work a bit more on body positioning within turns. I took him straight to drops, so he could warm up a bit, and allowed him to play around with different speeds. I then worked on cornering, and linking drops into corners, which he began to ride comfortably, whilst also carrying lots of speed into and through the turn. Jumping was next, and this started using the flyout on the trail. He then linked this to the bottom of the trail. We moved across to the singletrack trail, where we linked steeper roll ins to corners, jumps, tighter corners and further work on steeper roll ins. I also showed him dropping in sideways. I took him to the chute drop, where i worked on his confidence, and he was soon riding it well, and running back up the hill for another go. I then took him back to the end of the singletrack trail, where he could now answer yes to his mental questions, and get some airtime on the final steep by unweighting his bike. We then worked on the tabletop, where i managed his speed to allow him to land perfectly on the landing of the table and gap jump. I also worked here on how to jump the same distance, with a reduced approach speed. Our session ended on the pump trail, where i worked on mainly his pumping, as well as using this speed to jump other sections.

Nice one today! Remember that inside hand!

Nath (@ukbike_nath)

Tony (@ukbikeskills)

tweaking Graham's riding

A 2nd session in 6 months for Dom and Mark

 What a session this turned out to be for Dom and Mark. They booked the session in December after their 1st session and today I knew I'd have to build on their mental skills. We began with drops to 3ft and moved to the 6ft tabletop and gap jump from their previous session. Soon we moved to cornering and used two linked berms that just happened to lead to a 7ft ladder gap jump :), soon they were both riding that with absolute confidence and control and were buzzing as I made the coffee. We continued and I demonstrated linking cornerining and a 9ft gap jump that they had seen in their previous session but not ridden. Today was different, as they both rode it over and over again.
we worked on riding woodwork as they had rode trail centers in the uk and abroad that has wood trails and in an hour were riding 200 meteres of linked wooden trail that ends in a drop from a 7ft high ladder. Now they were smiling ear to ear but we wasn't done yet. We moved to riding dirt jump style take offs and after a demonstration they were judging their speed and landing correctly over a 6ft dirt jump. We later worked on riding fallen trees and the techniques required and again they grasped it and rode them easily as the bmx boy in Dom woke up and he really went back to childhood.
We ended our session linking the an entire trail of jumps, berms, drops and ending in the 9ft gap jump a few times before the boys ended the session citing beer at the local pub as too strong a draw. Amazing progression, High5!

Giving Ben confidence in his riding.

Our Session began as always with the skills check, where i found that looking and body position were Ben's main weaknesses. I worked on these within all the 3 techniques,  within the skills check, as well as doing a different cornering exercise, before putting them into practise. We started with working on linking two corners together, before moving onto the skills trail, where we used the first half of the trail, to link both bermed and flat corners with rock gardens. We then used his now concious unweighting technique on some drops, where he used his new mental skills set, along with his physical skills to be able to land perfectly off the largest drop comfortably at a variety of speeds. We then started linking drops into corners at the end of the trail. We worked on jumping using a fly out, which he rode with ease, and finished off here riding the trail top to bottom, improving each time, and self diagnosing any errors. Next we rode the tabletop, where i took care of one of his skills, leaving him with the others, and he was soon using these to land perfectly on the down slope of both the tabletop and gap jump. We moved up the the pump and jump trail, where he was pumping to gain speed and jumping other sections. He linked this with the two corners he started on, and the wooden ladder gap that follows. This lead us onto the ladders, where Ben rode a section of ladder involving two corners and a drop. Our session finished on the skills trail, which he requested to return too, just to remind himself of body positioning in the corners.

Great improvements today Ben!

Nath (@ukbike_nath)

Tony (@ukbikeskills)