Carlo's session

 Carlo is 16yrs old and was bought the skills session as a birthday present. The day arrived and I explained why I do a skills check and what it entailed before we began. The skills check revealed looking and body positioning needed work and that would leave the mental skills to work on afterwards. We began with applying his new skills sets to the technique We teach for drops and Carlo immediately felt comfortable and said it felt simple and effortless. He quickly moved through to the largest drop and then we moved to a 6ft tabletop to work on jumping and applying the same skills sets. Boom! Same result, Carlo effortlessly sailed over the tabletop with a big grin on his face and he said he'd be happy if the session ended there and then as it felt awesome but we wasn't destined to end yet. The 6ft gap jump loomed and he sailed over that a good few times too . Carlo is one of the super kids I have met during coaching and along with Henry, Otto, Ellen etc and I knew he'd develop fast today and on wards. We began working on his cornering and carrying speed through three berms as well as pumping sections to maintain and gain speed. It wasn't long before he was pumping, jumping, manualing and turning faster than ever. We worked on steep terrain and that blew him away as he easily rode a near vertical drop off . Onto the singletrack trail and linking drops into corners in particular and before long ,Carlo was linking the 14 sections of the trail faster and faster and smoother than ever. He linked the pump and jump trail through two berms and over a 7ft gap jump followed by a 9ft gap jump and was buzzing. After a few more runs I could see small errors creeping back in and it was clear our time together must end for today but I know I'll see him again.
Carlo, high5!