Daniel asked for a skills session from his wife for his birthday as he'd wanted to come to see us at ukbikeskills for a while. On arrival, we talked of hos experience as he'd been riding for 2 years and of his expectations for the session. Daniel hope he'd eventually be able to do drops and when I said that was a given in the first hour he just smiled. The skills check revealed some great habits in his riding but that he needed work on position and looking. I made a set up change that assisted in correcting these and we set off to apply the skills set to whatever we came across.
Drops were first on the menu and the look of surprise on his face when landing the largest 3ft drop with absolute ease was a picture and his face ached from smiling he said. Well that smile never left.
I surprised him by moving to the 6ft tabletop and applying the physical skills and the all important mental skills, Daniel sailed over the jump , laughing as he did so. loads of goes followed with the same result so he thought he'd try the 6ft gap. I told him it's not try , it's applying the skills sets and once again he sailed over it, woop woop!we moved on after he'd ridden it loads more and this time to cornering and carrying speed through turns. I discovered a weaker right side in turns so we focused on this and it is something that Daniel will be mindful of from now on.
After a break we worked on positioning for steeper terrain and even a near vertical drop off now proved simple and easy for him. We linked drops into corners too and worked hard on braking and positioning when doing so.
Next up we worked on pumping, jumping and cornering on a trail with multiple sections and Daniel even rode a 7ft gap jump a few times withing that trail. I could see he was tiring but the session wasn't over. We rode the singletrack trail and linked the 14 sections of that together before riding the pump and jump trail together too.
Amazing session with a great bloke.
High5!
No comments:
Post a Comment