Giving Tom's confidence a jump start

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Tom was given a gift voucher for a skills session after dropping hints as he needed to find the reason for his drop in confidence with his riding.
During the skills check I discovered what was causing this lack in confidence and set about correcting it.
We went straight to the skills trail and worked on the first half of it with its corners, pump bumps and rocks. Here we worked on Toms body position and looking and gradually Tom went quicker and quicker but also smoother too!
I then moved over to the drop sections and worked on his missing looking skill and also his mental skill set and how and why to apply it. Very qickly, Tom had ridden all 3 drops and landed perfectly.











I then moved us back onto the coaching trail to work on the next half. We linked fly outs, more corners, steps and drops. Then it came time to ride the whole trail and Tom was flowing fast and controlled down the trail . linking each section by its correct braking zone and adding speed where he should.

Now came time to start jumping. I moved us onto the table top that has one side taken out to form a gap. In a short while Tom was sailing over the table top and was bubbling with confidence and rode down to the gap side and flew over it perfectly. His first ever gap jump! I then started working on moving the bike about in the air a bit to both relax his body position and also make it start to look stylish.





Finally, we moved onto a more dirt jump style gap jump and began working on judging speed into it. Once again, Tom was flying over it. Any mistakes made were identified by Tom himself as he knew what he did wrong and corrected it himself. Our session ended as mental fatigue began to show. Tom, awesome session mate!