Andy turned up as arranged on a beautiful blue sky day and over a coffee we chatted about his aspirations for the session. I began as always, with the skills check and it revealed body positioning and looking skills were missing but also uncovered a great technique that was only bogged down by a missing skill too. I made some set up changes and went to work.
We began with the drop technique and applying the skill set, both mental and physical to the technique. I worked hard on body positioning and it was Andy's first session on flat pedals too but in time he was landing perfectly. After a while we moved onto the skills trail and began working on not only riding the fourteen sections within it but also on linking them together using the correct braking areas.
We began with pumping undulations on the trail and used this gained energy to ride the following berm and flat corner. Later we added in a rock garden, berm and switchback and errors made were now being identified by Andy himself as he now knew what he was doing wrong.
We moved onto the fly out jump and the corner with a step on the exit and Andy used his skill set to get into the air again and we added the previous sections to it again and Andy began to really flow down the trail. I moved onto the end segment of the trail and worked hard on linking the drop technique and cornering together using line choice and braking areas. After several runs it was time for Andy to ride the entire trail end to end and even though he was tiring, he was riding faster and way smoother than before and his final run was almost perfect in all sections. Andy was tired both physically and mentally so our session ended to a cold beer in the sunshine sitting on the sofas around the herts shore fire.
A great end to an awesome session.
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