Gary's 1 to 1 skills session

Gary has been riding for 2yrs and wanted to know the best way to do stuff before he'd developed too many bad habits. Over a coffee in the cold of the morning, we chatted about his past sporting experiences and his aspirations for the session.
I began as ever, with my skills check and I could see Gary needed body positioning and looking skills missing. I totally changed the set up of his Santa Cruz Nomad and then off we went to apply the new skills to the drop technique.

Here I went through the four mental skills questions that I teach riders to always ask themselves when faced with a new section and Gary applied the physical skills too and sailed through the air landing perfectly. He said he could feel the difference totally as it all required less effort.
We moved onto the skills trail and I showed why the skills applied to pumping and how to enhance the trails energy using this technique .

Gary then used this gained energy to link in the following berm, flat corner, rock garden and further two corners. The new body positioning really enhanced his grip in turns too and his confidence grew. We added a fly out jump, corner with a step on the exit and worked on line choice when linking drops into corners. Finally, Gary was riding the entire trail end to end and was so smooth now as a result of the session.

Gary was beginning to tire mentally and I knew we'd have just enough time for me to teach him to jump tabletops. Gary said that he had always slowed right down and rolled over them but a short time later he was sailing over the 6ft tabletop with commitment and confidence.


Gary called an end to our session after riding the table top a good few times as he was done mentally. Great session and I'm looking forward to his on going development.