Chris and Anita turned up at the skills area as arranged and over a coffee we chatted about their xc racing and their aspirations for the session.The skills check revealed everything I needed to know about their missing skills and i set to work.
We began with the drop technique and although neither had previously got air comfortably before they both flew into the air and began landing perfectly as their new looking and body positions took effect. They applied their mental skill sets to ride all 3 drops to whoops of joy from Anita.
Chris was loving the ease of it all too.
We moved onto the skills trail and I began working on footwork, looking and body positioning in corners too. Pumping, rock gardens, steps, drops and fly out jumps were linked with bermed, switchback, off camber and flat corners.
I worked on both taking off on the fly out jump and also pumping it to stay on the ground and speed up. I worked hard on line choice when cornering and linking drops into corners and in time they went from rolling into the corner to dropping into it.
In time they were riding the entire trail end to end and faster and smoother than before. Each run, although there were errors was faster than the previous and any mistakes were recognized by the riders as they now knew why it ever felt wrong.
To end our session I moved onto the steeps and applying the mental skills to decide whether to ride them or not .
The session ended with a riding demonstration by myself so they could see the exact same skill set in use in my own riding.
Great session!
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