Andy, Adam and Chris found out about my coaching from the bikeradar forum that I frequent (among others) and turned up for their session as arranged. I ran them through my skills check and found that they needed work on looking and their body positioning, so I made some set up changes to compliment this and then set to work.
To their surprise, we began with the drop technique and I worked on their mental skills here too but before long they were landing perfectly on all 3 drops. They looked over at the 6ft tabletop and said no way to that but That would change in the course of the session :)
We moved onto the skills trail and I broke it into segments so they could focus on small chunks of the trail before linking the whole trail together.
Pumping, rock gardens, steps, fly out jumps and drops were linked to flat, bermed, off camber and switchback turns. As we worked down the trail their speed and control was awesome to see as they confidently rode the trail. I worked hard on barking control and line choice and before long they were flying down the whole trail with smiles on their faces.
The heat of the day was punishing and I could see they were tiring but I had another card up my sleeve, the 6ft tabletop. I demonstrated and in no time at all they had all flew over it , landing perfectly. Chris even used his mental skills to ride the 6ft gap jump side too!
Our session ended as mental tiredness hit and they had nothing left so we retired to the shade and a cold beer to celebrate an awesome session.
High5!
Tony - what a cracking day! The training was concise, simple to follow and most of all effective. We are still in disbelief at how much we achieved in such a short space of time. I was particularly impressed with the small exercises you gave to reinforce points made or give us extra confidence in what we were doing. We are all buzzing and can't wait to hit the trails with our new found skills and the "tools" with which to further improve our riding. Thanks again - Andy
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Tony for an awesome day. We still can't believe that you managed to get us all to jump a table top when at the start of the day we couldn't even lift our front wheels. I found that teaching everything in small sections really helped it to sink in. A the start of the day I wanted to learn how to jump, corner, increase trail speed and learn the technique for drops, it was amazing to do it all then link it all together.
ReplyDeleteStill can't believe I did the gap jump!! :)
Many thanks mate, can't wait to get out again.
Chris
P.S the wheels fixed - thanks to the guys at Marshalls cycles.
Still buzzing from today Jedi brilliant can't wait to get out and put it out there. Cheers fella
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