South Downs MTB Skills

Chris and Sharon had heard through a former housemate of theirs about the awsomeness that is mountainbiking while they were instructing snowboarding in Canada. Back in the UK now they got in touch with a view to getting their skills together right at the beginning so that they could get on with their riding happy in the knowledge their techniques were good.

Unfortunately the weather forecast threw us a curved ball and the rain arrived earlier than expected. However as the trails were so dry previously it didn’t make too much difference and there was still plenty of grip available.

We made our way to the skills trail, and after an explanation of correct body positioning we set to work on cornering and the other parts of the jigsaw. Chris’s looking was good as a result of off piste snowboarding! He looked well down the trail and after a bit of encouragement Sharon was too.

We takled line choice, braking and berms then started to join the sections of trail up. Chris was flowing along nicely and I was pleased to see Sharon riding with a lot more flow, with one slight hiccup which was due to looking. She recognised that she had let her attention slip though and corrected the problem so it was all good.

That done we headed over the other side to look at trail obstacles and how to get over them smoothly. We started on the way up with some ‘powered front wheel lifts’ or wheelies as we like to call them, before moving into my favourite bit of obstacle strewn singletrack where we looked at manual technique and unweighting the rear wheel.

After all that though we were starting to soak through as it hadn’t stopped raining, so we headed back to the car park for a much needed hot coffee and some cake.

No photos today I’m afraid as the weather was so rubbish.

Jimbo

Jadie got back in touch after doing a guided ride with me earlier in the month. As we’d been riding for a few hours previously I had a pretty good idea of what Jadie was like as a rider and we were able to get on and get stuck in to the session.

First off Jadie was not that confident with her bike ‘mechanically’, so we went over the ‘M check’ to give her the confidence to check her bike over before any ride and hopefully flag up any problems before they become an issue out on the trail. Then we moved on to bike set up and made a few adjustments to the controls for her before discussing pedals and the old ‘clips/flats’ debate. Armed with a bit more knowledge she decided to stick with flats, but to get something that would still be kind to her knee issues, but give her a better foot position on the pedals.

Jadie - blurry cameraphone, sorry!

We started on body positioning and on the first few attempts round ‘the training corner’ it became apparent that looking was going to be the major issue. A few demos later and Jadie was able to get round safely. Then we moved on adding in all the extra elements. We rode a few longer sections with me ‘encouraging’ her to look ahead more and it all started to click into place.

Then we moved on to the bermed sections and also looked at unweighting the front of the bike for trail obstacles. We packed a lot in and the difference in Jadie’s confidence on the trail was noticeable by the time the session drew to a close.

Jimbo