Saturday 24 July 2010

Building Tim's mental skills





After the skills health check it became clear that Tim had some very good physical skills, some needed development but things were looking good. We began with pumping and in a short space of time Tim was rhythmically flowing through the undulations on the trail. I then taught him how to bi laterally pump which really clicked with him and he was really shifting effortlessly. We also worked on the bunny hop too over a fallen tree and Tim was getting to grips with this too.
From there I moved us to the drop and jump techniques and using Tim's natural push, I got Tim landing perfectly with both of these techniques. Things were really looking good, so I moved us to a trail and began working on cornering.
I discovered early on that Tim had footwork and looking skills to develop and his uptake of the corrective methods I use was really fast which enabled me to work on his body position too.
I broke the 1st trail into 3 segments and worked on each segment and the sections contained within each before slowly linking them together. Section after section was dealt with smoothly and quickly and all braking was done in the correct places. This was evdient when we rode the entire trail and Tim really flew smoothly down.
Finally, I moved onto another trail with looser, tighter corners and a larger drop section. It was here that I really worked on Tim's mental approach and we soon got him linking each corner together and riding the drop section all in a flow and each section became just that, another section regardless of what it actually was.
Awesome riding Tim and I look forward to your updates.

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