Thursday 15 September 2011

The return of Grant and Barny









Grant and Barny came to me back in June where I worked on their physical and mental skills sets and developed their singletrack riding and they became the fastest riders down my skills trail only matched recently by onzadog. During that session I worked on their jump and drop techniques also.
Our session today began on the the largest of the 3 skills drops and I worked on style in the air to reinforce some of what we worked on back in June. I then got them to warm up on the skills trail and their end to end speed hadn't deserted them.




I began working on advanced pumping techniques and the guys got to grips with that too and before long we moved onto the 6ft tabletop and gap jump to work on applying style there to but also to work a body position fault out of Grants technique and soon they were both flying.


Moving onto the jump and pump trail, I showed how and why the pumping technique could be used to generate speed without pedaling to be able to jump or pump sections on a trail.
I worked on developing their speed judgement for sections and soon they were able to decide what speed is required to jump sections.

One of the sections on the trail is a 9ft tabletop and they both were able to clear it by pumping the sections before, things were going sweetly so I decided to up it slightly.
Next we moved onto a 9ft gap jump and linked it into a berm. The guys both used their 4 mental questions before deciding yes to riding it.

Grant and Barny both sailed over it and linked it to the berm with ease. They rode it confidently and with a commitment to their own speed judgement.
I then began working on their peripheral fears by getting them onto the woodwork. Once I had shown them how and why to control any wobbles they rode along and off the 2ft high ladder with confidence. I then ramped it up by bringing them to a ladder to wooden landing drop. This style of drop is advanced due to the height and also the gap too but with their ability to control anything that goes wrong they confidently rode the drop and linked it into a wooden berm too.



After the wooden berm there is a step up to ladder to drop and I demonstrated riding it to them both and they wanted to link it to the previous sections. They both rode it and showed that the previous session and the development in this session was really embedding as they rode it over and over.
We ended the session their and celebrated a brilliant day with an ice cold beer. Great riding guys!

1 comment:

  1. I felt the need to come back for a second visit to uk bike skills as I was confident Tony could identify an issue i was having whilst jumping .never though did I suspect he would not only fix this, but improve my riding by as much as he had back in July . I feel so much more confident and ready to take on bigger stuff.in fact I think the second visit was better than the first if that is possible. One day with Tony must be worth hundreds of hours practise .

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