Mountain Bike Tuition Skills Courses

Jo,  a local mountain biker booked up a 1-1 mountain bike skills session as she had never been taught to ride off road before and was keen to learn all the techniques.  As she was riding into the forest from Crowthorne we met on one of the trails.

Firstly we went through a bike and equipment check.  We discussed bike set up ie: seat height, brake levers, tyre pressures and after a couple of adjustments  we were ready to go.  Riding behind Jo along the Seagull run to start with gave me an idea of her riding level, technique and confidence.  We then covered one of the first basic skills of mountain biking which is the ideal “body position”.  Being up out of the saddle helps manage the lumps and bumps that are on the trails. Jo adopted this well and with the new position of her brake levers could feel an improvement already.

Jo was quickly moving confidently around on her bike so we then covered braking.  After spending a few minutes practicing she could really feel the benefits of dropping the wrists.  From here we moved on to cornering.

Starting with a simple flat wide corner it enabled me to slightly adjust her cornering technique before moving onto some linked corners.  Before we could tackle them Jo had a slight mechanical where she couldn’t unclip one of her shoes because the SPD had come lose and one of the screws had fallen out.  With some pulling and tugging we eventually released it, put in an old screw that I carry in my tool kit and it was good as new.  (Top tip – carry old spare SPD screws, you never know when you may need them)

Before Jo rode the corners we discussed the rooty entrance section and how best to tackle such trail features.  Jo rode this section several times and with some coaching points she was soon relaxing her shoulders, moving her bodyweight to gain the most grip and was riding far more smoothly. (more…)

Louise is currently the overall Age Group British Triathlon champion. Most of her  riding is on the road but she is preparing for an offroad triathlon competition in June and wanted to get some off road mountain bike coaching beforehand to be able to shave crucial seconds off her time.

Louise has competed in a few mountain bike races and is a strong rider, very powerful on climbs, fast on the straight but can lose time on technical singletrack and steep drop offs by braking too much.

So with my brief done we headed for the trails.

As with all our courses we start with the basic fundamentals of mountain biking…the body position on the bike…..”control” or “ready for anything” stance.  By just adjusting her body position and a tweak of her brake levers Louise could feel the difference and the confidence this brought.

Moving on to cornering we started with a simple one just to get the basics correct. Louise picked this up  quickly and was moving really well around her bike.

From here we headed to the four corners to practice making the quick transition from a left hand corner to  a right hand corner whilst controlling speed.

But before we tackled these we spent a bit of time talking about factors that can affect our riding ie: roots.  This part of the trail has a good selection so after advising how to cope with these visual irritations both mentally as well as physically we rode the section a few times, looking at line choices and raising confidence and commitment.

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They forecast rain and they were right! Lots of it!

However, it didn’t put off Gemma and Rebecca coming on the ladies beginners’ course.

Gemma and Rebecca are fairly new to mountain biking and wanted to learn the basic techniques to give them the confidence to tackle more off road singletrack.

To start with we carried out a safety check on our bikes making sure they were in good working order. After a few adjustments and bolt tightening we rode out into Swinley Forest along one of the fire tracks.

Firstly we covered the body position to adopt when riding off road……..”ready for anything/control” position incorporating being out of the saddle, dropping the heels, wrists and looking ahead.

Although the ladies found this a bit unnatural to begin with by the end of this practice they were both looking more flexible and relaxed on their bikes which was great.

Following a brief introduction on how to get round corners with confidence and flow, Gemma and Rebecca practiced shifting their bodyweight around the bike riding round a short coned course.  They both got to grips with this very quickly so we moved on to a rooty bit of singletrack to introduce some trail features that will be encountered when riding in SwinleyForest.

Riding over roots is something that a lot of people get nervous about and Rebecca and Gemma were no different.  The wet conditions didn’t make it ideal to learn how to ride rooty terrain but with a few simple coaching points the ladies rode this section with ease.

We then headed up the trail and talked about gear changing and the basic technique to climbing.  Riding a small climb gave us an opportunity to get warm but we were so wet it would take more than a small hill to take the chill off!

Being cold and wet didn’t dampen Gemma and Rebecca’s enthusiasm and they were both keen to keep going. We rode to a section of Stickler 3 to introduce linked cornering and some more technical sections of singletrack.  By the end of this practice they were linking the corners nice and smoothly.

The ride back to the Look Out against a blustery head wind still  didn’t manage to warm us up so it was a quick debrief and home for a hot chocolate!

It was really good to see the ladies confidence grow as the session progressed.  Hope to see you both out on the trails in better weather!