- This topic has 38 replies, 31 voices, and was last updated 9 years ago by soobalias.
-
£1000 on coaching or £1000 on a DH bike?
-
jimjamFree MemberPosted 9 years ago
Reading and posting on this thread got me thinking. Would someone looking to advance their technical riding skills and gain confidence be better off spending £1000 on professional coaching from the likes of Neil Donaghue or would they be better off getting a used dh bike and spending time at their local dh tracks/sessioning etc?
Conventional logic says buying a dh bike will allow you to ride faster and attempt things out of your comfort zone. But so too would coaching.
This is no way meant to be a criticism or comment on smatkins question, rather it got me thinking it might make a good topic for it’s own thread.
AlexSimonFull MemberPosted 9 years agoFor me, I think the biggest thing would be opening myself up to really learning and progressing.
I’m not sure it matters which route I took as long as I was willing to really practice, fall off, session self-built trails, train, watch videos and immediately put into practice, ride with people faster than myself, take trips to uplift locations, etc.I don’t think it would matter what bike I was on, or whether I paid £1000 to someone, tbh.
jambalayaFree MemberPosted 9 years ago£200 on coaching and £800 on the bike. Spending £1,000 on coaching in my view would be insane unless you where already at a high level and looking to break into “pros” for example
scruffFree MemberPosted 9 years agoYoull get free tuition from riders much better than you when playing on your DH bike on uplift days, events and the like.
ndthorntonFree MemberPosted 9 years agoYou probably need both don’t you?
You might not get the most from your lessons without a bikejimjamFree MemberPosted 9 years agondthornton
You probably need both don’t you?
You might not get the most from your lessons without a bikeSorry, should have clarified. Assuming you already have a bike.
ambalaya
£200 on coaching and £800 on the bike. Spending £1,000 on coaching in my view would be insane unless you where already at a high level and looking to break into “pros” for example
Yes obviously £1000 is a lot on coaching, but just speaking hypothetically if you already had a decent bike, and were going to buy something else to improve.
Incidentally I know a few people who’ve spent big money on coaching. Some were just wealthy middle aged guys who decided mountain biking was what they wanted to do. Others were fathers spending on their kids who had become obsessed with DH. Unsurprisingly, they got very very good, very quickly.
RosssFree MemberPosted 9 years agoAssuming I already I had a bike I’d spend the money on time off work, uplifts and gym membership. I’ve always rode my best when I’ve got my fitness higher and had the time to ride regularly I think that is the key for most people.
Out of the above I’d take the bike because I ride for fun more than anything but the coaching would make me faster on certain tracks I guess
OnzadogFree MemberPosted 9 years agoPound for pound, coaching yields more results than buying shit.
ac282Full MemberPosted 9 years agoSurely this depends on your current bike and how well it will cope with the type of riding you are looking to progress towards?
If you already have a fairly big travel bike then you could well be better off (from a speed perspective) going for the coaching.
Look at what Jared Graves has done in DH for example.
curiousyellowFree MemberPosted 9 years agoCoaching!
A 160mm “Enduro” bike would get you down most DH runs in England. If you already had one of those then coaching would serve you best.
kudos100Free MemberPosted 9 years agoIn just about any other sport ask £1000 on gear or coaching and the answer would always be coaching.
MTb’ers are a funny old bunch. Happily spend thousands on bikes, but then hesitate to spend money on coaching.
soobaliasFree MemberPosted 9 years agocoaching.
you could blow the £1k on a bike today and ride it every day for two years, you would be better off riding everyday and having a coaching session every six months for the same time.
people always think they can buy their way to a short cut
you could buy a £1k bike and leaving it in the garage for two years would do about as much as having a weeks coaching and then not riding for the same 2 years.
the benefits come from the hours you put in.
some folk find inspiration buying shiney stuff to make them feel guilty if they dont ride – is that you?
evel_kneivelFree MemberPosted 9 years agoSpending as long as you can riding in the alps for £1000 would probably see you progress more than anything else.
rhidFull MemberPosted 9 years agoI go with the evel kneivel option.
If you were training to win races, sure spend £1000 on tuition, if not I don’t see the point in spending that much.
wlFree MemberPosted 9 years agoA grand will easily get you a week-long holiday with http://www.bikeverbier.com plus a load of change. If a week with those guys on those trails doesn’t improve your riding, probably nowt else will.
dangeourbrainFree MemberPosted 9 years agoPersonally I’ve never met anyone who was held back by their gear
ahwilesFree MemberPosted 9 years agobefore i spent £1000 on “professional coaching from the likes of Neil Donaghue” i’d want to know why someone like Neil Donaghue thinks they have the slightest idea what it’s like to be as shit, scared and slow as i am.
In terms of mountain biking; Elite Dh racers and i are different species.
I have ridden with elite riders, they don’t even notice things that i regard as more or less impossible.
competitive success does not automatically lead to competence as a coach.
klunkyFree MemberPosted 9 years agoI can see that argument ahwiles but then again I have seen plenty coaches who are barely even competent on bikes let alone good enough to coach.
I had a session with Ben Cathro from http://www.sickskills.co.uk and learnt more in a day than I could have in a month of the Alps.
Perhaps it’s just me but I would take the advise from a w.c. Racer any day over an enthusiast.Granted I accept there are plenty great coaches who are not from a racing background but some of the ones I have seen did not strike me as a capable enough rider to be a teacher.
LawmanmxFree MemberPosted 9 years agobuy the DH bike and get some NEW friends who can ride better than you and copy and practice Copy And Practice COPY AND PRACTICE, hope that got through pal 😉 Lol
scaledFree MemberPosted 9 years agoIt’s not just the money!
I could drop a grand on a DH bike after a few beers on a Friday night, to spend £1000 on coaching i’d have to book regular holidays, make sure i’ve got enough time between sessions to practice and cement what i’d learnt.
I’ve absolutely no doubt that the coaching would lead to much better results but it’s also much, much harder to do round family life. I probably spent 600+ quid learning to drive which is quite a lot easier than launching yourself down some hills on a bike (fast).
tomhowardFull MemberPosted 9 years agopeople always think they can buy their way to a short cut
Dreams.
Crushed.
IanMunroFree MemberPosted 9 years agoI guess the first thing is grab any old bike, go out now and crash it hard.
Because unless you are quite happy with the concept of crashing regularly I think spend money on either the bike or the lessons will produce minimal improvement.Conventional logic says buying a dh bike will allow you to ride faster and attempt things out of your comfort zone.
Nah, a dh bike just has a different comfort zone, but you’ll still be riding in your comfort zone for that bike.
bullroarFree MemberPosted 9 years agoI’d spend it on coaching by which I mean proper coaching and not just a series of stock sessions on skills. I recently tried to do this and found it surprisingly difficult to get a provider to do what I wanted rather than a stock session. Of the providers I contacted via email describing what I wanted 3 of the 5 didn’t reply, 1 replied with a terse “we can sort all that out in a single session” type reply which I didn’t believe.
In the end I went for stock session at an uplift place so I could get a “free” uplift ticket for the 1/2 day I wasn’t on the skills course.
BearBackFree MemberPosted 9 years agoIf you want to drop a grand on improving your riding… Take a trip over to us here in Whistler and your riding will improve significantly.
Our guides are also superb coaches and the amount of trail time you can accumulate in Whistler is incredible!beicmynyddFree MemberPosted 9 years agoHow about a few weeks or more in the alps ?
It could help towards the 10,000 hours of riding you need to get to pro level
megaFree MemberPosted 9 years agoHaving bought a DH bike, found myself hitting things I wouldn’t have tried on my trail bike. Now I hit those things on my trail bike and am selling the DH bike. Have also done some coaching days and those really bought my riding on too.
I agree with the £200 coaching £800 ratio someone posted earlier
Check my post history if you fancy trying (or buying!) my Kona DH bike, am based in SE (:
weeksyFull MemberPosted 9 years agoI wonder if everyone is looking at the wrong answer.
Get fitter, stronger, leaner and then you’ll get faster. Train more more more more, longer hours, better planned, better nutrition, better rest.
If bet doing all of that would make your average MTBer quicker more so than either of the others ?
crosshairFree MemberPosted 9 years agoLol! I’m genuinely interested by that answer Weeksy 🙂 Care to elaborate ‘over there’ ??
crosshairFree MemberPosted 9 years agoFWIW, I think that for DH, in a pure bike v coaching equation- with the right coach for you the coaching is always going to win.
ahwilesFree MemberPosted 9 years agoGet fitter, stronger, leaner and then you’ll get faster. Train more more more more, longer hours, better planned, better nutrition, better rest.
If bet doing all of that would make your average MTBer quicker more so than either of the others ?
yes, but all of that would take months, if not years.
£1000 buys you:
a) some nice shiny bits (wheels, forks, maybe a shock tune, not much change)
or
b) about a week of coaching.hardly comparable with years of (extra) training.
weeksyFull MemberPosted 9 years agoLol! I’m genuinely interested by that answer Weeksy Care to elaborate ‘over there’ ??
In simple terms, the fast guys (not just in MTBing, but other similar sports) are not just fast because they have skills, or balls, but they have the ability to do it harder and faster than anyone else. It’s proven watching other things like motorbike racing that the fast fellas are fast because they are likely to be more used to the speed, more used to the HR, more used to the training.
Take our resident fast XCer here, Njee, he’s putting in 190bpm averages for an hour and a half, not only can he keep up that HR, but he can obviously maintain concentration too, he’s got the strength, stamina and fitness (although he’ll argue now) that other riders lower down don’t have.
However, I’d bet you on a non-pedally DH ride, he’d be closer to my level than he would be on an XC ride… because your average blokes will only go so fast on a downhill I rekon. He wins and crushes me because he’s fitter, stronger and faster.
There’s obviously a finite level where this turns round and person A needs to up his skills (or bike) but not many here are at the level where a free ‘upgrade’ of riding an extra 10 hours a week wouldn’t give them a performance result.
EuroFree MemberPosted 9 years agoIf you want to drop a grand on improving your riding… Take a trip over to us here in Whistler and your riding will improve significantly.
This must be the right answer.
skidsFree MemberPosted 9 years agoI wouldn’t even consider paying for coaching unless you are competing at a fairly high level already
mikewsmithFree MemberPosted 9 years agoBoth, but in the context that it was asked more on the bike. Again if your going to be hitting DH runs on a short travel bike even with all the coaching in the world that bike is going to take a hammering. Long term the DH bike is a better bet.
crosshairFree MemberPosted 9 years agoHowever, I’d bet you on a non-pedally DH ride, he’d be closer to my level than he would be on an XC ride… because your average blokes will only go so fast on a downhill I rekon. He wins and crushes me because he’s fitter, stronger and faster.
I think this is where you are in denial. The fast XC boys are plain fast- everywhere. They know to brake is to waste energy getting back up to speed so they have to have the complete package.
Even many CX riders would whoop your ass on a downhill track I’m afraid.juanFree MemberPosted 9 years agoinstead i would take 1 month of work and ride the shit out of my bike, on plenty of different places
Practice makes perfectmikewsmithFree MemberPosted 9 years agoThe fast XC boys are plain fast- everywhere. They know to brake is to waste energy getting back up to speed so they have to have the complete package.
I can testify to that having been lapped by quite a few including this bloke
http://danielmcconnell.com.au/site/
on the weekend
The topic ‘£1000 on coaching or £1000 on a DH bike?’ is closed to new replies.
