Anyone done any of the Dirt School training days at Glentress (or anywhere)? if so, what did you think? (and which course)

thanks

Is that the crowd with the green and black logo?

If it is, me and a mate had a session with them about 2 1/2 to 3 years ago at GT. I found the morning session very good. It started with discussing what we wanted to focus on/our weakest areas and then a few hours sessioning drops/corners looking at technique etc but found the afternoon a big let down in comparison.

The reason being that in the afternoon the 3 of us just rode the trails for a couple of hours with the instructor out front so we could practice what we looked at in the morning but on reflection would have much preferred to continue the theme of the morning for the bulk of the afternoon followed by a short ride to practice what we learnt all day. If I were to do it again I would push for more instruction/sessioning in the afternoon and less full on riding. Instructor was very good at getting his points across as far as I can remember and obviously insanely good on a bike.

A couple of my pals have been on his course and they said it improved their confidence immensely.

I guess it depends where you’re at just now. If you’re already ballsy and just need skillz you’d be better of making pals with some better riders to feed off.

thanks…it’s not actually for me, a friend’s wife wants to buy him a course for his birthday, and wants me to go along. having been for a day with Jedi, I’m trying to figure out how it would compare

FWIW i did the dirt school day with rowan sorrell a number of years ago and didn’t rate it that much.

I did a day with jedi and he taught me how to manual/ weight and unweight the bike much better (rowan teaching to pull the bars, jedi teaching not to use arms to pull bars)

Trickydisco..that’s what I was afraid of 🙁

Mmm don’t think Rowan Sorrell has ever had anything to do with Dirt School though?

Didn’t get a huge amount out of DirtSchool at GT, but did enjoy the day. I can’t be really critical, as it’s a poor student who blames his teacher. It was clear, though, that it’s hard to teach 6 riders of differing ability and interests and that was part of it (I was one of the less skilled people in my group).
I doubt that this is unique to dirt school – Andy (the instructor) was a good teacher (he’s widely known as a superb rider), day just didn’t end up being that helpful for me for whatever reason.

Mmm don’t think Rowan Sorrell has ever had anything to do with Dirt School though?

Well he did that day. It was quite a few years ago.

Mmm don’t think Rowan Sorrell has ever had anything to do with Dirt School though?

http://www.dirtschool.co.uk/about/

Rowan Sorrell

Career Highlights

Author of European Trail Guide (Published ’08)
Welsh DH Champion
Director of Back on Track – the trail building company responsible for constructing Brechfa, Afan etc!
Newport skatepark local
Dirt Mag Journo
Cover Hero or What MTB and many others!

I did the day with Dirt School at Lee Quarry and found it really beneficial. I was taught how to manual, bunny hop properly, drop offs, table tops etc. Rowan Sorrell was involved but he wasn’t leading my group so can’t comment on his instruction technique but the other guys were really good.

I’ve done two days with them, one was great and one was OK…

The great one was a half-day with Andy Barlow at Innerleithen. Can’t say a bad thing about this. Well, it wasn’t cheap but then it wouldn’t be.

The OK one was the trail high school. Now the coaching was fine… But the problem was, we were a group of 6 and one was on the wrong course. But instead of dealing with that, Andy ended up spending way way more time with that person, and also slowed the pace down so we didn’t cover all the ground he’d planned to.

6 is a big group obviously but when you’ve got someone who’s out of the range of the course, you’ve got to have some way of dealing with that, that doesn’t negatively impact the other 5 who’re on the right course.

So I wasn’t totally happy, I didn’t feel I got what I paid for really and it felt like a pretty basic problem of class management. But on the other hand, the coaching I did get was excellent, good enough that I went back.

And I probably will go back again, for the jumps school.

done two at DirtSchool (and a Jedi session) – xc trail or whatever it is and the jumps school. On the trail day there were only three of us so it was quite good, but it was a lot of instruction to take in.

Personally think I got more out of the jumps school – we were of much more mixed ability but this obviously didn’t matter when sessioning jumps. Was great to have the whole day just to practice and get the confidence up. Obviously there’s nothing to stop you from just doing it without the tuition, but I probably wouldn’t have had the inclination or self-discipline to spend the day working on jumps myself.

Hi Guys, Chris from Dirt School here. I just picked up on this thread and thought I’d drop in to say thank you for the postings and thanks for the feedback – both good and bad. We really try to make everyone’s time with us as worthwhile, fun and useful as possible. Obviously there are some days that are better than others and we get many, many great emails from people telling us how much they got out of their time with us. However, we don’t get negative feedback very often and I just thought I’d let you know and I’ll work with Andy to see how we can improve. After all – if we feel like we can tell you how to ride a bike, you guys should tell us how to improve our coaching! Cheers, Chris

My other half had a “ladies day” 3 weeks ago with Dirtschool. Boosted her confidence no end, teaching was delivered by Rab Wardell.
Having ridden with her since she has improved vastly both in technique, and confidence “show me the roots” being just one example.

Have done 1 to 1 with Andy of Dirtschool twice at Glentress. Was very good and would go a third time.

Andy from Dirt School came out and did a coaching week with us. I rate him very highly both as a rider and as a coach. Two years on and we’re still pointing at stuff and either saying “Andy showed me a great way to ride that” or “Andy rode that…. no-one else has”.

Split ability levels within a group is always difficult (I teach MTB and snowboarding myself) and can really limit what you’re able to achieve in a day/session. Only real way to avoid is to either fill the session with your mates or book a private lesson.

I did a day with Andy from Dirt school at GT about a year ago, I thought it was excellent and definitely,worth every penny. Learnt a lot despite having ridden at a pretty reasonable level for almost 20 years. Speed and control noticeably better and just a feeling of doing things right rather than just doing them, if that makes any sense at all.
The only negative was the group I was in, I felt, wasn’t really at the “cross country/trail high school” level and perhaps missed out a little due to this, but in no way is this Andy or Chris’s fault, just maybe the other riders slightly over estimating their ability.

But overall hard to fault and would like to do another day in the future. Highly recommended.

3 of us did dirt school with Andy Barlow this weekend, we went down on the friday to ride glentress red just to spin our legs and stayed at the bike house, we traveled from lincolnshire an had a private course, to enjoy the trails in scotland we split the session down into two half day sessions this for me worked great, first morning session at GT we went over some basics which we were all fairly blind to how we were riding and how we should be rideing then breifly went over some jumps in the funpark , in the afternoon we rode round on our own trying to put what we had learnt into practice, day two was at innerleithen in this day we went over some of what we.d learnt from day one and then some more technical sections on parts of the dh (all do able on my xc bike albet a lot more controled with a better rider on board 🙂 ) over wet routes learning about grip points etc, some of day two i nearly felt out my depth but was never pushed into doing anything and learnt a hell of a lot what i came away with from this course ive found invaluble an over the next few months/years i’ll certainly put it into practice an hope to become a better rider, the entire weekend at first did seem expensive especially as i dont have a mega high income and trips like this i find hard to justify with having a family but all set aside this was worth every penny and id like to think when ive perfected all i learnt from this weekend i’d be more than happy to go back to andy to help push my riding even further