Hey,

I’m just a little curious about this, have you ever tried to improve your riding by reading post, blogs articles etc…? Does it actually work when you are out on the trails?

I’m thinking about a skills day but that might be a little expensive for me at the minute. Is there anything online that I could do or look at? Maybe some sort of online course as that would probably work better for me.

And do you have any suggestions on where I can look?

Any help would be great.

it’s road specific, but useful nonetheless: http://cyclingtips.com.au/cycling-tips/

Get a Tom Dowie course, cheap and he’s one hell of a good coach.

To answer your main question, Yes and No. Yes you can learn some stuff of reading or watching it online, but basic stuff since you don’t have a professional showing you how to do it and spot what your doing wrong.

That said, I did learn to jump and to corner quicker from watching youtube videos but when I got professional coaching he took my technique and threw it out of the window and completely reshaped my Jumping and cornering. Also Alot of videos/articles don’t tell you what could be going wrong and how to sort that out. Not a single jumping video shows you how to pump they all tell you to pull up and keep the bike level. This is wrong. Get a coaching course, Tom dowie coaching is priced nicely and you will learn more in 2-4 hours then months of doing it on your own.

from the can’t teach old dogs new tricks end of the age spectrum and I like to read stuff not watch vid’s – recently learnt to unicycle and found watching how to stuff on youtube great much much easier than trying to translate from words to action – need to be slightly selective as some stuff seemed pretty crap but seems pretty easy to spot
as to skills courses – never done for MTB prob why I start dabbing and crying on technical stuff – did some one to one ski lessons and learnt more in a couple of hours than in a few days of follow the leader ski school

reminds me new years resolution was learn to hold a manual

I prefer skills coaching with a human to provide feedback, it’s all to easy to thing you got it right after reading a book/blog or watching a vid, the human will make you do it again and again until you do.

In the end I blame mobile phones, before they became common or worked in loads of places you always ended up meeting for a ride early and hanging round more so you had time to get on your bike and just ride round car parks etc, hopping kerbs, up and down steps and all that stuff that helped make you better.
Also when trails were quieter it was easier to work on stuff and mess around, do I’m blaming other people too now!