I’ve been riding since 1989 and except for a few years where finances/injury/laziness got in the way, I’m on one bike or other, most weekends.

But I’ve reached the conclusion that I’m really shit at mountain biking.

I’m just not getting any better; in fact, I’m getting worse. This weekend is a perfect example. Riding round Swinley, feeling pretty confident and strong, I crashed on a mildly technical descent (Red 15) that I’ve cleared a dozen times. I didn’t have enough speed and was thinking about it too much… crash. And at my age, the scrapes and bruises (and earlier in the year, cracked ribs) take longer to heal.

It’s not the bike – I have a really good bike. It’s definitely me.

What do I do? A skills course? Ride the road bike for the rest of the Summer? Or just give up?*

*Not really an option. I love it too much.

Skills course, without a doubt.

I did this one a few years back, and found it excellent.

Skills course one on one. Get the decent opinion on what your doing, also your paying for it so be clear about where you are and what you want from it.

Skills day, my riding had stalled, stupid crashes and couldn’t work out why. I did a one 2 one with Jedi and was much better after that.

Unless you haven’t got any riding mates who are better than you to follow down descents then I would suggest a skills course would be the quickest way. It sounds to me like you have a confidence problem which means you are riding stuff way too slowly. The faster you go in most situtaions the more stable you are. There are a few coaches on here who do it professionally.

Don’t forget crashing is part of it really, if you weren’t taking a few risks you wouldn’t get the adrenaline every now and then the cumulative risk taking results in a bump, even if you get betterer you just go harder and push it a bit more and reach the limit and crash again. If you never crash you’re not trying hard enough*.

*This is my mantra for being really shit, which I most assuredly am.

If you’re riding at Swinley then you’re not far from Jedi. The man is a genius:

HOME

He’s basically the A-team of MTB coaching but he prefers coffee to milk. And I’m guessing he’s not scared of flying! 😉

Slightly left-field suggestion, but have you considered a fatbike?

It worked for me in a similar situation. I tried a few skills courses, which were great fun, but never really solved the fundamental issue, which turned out to be that I’m not actually a mountain biker. I just happen to love riding bikes up and down mountains, but I don’t get the obsession with trying to get down as fast as possible. My monster truck lets me ride up and down stuff I couldn’t or wouldn’t tackle on my normal bike, I just can’t do it as fast*

Well, just a thought.

*actually that’s not quite true, I’m faster in some places and about the same overall, but a fair bit slower on some bits.

Or just ride accordingly ….
I’m technically crap and realize it, I started riding bikes in my 30’s and 20+ years on feel I’m missing some of the fundamental skills which most people learn as kids.
I enjoy myself but just accept that I will get off and walk if needed.

What @chief says. Tony is generally fully booked so look into taking a session Nathan who works with Tony.

I did my session after I’d been mtb-ing 10 years and wish I had done it far sooner, its amazing how much you don’t know or mislearnt or just haven’t tried as you think its beyond you

at my age, the scrapes and bruises (and earlier in the year, cracked ribs) take longer to heal.

I’m knocking on 40, and have given myself permission to pack it in if/when I end up seriously injured. In the meantime, the key to improvement is faster mates.

🙂

Some people are just slow & have less skills. Dont worry about it. Ride at your own pace. Enjoy it for what it is. Not everyone is cut out or can expect to achieve even mild competence.
My mate is hopeless (hope he is not reading this!) All the skill courses, practice, decent bike make not one jot of difference.

EDIT dont buy a road bike for gods sake, that really is giving up on life.

Stop putting so much pressure on yourself to be Rad^gnar and just enjoy riding your bike. Believe it or not, you don’t actually take up too much room if you’re not living on the edge! 😀 **** FB statuses, **** Strava and **** humblebraggers right off.

I agree with either skills coaching or faster mates who are better riders and can give you pointers. I started riding after a lot of my mates and the one I’ve learnt the most from is the most skillful but not the fastest. The faster ones are clueless as to why they are quick and often have no idea about giving tips to improve.

That said, I spent a week with Mike @ Switch-backs.com in Spain 12 years ago and it transformed my riding. You need to be relatively confident on technical stuff though before going out there but I’ve been back most years since too just to keep my skills honed.

The vast majority of people i see who aren’t confident in their riding all tend to have glaring, basic errors in their technique, generally completely wrong body position or foot work.

Hence, they feel unbalanced/unstable and so slow down even more, resulting in yet more balance issues. Often this is compounded by a badly set up bike.

Go get some decent coaching (another recommendation for Tony @ UKBIKESKILLS !!) and you find you are able to flow down trails you were previously making a meal of!

you say its not the bike? if its a modern bike you may find that you need to ride it a lot differently to one a few years ago.

get a skills day. try and get a half day 1:1 first. or in a very small group. when get another in a month.

I can recommend people up near calderdale but its probably a bit too far.

Like the OP, I’ve been riding mountain bikes since the late ’80’s (with a break of a few years in the nineties), having come to it from m/cycle trials riding, which I did from when I was 16.
I’ve had to reluctantly accept that I’ll never be the fastest rider around (up or down) but I’m by no means the slowest. I’d love to be hucking big road gaps or dropping six feet to flat but it ain’t going to happen. So, you have to focus on your strengths and what I am pretty good at is steep, slow, technical descending and techy climbing too. Speed isn’t everything in this world but cleaning stuff is – well, in my book it is anyway.

The only problem is that you always have to have mates with you ‘cos if no-one sees a clean, well, it didn’t happen…..

So that’s why I don’t do any of this enduro stuff – people say “you’ve got the skills, get into it” but what I haven’t got are big enough balls to ride that stuff at race speed. Same as I was a good time and observation trials rider but couldn’t transfer those skills to the altogether faster world of m/cycle enduro riding, and if I can’t be competitive there’s no point really.

So, I just do what I do in the few years decent riding that I’ve hopefully got left – the trouble with age though is that I worry more than I used to do and I do go some stupid places in big mountains on my own, from time to time, especially in that Greece. I might well give up when I’m 65….

I’ve had a bit of an epiphany this year. Been riding since the early ’90s, never been more than a mid pack mincer. I got really disheartened at how crap my results were at a couple of races even though I thought I’d gone as fast as I could.
I sulked for a few days then I came to the acceptance that it doesn’t really matter. As long as I have fun, who cares if it’s at slower speeds and on less techy terrain?
Accepting that has ironically made my riding more fun, which has made me want to do more, which has actually made me faster and more confident.
Other than that the biggest change recently for me has been getting lower over the front. I always thought I was nice and low but I flicked through the pics from the Southern Enduro at QECP. There were some from one particular corner, I thought I had loaded the front wheel nicely but the really fast guys were so much more over the front it was surprising. I started to experiment on trails I know really well and have found that I get so much more grip and feel so much more stable on the corners that it has made me much quicker.
So I’d say chill out, have fun & just work on one bit of your technique at a time to see if it helps. Remember it’s a hobby to be enjoyed not a prison sentence to endure.

What you need is a really brilliant hardtail, like a Yeti Bigtop 😀

Seriously though, I bet there’s a couple of real fundamentals, like body position and looking ahead that a skills course could help with. They don’t have to teach you jumps and drops 🙂
(And before anyone says “why haven’t you done one Dezb?” it’s because I enjoy riding at the level I’m at and crashing is fun 😉 )

Wondering about bikes here too. I reckon a 150mm enduro machine would actually be worse for the rider who’s taking his/her time. Forks diving and saddles coming up when you’re sat up in the sack-of-potatoes position mincing down something could be quite unnerving. I reckon those bikes need a bit of speed and body language to work properly.

Some bikes will molgrips, some wont. A well set up fork won’t be diving too.

Some of the fastest bikes will need the best pilots as it were. Others will mask and hide bad technique till you crash. Generally the internet is really crap at diagnosing this though 🙂

Literally all you need to do is watch this:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgT4A5AaCRQ[/video]

After I watched it (2012) I realised I’d been doing everything wrong all my MTBing life (since 1990). Now I’m awesums 8)

Also realise, that all though you feel you might be crap, actually most of the people on ‘ere (including myself), aren’t actually all that good either. Despite the online impression they might give.

The best overall thing I’ve learnt is to relax a bit, which becomes easier when you’ve learnt some of the rad skilz in the above vid.

I’ve also learnt to realise that those tense, paranoid, off-days happen – and to take it easy on those days. It’s just a bit of fun, after all.

I don’t particularly like riding steep, tech stuff, or gaining the mega skilz to nail gap jumps. So I don’t force myself to.

Time for a cx/gravel bike. Permission to mince, it’s what I do.

Thanks no_eyed_deer – useful.

I am totally fine with not being Brett Rheeder or Thomas Vanderham. And I’m perfectly happy not to be the fastest, too.

I’d just like the confidence to enjoy my riding that bit more – ride that 2ft drop comfortably, get round that loose switchback without toppling over.

So many of you suggest a 1-to-1 skills course, so I’m going to to that. Pretty sure my bike it set up fairly well and that my position on it is OK. But that will be apparent to the course leader if I’m wrong.

Thanks for the positivity.

I went on a 121 skills session after losing all confidence following an ambulance level horrible crash. I found it very useful, infact had I done it before the crash I may not have reshaped my face …. 🙂

Youre not shit – youre a perfectly competent mountain biker. Sometimes youre awsome, more often than not average, sometimes it’s not there……some days pootle, some days work on some skills or push yourself a bit. Enjoy it for what it is – a cycle in the country.

Red 15 isn’t something you’d take a novice on a ride of, it’s techical trail with plenty of opportunites to crash and hurt yourself on, especially if you’re getting a move on.

I’v forwarded you an email from a local (I think) skills set up.

Which bit did you stack it on? I was over there yesterday and there’s a couple of sketchy breaking bumps right near the beginning and one of them had me hurtling towards a tree at around 30k, somehow managed to stay on.

@weeksy and @acidtest – I’d gotten through the relatively flat rooty bit near the start of Red 15, but lost too much speed doing so. I got to where it steepens a bit and there are 3 line choices. I took the furthest right, with 3-4 small steps caused by roots. I normally hit them fairly fast, relying on my suspension for grip, so that the lovely big right-handed berm at the end is more fun. Yesterday, I took each step one-at-a-time, too slowly and just lost it on the last one. I thought about it too much.

I feel that too often people just ride the whole route – on the sections you feel less confidant on try stopping and doing them again – obviously best done on solo rides – as someone who grew up riding dirt jumps one of the things I’ve never liked about trails is the tendency to only ride the fun bits once – unless your doing a second loop – rinse and repeat the sketchy sections – starting slower and then build up naturally .. OP – you mentioned a 2ft drop your not too smooth on – How about riding out to this drop and doing say 10 times – you’ll have conserved energy from not riding full pace round the whole route and give yourself some time to think about your approach – It’s a good way to make marginal gains IMO ..

I’ve recently come to the admission that i’m not that great at mountain biking & shall henceforth be concentrating on easier trails at a quicker pace on a hardtail, rather than donning the pads & ploughing 5″ of travel through steep rocky descents with gritted teeth and white knuckles, all the time praying I don’t fall off & snap my barse…

The realization came earlier on in the year, me & the missus went to Italy & spent a few days in Finale Ligure – I did one uplift day on a 140mm hire bike & had several decidedly hairy moments resulting in serious relief when I made minced it through the day without injuring myself – a classic case of mistaking ambition for ability – couple of days later I hired a carbon hardtail 29er & stuck 30-odd miles on it on the xc trails in the area & had a blast. Not totally convinced on the 29″ wheels but it was fun all the same & I felt more at ease on that type of terrain than the enduro gnar.

Stick with what feels fun, I think loads of people (myself included) get fixated with trail grades & feel compelled to go try progressively more technical stuff just to prove they can, whereas tearing round the blue routes or the local forest trails at top speed can actually be more enjoyable.

Obviously some people are more skilled & can tear up pretty much anything they come across at top speed without fearing for their lives, but i’ve made peace with the fact that’s just not me. I’m shit, and proud 8)

Like roverpig I really enjoy the fat bike. Depends what you want from your biking.

But I love the get over anything ability and not worried about ultimate pace…

*waves* highly average rider here too, also not even been out on my MTB for 12+ months so you are doing better than me.

I have used my BMX a bit though, also a very grounded rider on that too!

@rhayter Yeah I know which bit you mean, sounds like you where unlucky too. I normally just blast through there flat out and the bike just flows over it all.

I was running a 65mm stem for a bit then changed it to a 31mm, so much more confidence now at high speed and on the steep stuff, drop offs etc. Maybe that would help you too. I’ve not really lost any climbing ability, just have to lean forward a bit more. It’s a bit twitchy when you first change but you soon get used to it and wouldn’t go back now.

weeksy
Red 15 isn’t something you’d take a novice on a ride of, it’s techical trail

I’m pretty dam far from a gnarcore rider, but even i have to disagree with ^^^^this!! 😆

If you’re crashing on R15 then you are either:

1) totally failing to control your speed appropriately

or

2) Failing to apply the necessary basic techniques that allow you to ride at the speed you are going (slow or fast)

Both are fixed by a skills course!

If the OP doesn’t want the pressure of a 1:1 course, then doing one of UKBIKESKILLS public days is a good idea. Cheaper, and you get a good flavour of the more intensive 1:1 course but with a lot less pressure to perform!

Why not just enjoy riding?

Yeah a skills course might work. The teacher might not be the best at getting the best out of you. What then? A crisis of confidence? Another tutor? You’ve ridden it a dozen times before…maybe your stressed out, unfit or tired at the moment? I’m happy in my mediocre riding. Like a pig in shit. Who cares.

Honestly a 1-2-1 at Uk Bike skills isn’t pressured in any way. I can’t speak highly enough of Tony, the sessions are brilliant.

You do know no one who posts on this forum rides bikes….right?

This is a bike forum?

Seriously though a bit of coaching can do wonders, I have spent years and lots of money on upgrading the bike to improve my skills but this summer I rode the megavalanche for the first time and it put a lot of things into perspective for me. First few days I felt all at sea thinking wtf have I done signing up for this, after a comedy of errors in qualifying I managed to let go for my run down the mountain. It was great and felt that I was riding better than ever. However I realised I needed to improve for my return trip next year.

Stumbled across a drops course at Farmer Johns run by A-Line and decided to have a go. After 30years of mincing my own way I can honestly say in 2hours JP got me riding stuff so much better. I’m now actively looking for opportunities to drop off stuff now. A short course has got me itching for more, I’m going to try another small group course before delving into 121 coaching.

Best upgrade I’ve made so far is tweaking the muscle between my ears. It might not be for everyone but for a small outlay what have you got to lose?