The problem with MTB (in my mind) that makes it really hard to progress technical skills without supervision is the penalty for failure.
If you want to try and get more topsin on your backhand at tennis then maybe you miss a bunch practising. If you want to lean the bike more and perfect weight distribution to corner faster, the penalty is falling off lots, which for (sane people at least) is not fun and hurts.

Ultimately though mtbing is like all cycling mostly fitness dependent. You can have all the skills you want but if you are an unfit, fatty they forget it. For the average STW rider who thinks mtbing is a slow ride, with frequent stops and a few pints in the pub at the end, then a coach would be the biggest waste of money ever.

I think the biggest example of this is skiing v snowboarding. Nobody seems to get more than a week of snowboarding coaching, but the majority I see out really could do with it. Not least because they push and pull their turns with back foot rather. But also to learn mountain craft especially off piste, even if safe Canada off piste

Same with surfing, I am pretty good but get coaching session every now and then too improve technique. Hugely helpful to have someone else who can see why eg losing snap off cut backs etc.

I’m sure I’d benefit from MTB coaching too.

I had begun to think that I was the only person who was looking for the style of coaching that the OP was referring to but for some reason in the world of MTB it is virtually impossible to find (part of it is reflected in what Ghostlymachine says above about charlatans, some of it I believe is down to the fact that many interchange coaching with guiding, given that most tuition within the MTB world has evolved from guiding).

Most guides to learning/tuition that I have ever come across in other walks of life has talked about breaking the information into small chunks and then practicing that information to embed it followed by a check (review/test) to ensure it is embedded before moving on. This doesn’t happen when you have a one off day where you are bombarded with information – generally people will only remember a few of the things that they were shown and even then in a corrupted form. I am lucky enough to be able to ride in a local woods that has plenty of features so I do session stuff to try and improve my skills – I would love to find a good coach to spend an hour a week with to work through my bad habits which I can work on eradicating – it would then mean that my trips to BPW and the like would be more fulsome because I would be better able to use the facilities (if I have bad technique on a 4 foot gap what chance have I got in scaling it up).

more like musical instruments; you need lessons of some sort to get you going and depending on the instrument more than others. Eg guitars can be self taught with assistance from the internet

It can, but trust me.. more often than not the “self-taught” people have ingrained bad ‘form’. as a once frustrated guitar learner who bit the bullet and got lessons they really did teach something you’d never learn off that (great mind you!) justin bloke on youtube.

the whole problem is feedback.wihtout anyone to correct your mistakes you could end up like those people who turn up on the x-factor and can’t believe they don’t sound great, because they trust their tone-deaf mother over someone who wants to exploit their talent for cash – if they had any.

That aside.. I view ‘skills’ practice in probably a different way from many. I’m a ex-skateboarder.. and a lot the time is spent ‘trying’ to learn and do tricks, not just doing them. so its always a session. there are even ‘training’ games built around being able to consistently do the tricks which force you to try tricks you couldn’t usually. its similar with BMX. in those environments your peers help you.

With both skateboarding and guitar a key thing is to keep doing it regularly. So ride more, practice and get advice from your peers, and if necessary some pro-tuition could really help.

I keep thinking about getting some coaching, particularly as there are areas of my riding I’d like to work at.

I think I’d be much keener to get a regular session with a coach than a half day session. Essentially, I’ve never had any coaching, and so much as when I’ve been out with far better riders I’ve been given some really useful tips, I don’t have that feedback to know I’m actually putting those tips into practice correctly! Having done karate a long time ago, and even done a bit of coaching in that myself, I’m aware of how different what you are doing and what you think you are doing can be.

I feel like if I did have any coaching, anything I do would be so ingrained that one or two half days would never get it out of my system.

Still tempted by a couple of half day 1-to-1 sessions on the bike, but its a lot of cash to invest in something where i don’t have someone watching to make sure i’m on the right track.

A 1-1 day with Jedi or Nathan is the best £210 you’ll ever spend on your biking, a group (public ie 8 people) lesson is £95 (prices from memory)

OP make no doubt coaching/lessons are fabulous but unlike horse riding where you go once a week which in many casis is yoir riding, on biking you go once every few years and ride / practice (ie session) the rest of the time. If the majority of riding I did was in a group or on lessons I probably would give up.

I could do with safe practice more than coaching. I *know* I have the skills to do big jumps/doubles/gaps but I don’t have the balls. Some really nice easy progressively larger jumps to ‘session’.

The planks at Cwmcarn were good.. RIP Cwmcarn planks…

I think it’s a great question to be honest

Regular golferists will get a lesson to help with part of their game

Even hobbyist motorcyclists doing the odd trackday will get an instructor for a session to provide a few pointers (I know I have, and I definitely won’t be racing)

I coach mainly at jnr/youth level but have coached adults also. What does surprise me is the reluctance of some people to consider coaching but I do think the image of MTB’ing has a bit of problem as reflected by the GNAR rating of photos of downhill racing, getting air, gap jumps and all the other stuff that even the most committed of us only do 10% of the time. I was skiing for the first time in 5 years back in Feb and didn’t hesitate to choose a lesson to get me back in the groove. I do get requests from time to time at my local club to put on adult coaching for MTB. For some I think they don’t want their deficiencies exposed and I have friends who can ride a bit but would really benefit from some structured coaching, yet I know they would never do it.

This is a good and relevant point :

If you want to lean the bike more and perfect weight distribution to corner faster, the penalty is falling off lots, which for (sane people at least) is not fun and hurts.

This type of coaching certainly does exist. My closest trail centre (well bike park) offers a wide variety of weekly and monthly coaching options for adults and kids. I know other trail centres I frequent offer coaching and I suspect they can offer a similar arrangement.

Before I moved recently there was a guy who lived nearby who was in the coaching game. I know he would have happily agreed to an hour or so every few weeks or months for a cost less than those horsey prices.

Also my cycling club used to run an informal coaching session once a week in the summer. Just where a couple of more experienced riders helped pass on a few skills. Even just cycling regularly with a club is a good way of picking up tips from others who are a bit better or a bit more knowledgeable.

There’s certainly other options out there other than paying many hundreds of pounds for a one off day’s coaching.

There’s am element of “it’s just bikes, everyone can ride a bike, right?”

There’s also an element of riding the terrain you’ve got. The riding I did in the Chilterns has almost nothing in common to the riding I do now in Calderdale. If I’d have done training here and then moved to the Chilterns all those lessons would have been pretty pointless.

There’s an element of knowing that to be good at something (coached or not) you need to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over…And for many people MTB is the “thing they do on a Sunday morning” to get away from the kids and the missus for a couple of hours. The idea of doing a corner or a drop of or nailing a rock entry to a series of drops enough times so it becomes second nature is anathema, there just isn’t the time.

There’s an element of most folk knowing that they’ve got to get to work on Monday morning. I can’t rock up to work with teeth missing or my face smashed up ’cause I was spending all Sunday nailing that tricky DH steep switch back with the rock in the middle that forces you to go for the corner gap…

Some people offer this style of coaching, and it seems popular:
All booked up this year

Halfway of mtb coaching you have said is £200, that is 4 hours. 1 hour with the Olympiad is £70…so 4 hours would be £280…
You can’t ‘get’ multiple things in 1 hour on a bike…it needs time to run through it and start to Embed it…horse riding, I think, has less large bad habits to break so an hour seems more beneficial.