Who has done a skills days / who hasn't?

My Wife surprised me with one with Cycleactive.

Instructor was very good and enthusiastic and I got a lot from it.

I would love to do it again – I would do a solo though or a small groups with guys I know at a similar level; our group was quite mixed ability so the stuff we did was a bit more on the basics side.

Probably with Jedi – he seems to get good write-ups 🙂

I’ve done 2-and-a-bit. Definately worthwhile- they were all good days in their own right, and I’ve benefitted from them. One of them was a little bit less good than i expected but still probably worthwhile, the other one with Dirtschool and the short session with Ridelines were both excellent.

TBH I’m the limiting factor- I’ve failed to put into practice a lot of what I learned. But enough of it stuck to make a difference. And there was the other benefit to confidence- the 1-2-1 session with Andy at Dirtschool ended up being partly a benchmarking exercise, there were things I was doing right but wasn’t sure if i was doing right. That alone was pretty useful.

None of it taught me anything I couldn’t have figured myself. But maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn’t- and it would definately have taken longer.

rogerthecat – Member

But seriously, you can’t improve without coaching. Just doing it doesn’t work

Ah come on, everyone on here knows this is absolute rubbish. There is not one person on here that isn’t better than they were the first time they rode a bike, and there’s not one person on here that got there solely because of coaching. True story.

So far, 5 years of MTB’ing and no training, but come next Friday that all changes with an attack of the Jedi (2nd time round it can be the Return of the Jedi 😉 so i will be able to let you know how that compares to my poor self teaching experiments!

Also, you might just want to consider doing a skills course because it is fun in itself !!

Like Simon (page 1), been on two (one was same as Simon) and both occasions I came away not much the wiser. Both were big groups and the freebie one was coached by some guys who were as much learning their coaching trade I think.

On Sunday I’m on a Pro Ride Guides course who are more in the Jedi league (official coaches to the Mega Avalanche and currently doing the skills/coaching articles in MBUK). They seem to get good results and everyone I know who’ve been on their courses rave about them. I’m on their basic course, but with a bunch of friends so we can tailor it a bit, Shame about the weather forecast.

I have done one day with dirt school, it was excellent and will definitely do another.

I would say to those who say they don’t need one, unless you really are totally confident world class rider or only stick to simple trails or have no desire to go faster/ride with more confidence, then do one. It will make a difference to your riding, I have been riding and racing offroad for 20 years and it made a big difference to me. Before I could out descend most on xc type trails and wouldn’t say that’s changed massively, it’s not like I out descend everyone now, far from it but feel so much more in control and confident it’s amazing.

As I said would love to do another one, at a slightly higher level, looking at more jumps and drops.

And those who didn’t get much out of it, can only presume the course was at the wrong level or a poor teacher that only taught things one way…I am a teacher/tutor and thought Andy from dirt schools style of teaching was excellent.

I would say to those who say they don’t need one, unless you really are totally confident world class rider or only stick to simple trails or have no desire to go faster/ride with more confidence, then do one.

I would say you devalue the idea of skills courses by over egging the pudding.

I did a skills weekend a couple of years ago, and loved it. In fact, I think it is time to return.

I reviewed it at the time, but the centre was Forest Freeride[/url], and the instructor was STW member still-s8tannorm (aka Stuart).

I won a day with shaums march a few years back.

It was so wet a kayaking lesson might have been more appropriate…

crikey – Member
I would say to those who say they don’t need one, unless you really are totally confident world class rider or only stick to simple trails or have no desire to go faster/ride with more confidence, then do one.

I would say you devalue the idea of skills courses by over egging the pudding.

Sorry not quite sure what your getting at? Yeah maybe in your case if your not riding a MTB then a skills day might be a bit pointless. I am not suggesting that a skills day is worth more than fitness but then if your a MTB racer looking to be as fast as possible then no stone unturned?

And yes maybe I over stated the point there’s lots of reasons not to do one but what I meant is that if your open/thinking about the idea of doing one, get the right one and it will make more difference to your riding than say a new bike part.

No problem with anyone who wants to do a skills course. I’m curious about who is the typical skills course client. Did they take to MTB, or bikes in general, late in life? What is the typical level of riding most clients are aiming for?

This;

And yes maybe I over stated the point there’s lots of reasons not to do one but what I meant is that if your open/thinking about the idea of doing one, get the right one and it will make more difference to your riding than say a new bike part.

Is better than this;

I would say to those who say they don’t need one, unless you really are totally confident world class rider or only stick to simple trails or have no desire to go faster/ride with more confidence, then do one.

I’ve no problem with skills courses, but selling them like ‘you can’t possibly be any good without doing one’ is exaggeration and devalues them.

They are of great benefit to some people, but not to everyone.

Fair point crikey! Agreed a bit over selling them, still amazed at how much of a difference it made it me as I was a bit sceptical that it would be useful having ridden for so long at a reasonable level and at that point in time not wanting to do anything but xc but did really make a difference to me.
But yes did go a bit over the top more than I meant!

I’ve just come back to MTB after about a year and a half of road. And instantly figured, damn, i’m going to rubbish getting back into this, but not at all.
Infact, opposite.

I’ve learned to be a lot more flexible on the bike and do more work, not just hang out and let the suspension do the work and also figured, yeah, I’m much more animated now, I boss the bike around 5x more than I ever used to before, but I still have a heap to learn.

though right now its just a case of getting bike upto a decent standard before I sort some training out.
Cyclewise fella’s at whinlatter would probably be the closest (could ride there in 40mins lol).

I think that this is a great topic for discussion – as well as biking, I play a lot of golf and some of the guys I play with seem to pride themselves on the fact that they’ve “never had a lesson in my life” – but they’re still playing off 18!!

If the best sportsmen/women in the world use coaches then why do “normal”, less talented people, view it as a weakness to have a lesson?

I have a lot of golf lessons (which have, definitely, helped me to reduce my handicap) and I’ve just had my first MTB skills lesson (as mentioned in the Jumps and Drops thread) and would highly recommend lessons to anyone wanting to improve.

I have (February 2012) with Jedi

Probably the best mountain biking money I’ve ever spent

Definitely improved my riding (had an instant impact for me)

Changed my riding style for the better

I only wish I’d been to visit Jedi sooner

Ok! Friday has been and gone so now i’m in the “done a skills course camp” 😉

And?

Damm good fun for a start! If you like riding your bike then you’re gonna have fun whatever you learn or fail to learn. Tony certainly has an intuitive eye for picking up both on peoples faults, but also on how to correct them. It ain’t as simple as saying “you’re crap at x y or z, do it this way” (especially with us blokes who like to think we know everything……….)

Throughout the day you could see how the course formulated itself, building on those first and simplest actions and skills, each challenge adding a new layer but not leaving the previous skill set behind. Based on a simple and easy to remember set of rules, you find your riding flows more and more as the day goes on. Whilst it has to be said i am never going to be a great “airtime” rider, the skills Tony teaches are very relavent to real world cycling imo.

We’ve all seen loads of videos on the Net of people jumping massive gap jumps, or manualling 300yards, or doing a complete 360 off the roof of a house, but if we are honest, this really is a bit of a false picture of riding for the vast majority. The skills you have re-enforced by a skills course, are those that you probably, subconciously, were probably using anyway, just maybe not at the right time or in the right fashion. Tony lays down the groundwork and enables you to take it forwards at your own pace.

He also makes a fine cup of coffee and makes you feel right at home, important as it’s easy to feel the pressure of scrutiny, and tense up, which is not good when trying to find some flow and smoothness.

As with everything in Life, you get out what you put in. I would have liked to have progressed a bit more in the time we had, but realistically, even the stuff I failed to learn on the day will now be there in the back of my mind everytime i get on my bike. I wouldn’t call myself a “natural rider”, it takes me some time to really pull everything together, but at least now i can begin to see how i ride from an external perspective, analyse the results of my actions, and file away the “good results” from the bad ones.

An interesting collorary of a few hrs of intense riding scrutiny, is that by making the basic actions more automatic, i actually should have more time to simply “appreciate the ride”, spend a lot less time looking at my front wheel 😉 and just enjoy it more for what it is.

The next few weeks should be fun 😉

Buying a dropper seatpost really opened my eyes to some of my bad habits. For instance, I realized that I had my butt on the saddle 99% of the time; I almost never stood up! Well, if you drop the saddle, then you have to stand, and it is really tiring when you’re used to being in the saddle all of the time.

I would go see Jedi if I lived in the UK. I’m in the US though, and MTB coaching does not seem to be as popular here. After some searching, I found Lee but he’s 1500 miles away!

In the interim, I bought Lee’s book which just arrived yesterday from Amazon. It really does a good job of breaking down basic riding skills. I’m thinking about seeing if there is interest from others in running our own skills course where we read the book and help coach each other on maybe one new skill a week. That way, I’d have others there to look at my riding since you can’t see yourself ride unless you make a video or something. No doubt that this is not as good as having an experienced coach, but it is probably better than trying to fix my riding on my own.

I also just bought this book which goes much more in depth and covers more advanced riding than the NICA one. At this point, it is too much material for me to wrap my arms around though.

Ok, now I gotta go ride and practice that attack position…

realy need to do one of thease. anyone got the link to Jedi’s website?

Yup, had day’s one-to-one with Nigel Page. Cannot recommend highly enough. All the money we spend on *kit*, it has to be worth a bit of money to improve the skills too 🙂

I’ve been Jedi’d

Very, very, very worthwhile.

What he teaches is (one you’ve been taught it) incredibly simple, but it’s the way he teaches it. My riding has come on loads since going. The techniques he teaches work for all riding disciplines (well, maybe not the jumping bit on road bikes!) and I can now corner on my Brompton at scarily (but very controlled) fast speeds. Every morning on my commute to the station I get a good belt of positive G on the folder in a tight left hander at the bottom of a hill – before this was a very wide scary turn onto the opposite side of the road!

I wanted to see Jedi before my upcoming trip to the Alps but at the time I enquired he was fully booked til September 😥

I spend an enjoyable winter’s day with Stu at Forest Freeride. He spotted some flaws in my style which held me back, explained why I got scared and how to look past that with simple technique. We worked on:

Body positions and bike setup
Foot positions
Looking
Traction and braking (and most importantly, not braking)
Rolling obstacles
Switchbacks
Drops (keeping the bike more level to land on 2 wheels)

The main challenge since has been integrating practice into trail riding. Just riding along does not encourage practice. With riding time limited, I just don’t practice enough. So for me, a key advantage of coaching is that it is enforced practice time.