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Thank you for creating what has been one of the best learning experiences of our lives. We traveled all the way from Australia to attend your camp in Golden, Colorado and it was worth every penny! It is refreshing to find someone who understands their field well enough to be able to deconstruct difficult and often hard to pinpoint concepts. This is a rare talent. Learning these mountain biking skills has truly made us "betterriders". Thank you for the opportunity to attend your camp and we look forward to attending a core skills camp #2 !
The winter is the best time to improve your skills and take a mountain bike skills camp. Many skills, such as cornering involve a lot of different movements/components which means practicing "cornering" is not deliberate practice. Deliberate practice would be practicing vision through a corner three times, stopping and analyzing what you did right and wrong then refocusing and doing it three more times. This is why you see all the basketball, football, ski teams and pretty much every sport requiring skill teams doing drills more than 70% of their practice time! A few weeks of this quality practice (mixed with resistance training and cardio work) will do more than years of just winging it on the trail (according to Ross Schnell who said, "I learned more today than in the last 10-11 years of just riding" (in a rushed 3.5 hour lesson, BetterRide camps are 19-22 hours over 3 days!).
I love getting happy emails from students but happy emails from halfway around the world from riders I have never meet? 60mm stem, bars 1.125" below saddle, and 725mm width. Wow. Amazing. No downsides, no oversteering, just way way better stability, agility smoothness and control.
The correct descending body position involves standing and staying centered with your weight on the pedals (not getting way back), legs relaxed and bent (not squeezing your seat) and arms bent in a half push-up position. Remember, I didn't invent these skills I have been fortunate enough to learn from the best (World Champions Marla Streb, Greg Minnaar, etc.) and learn from the great riders that I coach (Ross Schnell, Mitch Ropelato, etc.). I am simply passing on what I have learned. In these videos taken by a student in my Philly mountain bike camp this spring you can really see one huge reason (there are many) why centered is good and getting back is bad.
