MTBPro - A Skills & Guiding Service
Here’s a scenario: you’ve arrived in the Alps for your first snowboarding holiday. You’ve bought the board, the boots, and the bindings; your new jacket and trousers are pristine, and the powder is deep and dry. Just one, small problem: you don’t know how to snowboard. Three options crystallize in your mind with the speed of falling snow. One: return to the airport, fly home, and wonder what you’d been thinking when you booked the holiday. Two: risk everything, fall in with a group, follow them to the nearest run, and hope for the best. Three: find a qualified instructor, learn the basics, and get the most from the experience you’ve exchanged so much of the folding stuff to enjoy.
Few would question the wisdom of option three, and pretty much everyone we know started their first skiing or snowboarding holiday with a few, valuable hours in the company of an instructor. So why not do the same with cycling? Let’s face it, the cycling proficiency certificate you gained in another lifetime is unlikely to stand you in good stead for a clean run down Frank’s Tank, or have taught you how to find and avoid the trees in Wareham forest. So who can? Glad you asked. Here’s Johnny!
Ok, so you’ve met Mr Hayes on a Wednesday night off-road ride, following him around trails you didn’t know existed, or possibly gained the benefits of his road racing knowledge on our Friday night road rides. His mechanical skills may have saved you from a long walk home from the trail, or returned your pride and joy from a sojourn in the Ride workshop in a condition last seen when you wheeled it from the showroom for its maiden voyage. You may even know that he’s served time as a World Cup mechanic with Orange, or that he finished the highest UK entrant in the Canada’s grueling seven day BC Bike Race in YEAR. Impressive stuff. What few people know about Jon is that he’s also one third of MTBPro, a skills and guiding service designed to maximise your on-the-bike abilities in short order.
So what can a skills session do for you? “It can help you get more from your ride. We teach line selection, body position, gear selection, and give a whole load of pointers that just make riding more enjoyable. Riding Frank’s Tank until you clean it, concentrating on where you can improve, is so much more satisfying than doing yet another scruffy lap of the Purbecks. You’ve still been out, you’ve still had a ride, but you’ve improved and maybe achieved something you didn’t think you were capable of when you set off.”
So what are the fundamentals? And how does MTBPro teach them? The guys cover wide geographical as well as technical areas, but for customers looking to squeeze a couple of hours tuition into an otherwise busy day, the Purbecks, with its mix of sandy singletrack, steep climbs, and a choice of high-speed descents, is a conveniently located classroom for lessons on line and gear selection, and body positioning.
Line Selection
“It’s all about taking the path of least resistance,” says Johnny, who warns against relying on suspension travel to soak up obstacles that are best avoided. Flowing lines that save time and damage to bike and rider are the ones MTBPro specialise in teaching.
Where better to learn the subtle art of line selection than on Frank’s Tank, arguably the best singletrack trail on the Isle of Purbeck: a narrow, rutted, stepped descent that flows through forest and onto open heath land before depositing exhilarated riders at a gate beside the rusted water tank that gives the trail its name.
Bikes down, the MTBPro guys will walk you through a testing section of trail before asking you to ride it. Here’s the SP from Jon on the quickest way down the Tank: “You can straight-line the steps if you’re going fast enough, but if you’re on the brakes, it’s a big drop down for the front and back wheels and that’s when you go over the handlebars.”
Body Position
Frank’s Tank is also the perfect trail for a skills session on body position. Line selection is only half the story. If you’re body position is wrong on a narrow, high-speed, technical descent, prepare yourself for an unexpected close up of the scenery. Here’s MTBPro’s inside track on where you’re body should be if its to stay in contact with the bike.
Shift your weight back. One easy way to avoid a trip over the handlebars is to position yourself over the back wheel, ideally with the saddle in front of you.
Stay relaxed. Rigid arms and locked-out joints are sure signs of a tense rider. Stay loose and go with the flow. Bent elbows will take your weight from the front of the bike.
“Frank’s Tank has rocky drops half way down, and it’s very important that your weight stays over back wheel. The pivot point is your front wheel. If your weight is far enough back, it’s pretty much impossible to go over the handlebar,” says Johnny.
Gear Selection
With downhill skills well and truly brushed up, it’s time to move to the climbs: the perfect terrain to tackle the importance of gear selection and show the best position for ascending.
Starting off in a gear too high is the classic mistake of every enthusiastic novice. But gradient undoes the best intentions in double quick time. The result? Grinding to a halt. Literally.
Here’s Johnny: “The problem comes when you start in too high a gear and need to change down. The bike won’t shift – there’s too much tension in the chain. Before you know it, your foot is down and you’re off the bike and walking. The guy in a lower gear comes whistling up behind you and clicks the button to shift to a higher gear.
“It’s better to be in a lower gear than you’d expect to be. Go in low and change to a higher gear.”
Body position is as important going up a hill as coming down it. But as the trajectory is reversed, so is your riding position. Keeping your weight back is all-important when descending, but on the climbs, it’s about striking a balance between rear wheel traction and front end compliance – in other words, making the rear wheel ‘bite’, while preventing the front wheel from popping-up off the trail. The MTBPro solution? Shift your weight to the front of the saddle and bend your elbows. Simples.
And the principles of line selection remain the same on the climbs as on the descents: take the path of least resistance. If there’s a line littered with obstacles, avoid it. You’ll need all your energy for forward motion. Don’t waste time and effort riding over obstacles when you can ride around them.
Timothy John
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