Last week I posted an article and video going over the lowly trackstand and why it was the key to improving your Standing Pedaling and ultimately your Switchback riding skills. In the beginning of the post I mentioned something that I wanted to expand on a bit more because it is really important to understand if you want to improve your skills and fitness on the trail.

The key is a “simple practice”, one that focuses on gently nudging our high level skills up through a constant study and refinement of the fundamentals.

One of the biggest challenges I face as a coach is helping people to learn a new high level exercise and/ or bike skill. Getting someone to understand how to do a deadlift in the gym or get into good body position on the bike is one thing but getting them to do a good snatch in the gym or manual on their bike is another.

While I’ve tried to out-coach bad technique in the past over the last year or so I’ve come to realize a simple truth…

Anytime I run into a problem teaching a high level skill to someone there is a problem with one of the fundamental skills that supports it.

If all of the requisite movement skills are there it shouldn’t take much coaching from me to get someone doing a pretty good version of what I want them to do. If it takes me more than 5 minutes to get someone to start grasping what I’m asking them to do then I start to think there may be something more than “bad technique” at play.

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate my point. On the right are High Level Skills we all want to do and on the left are Fundamental Level Skills that are often lacking when someone runs into problems with them…

And the list goes on and on. The problem you run into is that we all want to focus on the left hand colum but it is right hand colum that holds the keys to real progress.

This means that often when we want to improve a high level skill you don’t want to look to a higher level skill or technique, you want  to look back at the fundamental skills and techniques and improve on them.

Again, this gets tough when the Ego tells us that we’re too advanced to go back and work on the basics or, worse yet, that we’ve gotten this far without mastering them so they can’t hold the key to going even further.

This mindset comes from protecting the image we have of ourselves as a “good” rider and not from a sincere desire to master our art at a higher level.

The funny thing is that by focusing on your Fundamental Level Skills you’ll improve your High Level Skills without really trying. Which reminds me of a quote I’ve used a lot on this site…

“If you continue in this simple practice everyday you can attain something wonderful.” – Shunryu Suzuki

The key is a “simple practice”, one that focuses on gently nudging our high level skills up through a constant study and refinement of the fundamentals.

Hope this inspires you to look back and see what Fundamental Level Skills you’ve been neglecting and the courage to start focusing on them again. If you have any High Level Skills you’re struggling with and want some insights into the Fundamental Level Skills you need to focus on post a comment below this post and I’ll get to it ASAP.

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Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson