I got this e-mail from a rider last week and it brought up a very interesting question – how do you systematically progress as a rider? It is something that I think every rider has thought about and also lets me introduce a chapter from my past I don’t think I’ve ever talked about…Pallet City.
“James,
I bought the DB Combos last year and used them as part of my off season training. I loved the short, intense interval concept.
After watching your videos from the “Ranch”, I was wondering about the path you took to gain the confidence to try that big stuff.
I’ve been out to GJ from Denver and ridden the Lunch Loops a few times now. On Free Lunch there seem to be about 4 main, big drop sections; all of these are above my ability. Where did you go to practice or train for these “all or nothing” sections. I think all of us experienced riders can drop 2-3 feet without too much of a problem. But when the drops hit 4ft and the landing is downhill and looks bigger, there is that mental hurdle that stops you.
Did you find a 3 footer that you could hit all day long, then 4 footer and do the same, then a 5 footer?”
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This is a very interesting question and not one I have been asked a lot. It is something I’ve thought about, though. How exactly do you build the confidence to go bigger?
I know that for me there was a progression – I wrecked jumping off a curb when I first started riding and the thoughts of hitting a 40 footer were as far from my mind as possible. But, like I touched on in a blog post last week, I did spend a lot of time practicing basic skills and I actually carried that over to building confidence on more technical trail skills.
The first thing I did was ride a lot of urban assault missions. If you’ve never done this, it is a lot of fun and really challenges your technical skills. Since there is no “trail” you roll around town looking for interesting things to ride. Stairs, ledges, loading docks, curbs…whatever looks interesting you give it a go.
Of course, this only works if you live in the city which is what I did for the first 2 years of riding. Then I moved to Kauai and I lost my “practice ground” so I had to get creative. I created Pallet City and used it to hone my skills even more. I basically took pallets from a local grocery store and used them to build different stuff. I’d string them together with boards to create “skinnies” and stack them to create different size drops.
Here are some pics so you can see what it looked like. I could go out there and practice riding skinnies and doing some basic jumps and drops. I studied videos of riders to see how they were holding themselves and then tried to practice that when I was riding Pallet City.
On the trail I did similar to what you are saying – finding smaller stuff to get confident on and trying to find progressively bigger stuff to try. But the truth is that sometimes have have to make a big leap from riding one feature to trying the next one. That is where studying your craft and finding ways to practice the basic skills comes in handy. Like one guy who saw Pallet City put it – “you practice that stuff here so you have it in your back pocket when you need it on the trail”.
Hope this helps…
-James Wilson-
Another excellent article James. Way to challenge the BS macho stuff that gets way more airtime than it deserves. Since adopting a more strategic approach to my MTB training by working with a local skills coach and using your courses in the gym I feel way more in control and always improving. Beats living on the edge all the time for sure.
Another excellent article James. Way to challenge the BS macho stuff that gets way more airtime than it deserves. Since adopting a more strategic approach to my MTB training by working with a local skills coach and using your courses in the gym I feel way more in control and always improving. Beats living on the edge all the time for sure.
Glad this approach is working for you as well and that you liked the article. Living on the edge is tough to sustain so knowing how to improve in other ways is important if you are in this for the long haul.
This is awesome …using the coarses in rhe gym really makw a difference to core strenghth when onw is on the trails ….mind over matter always works aswell .
This is awesome …using the coarses in rhe gym really makw a difference to core strenghth when onw is on the trails ….mind over matter always works aswell .