@wes and I had a great day's coaching with Neil yesterday. Predictably the day started with 8's, over some small obstacles. All the usual corrections (knee out, bike on inside leg blah, blah. The simple things that are nigh on impossible to get right.) but also some detailed adjustments probably easier for Neil to pickup on face-2-face, lever adjustment, tweaking foot placement, brake use etc. Next we went to stationary Ride on some small rocks (bit higher than sump guard). Quite a bit of work to do there, fine tuning timing, "leverage", holding a bit of throttle on after the Go ... Some of it was with wheel over the back of the obstacle and some starting resting on sump guard. Ride up a bigger obstacle (steeply sloped boulder maybe hip height) was next on the menu. Bringing the Go point closer to the obstacle, staying back & not starting with a move forward, more work on "leverage" driving the rear into the face. Off the rocks and into a sandy creek bank. Bottom turns and climb back out. Focus on getting the front accurately onto the right track, staying out and back, splitting the turn into 3 sections, entry-transition-climb. Transition is certainly my nemesis at present! After lunch we went to Punch. Neither of us have rocks at home, so big, grippy granite is somewhat outside our familiarity or comfort! The usual suspects for me - hit lower, stop the bike. A good new thing to work on was dropping slightly lower on front impact to create a longer delay for the bike to stop and compress - the little details that make such a difference! By then we'd been at it for around 3-4 hours. Wes had to head home. Tom (owner of the property) took Neil and I a few km to a spot with a big bank of quarried granite and a creek. Spent another 2 or so hours there just riding. Tom & Neil started riding a section with some big, quarry blocks on a steep bank. Pretty impressive watching them trying all sorts of different permutations. I had significantly more modest challenges!! Definitely a really beneficial and enjoyable day. I hope the Oakleigh crew are having as good a day today. It was interesting to compare the online with the F2F coaching. Certainly getting that instant feedback and the discussion was a big benefit of the "live" coaching. But I did come away thinking that what's happening in this online space is worth a huge amount of F2F coaching. Here we get time to digest and process information, go out and try it as many times as we like, then get feedback again. Also the understanding that develops in here feels like it has considerably more depth than what is possible in periodic F2F coaching - more like what you'd get if you had regular weekly or more frequent coaching. If I had to choose between being able to have say 6 days of live coaching OR the online coaching then I'd go with the online. Of course getting both is absolutely ideal! I meant to get some photos & video, but too busy riding! Thanks Neil, Wes & Tom for a great day.

Posted by Peter Mack at 2022-04-06 03:23:23 UTC