What is it we do when we ride a mountain bike? We pedal. We lean the bike to make it countersteer. We shift gears. We brake. On steep descents we lower the seat.
That covers it, and yet not remotely. Mountain biking isn’t one skill—it’s a whole grab bag of skills and when you’ve been riding them for 20 years or more, things that seem obvious to us aren’t to the new rider. Which brings me to my son, Philip.
As I’ve shared on the Paceline, my son Philip is in the developmental, or DEVO, program that is part of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, or high school mountain bike league, better known as NICA. We’re part of a composite team with kids from multiple nearby schools, called the A Team, as in Annadel, the park where we do our rides.
I figured in order for Philip to be successful, I needed to be involved, and the only way to do that is to be a coach. So last year I took all the courses in order to become a Level One coach with NICA.
What I quickly learned is that Level One coaches aren’t especially useful. You can accompany a group of kids and be useful from the standpoint of splitting the kids into smaller groups, but I can’t lead a group. So I decided I’d start taking the courses necessary to become a Level Two coach.
Earlier this spring I attended the mountain biking skills 101 course. The course was taught by a veteran NICA coach, Morgan Fletcher, and if I may insert a little humble brag, when we met he asked my name; I said Patrick and he asked, “Brady?” and then said, I’ve been reading you since Bicycle Guide. That was pretty awesome, but it also told me something important: his experience in cycling goes back decades.
There were a dozen of us from Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin Counties.
The course covers a number of basic skills that you, me, our listeners, have long-since stopped thinking about. Morgan took us through ten essential skills: neutral and ready position, bike/body separation, pedal position, eye movement, braking, steering, speed, shifting, timing and coordination and pressure control.
Each of the fundamentals is taught in a tell it, show it, do it and review it format.
Now, back in the early 1990s, I helped develop a mountain biking skills curriculum based on the Professional Ski Instructors Association’s Nordic ski instruction format. I basically spent a whole summer developing our curriculum. I mention that only to try to convey that I have some clue about just how thorough and thoughtful this course is.
After we’d gone through a demonstration of each of the points, our group was broken into pairs and each pair took one of the essentials and taught it, with one person talking it through and the other demonstrating. Like most things, it seems easy until you do it.
Again, I have to say I’m so happy to have my son involved in this. They place the emphasis on having fun and trust that the rest will come, or not. I feel like my son is under pressure with school entirely too much and so a circumstance like this where he doesn’t have to do anything but show up and have fun I welcome.