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Personal Skill Development Days

These are half, one or two day options at the ‘New to Mountainbiking’, ‘Improvers’ or ‘Advanced’ level. These are designed to enable you to ride routes on terrain you can enjoy. We know it can be difficult to define your own confidence and skill level so we like to be very flexible and mix and match where necessary. Take a look at the programme and choose what seems the best fit – we can easily tweak it to your needs and even combine the ’New to Mountainbiking’ and ‘Improvers’ course content where appropriate. We will provide a course completion certificate to each participant.

New to Mountainbiking

These courses will use easy trails and bridleways where basic techniques can be mastered with ease and confidence. We will cover:-

• Bike safety, setup and riding position check
• Personal clothing, equipment, food and drink
• County Code, Mountainbike Code, Highway Code
• Riding on the flat, uphill and downhill
• Gear changing
• Braking
• Cornering
• Techniques for different surfaces
• Trail riding safety and recognising potential dangers
• Typical trailside repairs – punctures, chain off or broken, broken spoke etc
• Basic first aid considerations and incident management
• Simple navigation to choose a route, find the café and get home!

Improvers

This course will use more challenging terrain incrementally to enable you to gain skill and confidence on single track, rough and difficult surfaces. This will prepare you for a ‘good day out’ on the easier trails of the Yorkshire Dales or North York Moors. You can expect to cover:-

• Essential maintenance, adjustments and safety checks
• A swift review of everything in the Beginners Course
• FFD – fitness, food and drink!
• Riding at speed – different surfaces, cornering, berms
• Riding mud, rocks and roots
• Picking a line through rough terrain
• Steep descents and drop offs
• Steep ascents
• Trackstands, bunnyhops, front wheel lifts
• Find and use the weather forecast
• Detailed route planning and navigation
• Trackside first aid for bikes and people!

Advanced

These courses will use terrain that introduce you to high levels of skill on very steep or loose ground, tree roots and rocks where there are multiple and combined obstacles – we can show you how to ride all of these and still be on your bike demanding more! At this level we can help you prepare for ‘big days out’ or multi day journeys anywhere in the UK or abroad. They will normally run in the Dales or Lake District. We will help you ensure that you can ride the hardest terrain or know when to get off and push or carry! During the course you can expect to learn or improve your ability to:

• Complete a detailed bike safety check and recognise the need to fix an impending problem
• Plan and navigate a route using map, compass, cycle computer
• Interpret the mountain weather forecast with implications for the route
• Ride all types of natural or built trails and sections of north shore where possible
• Look after someone who has crashed in a remote environment
• Fix just about anything to keep riding or find another way home