After having done a course with Astounding Adventures earlier in the year, I decided there were still many more bike skills to learn for improving my speed and fluency, and booked a 5 hour 1-2-1 session with Tony Doyle.
Tony is an ex-racer and has coached multiple MTB champions over the course of several years, and with loads of positive reviews on the Internet, I was hoping for a really good session.
It began with Tony watching me cycle round a short course and identifying the things that needed to be worked on, namely my habit of breaking during the corners and looking down at what I was about to ride over rather than up into the distance.
We then practiced drops, berms and turns on Tony's own purpose-built skills areas to help improve my techniques. This included a long skills track where we went over each section individually and I did several timed runs with him watching & advising on how to ride smoother & faster. By the end I recorded a time 7% faster than any of his previous clients on the track, and rode a lot quicker & smoother than I did at the start of the day.
One of the things that really helped me understand what I was doing on the bike and what could be improved, was Tony's use of a camera to photograph me whilst I was riding, and to immediately show me the pictures and discuss how things could be altered to improve my technique.
Tony's weblog of my session with him including photos and video is here:
http://ukbikeskills.blogspot.com/2010/10/gareths-day-of-discovery.html
Here's what the Muddy Moles thought:
http://www.muddymoles.org.uk/2010/04/mtb_uk_bike_skills_coaching.html
Highly recommended!
If you would like to book a session with Tony then go to www.ukbikeskills.co.uk
Gareth Ashton