Intermediate Riders: Where to Focus Your Skills

So you’ve conquered the basics. You are well versed in braking, standing position, and looking ahead. You are more comfortable on your bike and you are looking to grow your skills from the foundation that you have built. Here we are going to cover some of our skill focus for our Intermediate Riders, these are skills we teach in our Intermediate courses, workshops, and lessons.

1) Body and Bike Separation

Like any other sport there is a point where you want to separate yourself, here you’re separating yourself from the bike. Here is what you will want to focus on:
-learning to move your bike under you.

-play with leaning your bike, pushing it forward to get over obstacles and to roll down obstacles.

-separating yourself from your bike allows for more fluidity of movement.

2) Cornering

This is a skill we always like to work on. Here your balance helps, which grows from your            body and bike separation skills! These are some tips we find helpful for cornering:

• body position matters, keep your knees open.
• Learn to learn your bike from side to side, imagining that there is water inside your handle bard and you are pooring water inside of the turn
• use your hips and chest to direct your range of movement, shine headlight on the direction you want to go ☺

3) Move with the Terrain
Here you will start to focus on allowing your body to move with the terrain. This helps
you to lead into pumping, jumping, and drops later on. These are some of the things we                                                  like to focus on with Moving with the Terrain:

-Don’t be static, movement is good.
-Start to allow your body to move up and down with the terrain.
-Balance is helpful and utilizing the skills you learn in separating yourself from your bike
are key.

With the focus on these skills, you will find yourself building upon the foundation of your beginner skills. Focusing on where you want to grow your skills is a great way to help push yourself to the next level while also benefitting yourself on so many levels. As much as biking focuses on biking, a lot of these skills are based on principles and foundations that apply to life: balance, determination, and practice just to name a few. We hope to see you out in one of our workshops or courses this season working on these skills!

Blog Post Written By Josée Gulayets 

Photo Taken by Marie-Pierre Tremblay in Golden BC.