Ten reasons to attend a Mountain Biking Skills Clinic / Camp (from a qualified trainer / s)

1. A mountain bike camp is fun! Rocking horses are fun! Beating your friends is fun!

2. A mountain biking clinic will improve your confidence and make riding more fun.

3. As your confidence increases, so will your desire to ride a bike. After camp, you may find yourself riding more and getting in better shape.

4. A mountain bike camp is a fun way to learn the correct techniques for riding a mountain bike.

5. Mountain biking is fun and relatively safe when done with the right body position, skills, and vision techniques. It can be scary and dangerous without the correct techniques.

6. Like skiing and golf, mountain biking is not intuitive. Biking is easy, biking on dirt over rocks, roots, and steep slopes is more difficult. Trying to learn yourself will lead to bad habits, fear, and possible injury.

7. Learning basic skills sooner rather than later will prevent bad habits from taking hold. Unlearning bad habits is much more difficult and time consuming than simply learning the correct way to do something from scratch.

8. A mountain bike camp offers a fun and safe way to improve. You will learn the correct techniques in a safe environment and then apply them along the way.

9. There is a lot of misinformation about driving technique that is repeated by well-intentioned people who often lead you the wrong way. Attending a camp will teach you the correct techniques and explain why many common tips are wrong.

10. A mountain bike skills camp is a great way to meet other fun people who share your passion for biking.

How to know if they are qualified:

1. Check your coaching experience, professional athletes are often poor coaches, a racing experience means very little. How long have they been training? Do they have more than one or two references?

2. Do they teach basic driving skills? In a safe environment without threats? It is almost impossible to learn with the slightest fear, which makes the trails a good place to apply skills, but an important place to learn them.

3. Is your camp structured or do you just follow them on the road and get skill tips as they go?

4. Who have they trained? Have you trained both professional runners and beginners? If you only teach beginners, are you teaching the true basic skills? Do they trust their training? If so, why haven’t the professionals received lessons / camps from them?

5. Did camp end on the last day or were you provided skills and exercises to practice these skills long after camp?