September 11, 2024 • 52 mins
In this episode we’re going to take a deep dive into the world of mountain biking with Josh Whitmore, owner and head coach of Mountain Bike Skills Factory. Hear Josh's inspiring journey from his roots in Brevard, NC, to becoming a leading mountain bike instructor with over 25 years of coaching experience and a professional racing career.
Josh explores the evolution of trails, the rise of bike parks like Kanuga, Chestnut Mountain, and Old Fort...and why certified instruction is essential for all riders. Learn expert tips on body positioning, common rider mistakes, and how to find the right coach. Plus, get insights into the craftsmanship behind high-quality mountain bikes and the comprehensive approach at Mountain Bike Skills Factory.
Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned rider, this episode is packed with tips and inspiration to take your riding to the next level!
Mike Andress
Host, Exploration Local
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mike@explorationlocal.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode, we're going to take a deep dive
into the world of mountainbiking with Josh Whitmore, owner
and head coach of Mountain BikeSkills Factory.
We're going to hear Josh'sinspiring journey from his roots
in Brevard, north Carolina, tobecoming a leading mountain bike
instructor with over 25 yearsof coaching experience and a
professional racing career.
Josh explores the evolution oftrails, the rise of bike parks
(00:21):
like Canuga, chestnut Mountainand Old Fort, and why certified
instruction is essential for allriders, and we're going to
learn expert tips on bodypositioning, common rider
mistakes and how to find theright coach.
Plus, we're going to getinsights into the craftsmanship
behind high-quality mountainbikes and the comprehensive
approach to Mountain Bike SkillsFactory.
Whether you're a beginner orseasoned rider, this episode is
(00:43):
packed with tips and inspirationto take your ride and mine to
the next level.
I'll see you on the other side.
You're listening to ExplorationLocal, a podcast designed to
explore and celebrate the peopleand places that make the Blue
Ridge and Southern AppalachianMountains special and unique.
(01:05):
My name is Mike Andrus, thehost of Exploration Local.
Join us on our journey toexplore these mountains and
discover how they fuel thespirit of adventure.
We encourage you to wander far,but explore local.
Let's go.
I'm excited to have JoshWhitmore with me today.
He is the owner and head coachof Mountain Bike Skills Factory.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Excellent.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
One of the things that's really cool is that you
are a member of the PMBIA, whichI just learned is the
Professional Mountain BikeInstructors Association.
You do this not only here inWestern North Carolina, but you
do it all across the country andyou're the most active
instructor in all the countryfor the PMBIA.
(01:48):
That's pretty big stuff, man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, yeah.
So in addition to my companythat runs in this region, the
Mountain Bike Skills Factory, Ialso work for the Professional
Mountain Bike InstructorAssociation to teach the
certification courses for othermountain bike instructors.
So the PMBIA is theprofessional certifying body for
mountain bike instructors andso I do a lot of staff training
for other skills schools andguide services and summer camps
(02:13):
and bike parks and that sort ofthing.
So offer a lot of those courseshere, my home zone, but then I
travel quite a lot around theUnited States to teach those as
well.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Let's go back in time a little bit.
And when did you catch thispassion for mountain biking, and
when did it just sort of beginto take on its own trajectory?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, I really started from riding my bike to
school.
Honestly, is that?
Uh, so I had a single dad andhe was worked at the DuPont
plant, the x-ray film plant whenit would be before it was a
state forest.
There was an actual like x-rayfilm plant there.
So he was a shift worker and,you know, worked rotating shifts
and so I was kind of a feralchild a lot of the time.
And so, you know, I'd startedriding a bike to school, just so
(02:55):
I could get to school on my owntime or come back from swim
practice or whatever else I wasdoing.
And so that was kind of where Istarted riding and there were
trails in Pisgah, you know.
So I grew up in Brevard andthere were trails right there.
So, yeah, it was.
It was kind of a natural thingto start exploring on the bike
as a 12 or 13 year old and startto, you know, my own time, to
(03:18):
just like, well, where else canI go on this thing?
And it's like, oh, I can gointo the forest and I can ride,
there's trails I can ride on.
So that's kind of how it allgot started for me.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Cool.
And then, at what point in yourlife did you really kind of
figure out that man?
Helping people, coaching people, teaching people it's a thing
that you are passionate about,and the reason I asked that
question like how far back itgoes is because in my experience
, there are people that don'tjust sort of turn on the switch
and all of a sudden they go oh,I'm going to go coach.
(03:47):
There's like something in theirlife has kind of built up to
that point or something thatthey realize they just like
helping people, helpinginstruction, connecting dots
with people, learning new skills, all that kind of stuff.
I don't want to project that onyou, so maybe that doesn't
exist.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
No, no, it does, it does, yeah.
So I guess, uh, when I was ateenager and I started working
at summer camps, so there was alot of summer camps in the area
and obviously, and so then backthen, um, mountain biking was a
kind of a new activity to the tosummer camps.
You know, mountain, uh, summercamps are starting to get bikes
and have that as a program forthe kids and there wasn't a
whole lot of prior experiencewith that, and so basically it
was the kind of thing where,like, they figured out that I
had rode mountain bikes and thenlike, naturally, like, oh, that
(04:30):
means you're in charge of themountain bike program.
And then I was also had a localkid scholarship to Brevard
college.
So I was the part of the firstgraduating class of the
wilderness leadership,leadership and Experiential
Education degree program atBrevard College when it was
transitioning way back then itwas transitioning from a
two-year junior college to afour-year program.
(04:52):
So I was the first of thegraduating bachelor degrees from
Brevard College the first year,proud to say I was
valedictorian.
There were two of us.
I beat out the other guy by afew grade points, you know, both
of us kind of struggled throughbut we made it.
But anyway.
So that wilderness leadershipprogram was.
I'm not sure exactly why I wasinterested in that.
(05:13):
I think maybe because of summercamp world and it's like, oh,
this seems like a neat thing tobe able to.
Outdoor education in generalseemed like something I was
interested in, althoughsomewhere along in the lines I
started out with generaleducation classes there and then
I had there was this outdoor edclass and I didn't really
understand what it was.
But I saw that they wentbackpacking, rock climbing,
whitewater kayaking and someother things like all in one
(05:34):
class and I was like that soundslike a cool class.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
That's for me, yeah, so I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And then it was about halfway through the semester
that I figured out that, likewait, wait, wait, wait, you're
trying to teach me how to teachother people to do these things.
Like no, I don't know aboutthat, I just want to do it.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I would just rather do the things like.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I don't know about this teaching it thing, so I
felt like I kind of gothoodwinked into it but it but it
turned out to fit and uh andworked out pretty well and so
that's kind of where I gotstarted with it.
So I guess I've been I meanbeen teaching mountain bike
lessons really for I mean 20,more than 25 years now.
It's been quite a long time.
That hasn't been full-time.
All that time, you know, workedat summer camps and was
(06:13):
teaching some there and then andthen I was a professional
mountain bike racer after that.
So I went into mountain bikeracing and a lot of different
kinds of bicycle racing, but I'ma professional on the mountain
bike.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
All right.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
And then I always coached a little bit on the side
, so I would always do a littlebit of lessons here and there.
And then as I got further inthat career, I did more coaching
on the side.
And then when I eventually gottoo old to make any money racing
anymore, then coaching kind oftapered off and racing tapered
off, coaching took off and then.
So now I've been coaching fulltime since 2015 or 2016 or
(06:48):
something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
So that's cool, that's so, that's so fantastic.
I love it when you could finishwith a sport, but the sport's
not really finished with you yetand it's your time to sort of
give back and kind of help thenext generation sort of come
along.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I just really had this conversation recently with
someone who's like well, youknow, like, do you ever see
yourself doing something that'snot bikes?
And I was kind of like, well,you know, my whole life, you
know, it's like I'm sort of likebuilt into being an expert in
one thing.
I could start over.
But you know, I would have tostart over, you know, I would
have to like start from nothing,you know.
So it's sort of like I don'tfeel like I'm trapped in it.
(07:20):
I don't feel like I'm trappedin it, I love doing it, but it's
also kind of like all of mybackground kind of leading to
where I am now.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's great.
So 25 years of coaching, andI'm thinking that's probably
about the time maybe a littlebit before that when I started
actually mountain biking andgetting out and there wasn't a
whole lot of this instruction.
Back then it really was hey, ifyou find a group of people,
that they have a common interestand if you can pedal without
(07:49):
your chain falling off, let'sjust go kind of explore and
start doing the things right.
And so I'm amazed at that thatthere was instruction that goes
back that far.
I guess I am and I'm not, but Imean it makes sense, especially
if you're in this area or anyof the areas where you have such
great natural assets too.
But I'm really curious to knowfrom your perspective, like over
the last let's call it twodecades, how have you seen the
(08:11):
popularity of mountain bikingexpand and grow?
And you know, were there partsof that where it was slow and
then all of a sudden there'sbeen a spike.
I mean it seems like COVID hasnot has a whole lot to do with
it, but during COVID that was apretty big time where people
were getting outside, butthere's an explosion right now
of trail building and peoplegetting into the industries and
bikes for all price points andall those sorts of things.
(08:32):
So how have you seen it fromyour perspective, because you've
been into it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, yeah.
And then I guess, growing up inthis area in Brevard and being
a part of you in Western NorthCarolina and most of my life,
I'd say that you know it reallykind of dovetails nicely with
the story of transition of thearea from, you know, mountain
extraction industries to, youknow, recreation tourism.
You know it happened to be thatthere were already some
resources here that made it easyfor recreation tourism to
(09:00):
expand.
You know.
So we had national forests youknow Pisgah National Forest and
Nantahala National Forest andyou know that were there was
existing trail systems and thatsort of thing.
You know I'm old enough toremember when mountain biking
first became a thing that westarted riding mountain bikes on
trails in Pisgah and you knowwe would be on a bike somewhere
like way out in the forest andhikers would.
(09:21):
We'd come across hikers andthey would look at us and be
like how did you get that thinghere?
You rode a bicycle here and youknow we'd be like it's a
mountain bike.
They'd be like that's thewildest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Too funny.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
You know.
So, back then there weren'ttrails that were open to bikes
or closed to bikes, there werejust trails.
And then, you know, we startedriding bikes on them and you
know, eventually, you know the,with more and more riding
happening, you know, thencertain trails became, uh, okay,
to ride bikes, and other onesthey, you know, they made hiking
only, or horses, you know,whatever it was.
So they kind of like separatedsome of those out.
But so I would say that thatyou know we had a nice advantage
(09:56):
of the of the location as faras the mountains, and then you
know all existing nationalforest and trails and that sort
of thing that made all of thatkind of easy.
But yeah, pretty early on evenactually, this Western North
Carolina became a kind of amountain bike Mecca and that
there were because there arealready existing trails.
Then people were riding bikeson and they're quite good for
bikes that people came from allover to ride them, and so it
(10:19):
became known in that area.
I should find this article.
There was an article in like abicycle magazine or something
from the early nineties thatranked uh, avery Creek downhill
or Avery Creek trail in Pisgahnational forest is one of the
top three downhills in thecountry, or something like this.
It was like early nineties, youknow early, kind of more early
days of of mountain biking.
(10:39):
But you know, it kind of heldthat prestige just because it
was already here.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It kind of held that prestige just because it was
already here.
Yeah Well, we talked about thata little bit before we started
recording of just how much thisarea is a mecca, and I was
sharing some stories aboutpeople who have lived here.
They've moved out west andobviously the thought of
everything out there is biggerand better, but there's people
that say no, with a mountainbike there's so much more
concentrated trails that we canride here and they really kind
(11:04):
of prefer a lot of that singletrack that's in this whole
region.
That's characteristic of thisregion.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, yeah, I'd say so.
There's a lot of variety hereas well, and we can ride
year-round.
It never gets real hot in thesummer and then in the winter it
might snow a little bit, butwait a couple days and you're
back riding on the trails again.
So we tend to be able to rideyear round.
(11:31):
And then we kind of have thesethis size mountain that is good
for hiking and for mountainbiking in the way that they're.
They're big enough to make itexciting and difficult and
challenging, but not so big thatthey're that there's unused
terrain, you know you can thinkabout like you know the biggest,
the biggest mountains inColorado or wherever.
you know there's there's notmountain bike trails on the
highest, biggest mountains inColorado.
You know there's kind ofthere's sort of a zone of
elevation and steepness andstuff that makes sense for
(11:53):
mountain bikes and you knowthat's kind of describes all of
our mountains here honestly.
So we have really good terrainin that way and you know weather
and you know all that sort ofthing.
So it it makes makes for aperfect storm in that way.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah.
So let's talk a little bitbefore we get into the
instruction part, cause wereally want to focus on that too
.
Just the trails in general.
So we know that there's a lotof them and they're all
accessible and we have within aday's drive so many, I mean from
New York, from, you know, fromthe Keys to New York.
I mean people can be here,within a day to enjoy.
But you also talk about thevariety of the different trails
(12:28):
for all different levels.
And then I'd love to touch justa little bit on your
perspective of seeing, really,at least in our region, Western
North Carolina the explosion ofmountain bike trails that are
being made out there too.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, I guess, as you know, it all started with, you
know, the trails that were inthe national forest, the
existing trails that were there,which were really kind of
co-opted from like logging,extraction routes, and you know
we're talking about like oldlogging roads and old you know,
logging trails that would gobetween hunting or logging camps
and stuff like that.
But you think about, like youknow, the Brevard zone of Pisgah
(13:07):
and then over at Solly andNantahala National Forest were,
you know, some of the hotbeds ofthose existing trails, and then
you know we started gettingsome other, you know, like
DuPont State Forest, that cameon board and then they, some of
them, like a lot of the trailsthey were purpose built to be
multi-use for mountain bikes,hikers and horses, and so that
was early days of professionaltrail building and trail design
(13:31):
to be able to accommodate thosedifferent trail users on the
same surfaces, which Pisgahnever really had.
We just kind of adopted thetrails that were already there
in Pisgah.
So how to make the trailssustainable?
We live in a place that gets anincredible amount of rain, so
and how do you build a trailthat lasts, you know, with that
amount of rain and that amountof traffic and all that sort of
thing?
(13:51):
So that that was interesting.
And then you know, with the boomof recreation, tourism in
general and then just the sportof mountain biking, then you
know other sort of commercialendeavors, like private property
that people build trails on andthen charge a fee to ride them,
or shuttle services that youknow shuttle you to the top of
the mountain so you don't haveto pedal all the way up there,
(14:12):
and that sort of thing.
So we've got, you know, severalnew bike parks in the area,
like you know Canuga Bike Parkand Rock Creek Bike Park.
And with the amount of peoplethat do ride in this area in
general, even the NationalForest is trying to expand the
amount of trails.
So you think about all the newtrails that are being developed
around Old Fort and the.
G5 Collective and all of thatstuff is sort of concentrated to
(14:33):
try to be able to buildadditional terrain so that to
relieve some of the overusepressure in maybe the more
popular bits.
With all that said, yeah, itseems like every year here
there's a new trail systemthat's open.
You think about like FireMountain Trail System in
Cherokee or Chestnut TrailSystem in Chestnut Mountain in
Bicanton, and some of those arefree and municipal owned, city
(14:57):
owned, state owned.
Some of them, like Canuga orRock Creek, are private property
, commercial things.
There's more of that coming too.
There's going to be a new oneopen in Old Fort called the
Watershed Bike Park.
That's going to be probablystill another year out or so,
but they're already buildingtrails there.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's so great.
There are a lot of trails andthere are a lot of people that
look to this place as a mecca,that look to this place as a
Mecca.
So it only stands to reasonthat instruction, and really
good quality, certifiedinstruction, is taking off as
well.
And that's what you're doing,that's the niche that you're
serving in this industry.
Well, that's part of it, Iguess.
The other part is, like we'vetalked about earlier traveling
(15:37):
around teaching otherinstructors.
But let's talk a little bitabout your company, let's kind
of camp out and focus there, andlet's talk a little bit about
the rise in popularity of themountain biking instruction.
But maybe even before we getthere, just like why?
Like what's the why behind it?
And also we've talked about it.
(15:57):
But I'd love for you to kind ofunpack.
Hey, it's kind of a widespectrum.
It's for everybody who ismountain biking.
And well, I'm going to let youfinish that, so I don't want to
kind of give that piece away.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, well, you think aboutthose listeners that are already
mountain bikers.
Or, if you're thinking aboutgetting into mountain biking,
think about how did you learnhow to ride?
Most of the time, it's that yougot a bike, you started riding
it and started figuring it outjust by kind of doing it trial
and error.
Yeah, you might've got sometips from some friends.
(16:29):
These days, you know folks likethere's some video and tutorials
and some stuff out there andcontent that is sometimes
helpful, but, you know, veryrarely did we when we started
learning how to ride mountainbikes, did we folks out there.
Very rarely did they, you know,start with, like start with a
lesson, or have any kind ofstructured learning process of
how to acquire these skills, ofhow to, how to maneuver this
(16:52):
complicated thing on complicatedterrain.
What ends up happening is thatpeople kind of figure it out and
human beings are prettyintuitive with, you know, with
understanding body movement andtrying to balance, and some
folks learn it quicker thanothers.
I'd say that a lot of peoplelearn sort of bad habits as well
, like they kind of like getdecent, they can handle decently
(17:14):
difficult terrain in spite oftheir skills in some ways, and
then so you know it's just sortof like been that process for
most people of just kind oftrial and error figuring it out
on their own.
But you know you think aboutalso.
You know mountain biking haskind of a reputation of being
like extreme or dangerous or butit doesn't have to be that way,
(17:35):
you know you can.
Certainly it's sensationalizedin social media and stuff to see
.
You know the Friday fails andthe you know the crashes, the
Friday fails and the the uh, youknow the, the crashes and that
sortof thing.
You know that that getseyeballs on it, but, um, being a
mountain biker doesn't mean youhave to crash and hurt yourself
.
You know you can, you can ridesafely and and do well.
So, yeah, I'd say in in generalit, uh it kind of struck a
(17:57):
chord with me in the way that,in trying to be a professional
racer and trying with thisoutdoor education background, I
was really trying to understandhow to how to ride a bike in a
more conscious way and so that Icould improve it.
So my story with that real quick, was that as a racer I was a
little bit bigger, more muscularthan than I would say like your
world cup kind of like crosscountry racer, and a little
(18:18):
little tiny whippets that gouphill real fast.
I weighed a bit more than that,and so in order to compensate
for that disadvantage, I had tobe really good with everything
else.
And so then skills and drivingthe bike and making up time and
complicated terrain and on thedownhills was how I like
maintain to be competitive, andso I spent a lot of time in my
(18:39):
personal journey trying tounderstand how to drive a bike
better and faster so that Icould be a better racer, and so
then teaching other people,connecting that to my outdoor
education background you know,the methodology of how to teach
that to other people reallystruck a chord with folks.
It would be like a lot ofcomments would be like I sort of
do that and I kind of knew that, but I didn't really understand
, like really even the consciousparts of how you position your
(19:02):
body to go over a drop or arounda turn, or and they certainly
didn't have like a um, mostpeople don't have a conscious
process of being able to scanahead and see terrain that's
happening or that's coming andthen translate that
subconsciously into these arethe body movements I need to
make in order to drive the bikethrough that terrain.
(19:25):
Most people, the way that ithappens, is that they just kind
of ride into the terrain and seewhat happens, and then they
they end up being like this kindof reactive rider, like a
reactionary process, wherethey're just trying to react to
whatever's happening.
And so the analogy I use iskind of like rather than driving
the car, they're holding ontothe bumper and getting drug
along by the car down the road.
(19:45):
They're just kind of reactingto whatever's happening and
through the whole process ofskills instruction, then what
we're really trying to do is tryto move people towards being a
more conscious driver of thebike, where they're kind of
anticipating movements and thenare making the movements happen
as they're needed, rather thanbeing a reactionary rider man.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
You just described the former is me the movements
happen like as they're needed,rather than being a reactionary
rider man.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So you just described the first.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
The former is me.
It's grabbing the bumper andjust kind of holding on.
I was sharing that with youearlier and that very much
explains kind of my last 20 plusyears of just being a
reactionary, you know, rider andkind of hanging on and and it's
been really inconsistent for me.
But you know, I think I sharedwith you also that somebody, the
first connection that I hadwith driving, you know through
something, is just understandingmy speed, my gear and all of
(20:32):
that in my downhill to sort ofcarry into an uphill, and that
was huge.
That was just that one littletip was enough to sort of be a
game changer for me, feelinglike I had sort of improved a
little bit.
And it really didn't haveanything to do with you know,
how fast I wanted to go or howextreme I wanted to be or any of
that kind of stuff.
It was just this is just nowgetting into this and I'd like
(20:57):
her to kind of learn the rightway, but also just the
efficiency and being able to beout there and getting off the
trail and not feeling likeyou're beat to death you know,
and that's the way I feel a lotof times when I get off.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
So yeah, yeah, I guess.
And so folks that are justgetting started riding or more
beginner riders, get quite a lotout of it, just to be able to
feel more confident, morecapable and just more safe and
stable I guess in those kind oflike priorities, just to have
(21:31):
the ability to be able toproactively see things and then
do the right stuff, to not getthrown off the bike or that sort
of stuff, be able to tackledifferent trains.
So at the beginning it helpspeople to access more terrain
because they're just morecapable pretty quickly.
And then I guess anotherphenotype of people that work
with quite a lot are what Iwould call the intermediate
(21:53):
plateau.
So the intermediate plateau arefolks that have been riding for
a little while.
They've kind of been figuringit out on their own, they've
been riding lots of differenttrails and that sort of thing,
but then they they kind of reachthis plateau and ability where
they're not really gettingbetter anymore and so they're
riding the same trails the sameway and with the same results
and they they see the otherpeople going faster or they see
(22:13):
people doing other types offeatures they don't feel
confident doing or and theydon't know quite how to like
bridge that gap of like how do I, how do I continue to improve?
I've reached this plateau nowand so those type of riders
really benefit from, fromlessons to help like connect
those dots, to like help breakthrough that plateau, to
continue to improve.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Access more terrain, new features be maybe ride
faster if they want be able to.
Yeah, just feel like thatthey're more in control and all
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
You know, it's amazing that your wilderness
education, background andexperiences really comes through
with what you're saying rightthere I think, and then because
that's transferable, right.
So, like you said, if it's snowskiing, if it's rock climbing,
if it's I mean you name it, youfill in the blank.
All those principles are kindof all the same, and so I could
definitely see how and why youhave so many positive reviews
(23:09):
from some of your customers thatare out there.
In fact, one person I wrotethis down.
I thought this was really reallygood.
They said, josh, make sure tounderstand your current skills,
learning style and goals so youalways get the instruction you
need explained in a way thatmakes the most sense to you.
I thought that was prettyprofound when I read it.
I mean, I read through many ofthem, but that one really kind
(23:29):
of stuck out because it's likeyou're understanding the person,
what it is they're trying toget to, what challenges them
perhaps, where are they now,what's their current state, and
you want them to move into aflow state, no matter what the
stage is.
Because you can be I'm thinkingyou can have flow state as a
beginner, because I do For sureComing down some of these trails
, just hooping and hollering,just grin from ear to ear, but
then, as you go through, thosesame things are evident as well.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that speaks well to the art
of being a good coach in themountain bike world is that the
evolution of being a mountainbike coach is that when you
first get started, you learnsome curriculum, common
curriculum, and you learn how todeliver a set script.
So you learn how to deliver thiscurriculum and then as you get
(24:14):
better and better at it like,let's say, that you'd work more
private lessons with folks,where you work on one-on-one
with a client and you can sortof then branch out from the
general script and so then itbecomes a lot more customizable,
where you're trying tounderstand the background and
the current state of that clientand then trying to use the
(24:37):
knowledge and the curriculumthat you have to apply to that
client so that they like reachtheir goals in the most
efficient way possible.
So then I think that's whatreally keeps me in the flow
state of being a coach is thatit's it's highly adaptable to
each person.
And if I was in the state oflike um, of just delivering the
same curriculum over and overagain, then that would get kind
(25:00):
of mundane and boring.
But for me, the challenge oflike working with each person
individually and understandingyou know what do they need right
now, as their next step is islike a is something that just
turns into a flow state.
For me, that is a creativeendeavor, requires connection
with the client, understandingof, like you know, kind of
mastery of all of the skills andthen what terrain you have to
(25:20):
work with and how to maximizeall that stuff together.
So that's what keeps me in it,I think, in the in the long run.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
How do you pick the perfect mountain bike coach for
you?
How do people, based on whatthey just heard and knowing that
there's a difference, how dothey go about trying to find the
right one?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Maybe just start with some basic professionalism
questions of you know, do theyhave a business, commercial
liability insurance?
Do they have permission orpermits to be able to teach in
the places that they're teaching?
You know there's it's a littlebit of a wild west sometimes
that people are, you know,exchanging services for money
and don't even have a commercialoperating permit and Pisgah
(25:55):
National Forest, you know so ordon't have commercial liability
insurance, or you know thosekinds of things.
So just some of those basic,those kinds of basic questions
are a good starting point.
Beyond that, I think it's youcan dive a little bit into
background and experience of theinstructor and don't be afraid
to ask how long have you beendoing this?
How did you learn how, workingwith a company that had some
(26:21):
kind of methodology or moreexperienced instructors in place
that you could mentor andapprentice under?
The best coaches that I've seendevelop have come up through the
ranks under kind of like anapprenticeship type of
arrangement where they areseeking both outside
professional development butthen also exist in a place where
they can learn from other moreexperienced coaches.
(26:42):
Or did they start it themselves?
And if they haven't been doingit for very long, if they're
figuring it out on their own.
They're essentially kind oflike figuring out how to be a
coach kind of trial and errorwith you as the guinea pig.
So it may not be as efficient,maybe.
Okay, it may not be asefficient or as high quality as
someone who has come throughsome kind of a program of
(27:03):
training where they are more,where they get more highly
experienced apprenticeship ormentorship.
There are certificationprograms out there, like the
PMBIA is the main one and it'sthe kind of the worldwide
certification body for mountainbike constructors, and so that's
pretty universally accepted asthe different levels.
There's four different levelsof certification.
(27:23):
So depending on what level youare, you're sort of like your
scope of practice for teachingspecific things changes
throughout that.
But that's also a good markerof just the dedication that the
coach has to their ownprofessional development, that
they have sought out trainingand certification from other
sources.
And then I think as well, justyou know, do they work with
(27:46):
riders that are like you.
So, for instance, you knowthere are a lot of great
mountain bike coaches that arepretty new to mountain bike
coaching.
They are fantastic at workingwith specific populations, say,
like more beginner populationsin general.
Maybe they're really good.
Their experience thus far hasbeen with group clinics where
(28:06):
they're delivering more of ascripted curriculum rather than
like a custom on the fly kind oflike curriculum with a private
lesson.
You know, and there's a greatneed for those type of coaches
that are pretty new to it butare delivering high quality
curriculum.
You know, for beginners, youknow, I'd say in general, like
universally, like someone justgetting started mountain biking,
you know, there's a few thingsthat they, that we kind of teach
(28:28):
all of them and it's incrediblyhelpful.
And then the more advanced therider gets, the more nuanced the
instruction has to be to to beable to help that rider.
So newer coaches can be great,you know, if they, you know,
have the proper amount of liketraining and certification and
mentorship to be able to do that.
But you know, but yeah, so dothey.
(28:49):
So that's a good question toask.
You know, do they regularlywork with, with riders like you
or the rider that you want tobecome?
You know they're like I I refersome riders to other coaches
that are riders that I, that Idon't that there are other
coaches that may be better atworking with that specific type
of rider or the or for theirspecific goals.
So, for instance, like you knowI I teach regular mountain
(29:10):
bikers how to go over jumps anddo jumps and drops and that sort
of thing and do basic tricks inthe air, uh, like tail whips or
tables and stuff like that.
But like if you're in a dirtjump park on a dirt jump bike or
a BMX bike, like that's kind ofoutside of my scope of
expertise and like I, you know Idon't ride those types of bikes
and doing, you know, backflipsand three sixties and like those
(29:30):
that kind of jumping.
Like you know, it's like I canteach you know mountain bikes
how to jump all day, but like,yeah, get on a dirt jump park
then yeah, that's kind of out tomy.
So if someone comes wantingsomething like that, then I'm
happily, you know, referringthem to someone who does
specialize in that.
So, that's an example of that,of that kind of thing.
So and then the last thing Ithink would just be like, do you
(29:53):
jive with their personality?
You know there's it takes aconnection between the teacher
and the student and any kind oflearning environment in order to
have really effective learninghappen, and so that learning
environment is really, you know,do you think that you would
enjoy hanging out with them fora few hours?
And sometimes you just don'tjive with people, and that's
okay too.
Like you know, maybe that'slike some folks, you just jive
(30:16):
more with others.
You may even consider thegender of the person that you're
working with.
That there's in general.
It's kind of funny.
Like, one of the things I say alot of times is that if you're
strongly consider taking alesson from a female mountain
bike instructor and why is that?
Is because, like, it's harderfor a female in general to show
up in the mountain bike spaceand be taken seriously as like
(30:37):
being good at teaching yousomething.
So the ones that have made it,that are doing it regularly, are
really good at it, because theyhave to show up and demand that
respect through excellence andquality right away If they're.
If they're not very good at it,then unfortunately the you know
the I mean it's getting betterin the world in general.
(30:58):
But you know the you know thein general, like in a male
dominated sport, then it's it'sgetting better in the world in
general, but in general, like ina male-dominated sport, then
it's harder for them to getrespect.
So anyway, those are a fewlittle pieces that I typically
tell people when they're lookingfor mountain bike coaches.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Love it, love it.
Well, in a world today, hardpivot.
But in a world today of so muchonline video YouTube, you name
it we can get instruction outthere.
There's a lot of people havenew, you know, youtube channels
and I'm sure that there's somegood behind it.
But what's the differencebetween, like, how would you
(31:32):
draw the demarcation betweenwhat you're going to see online
and really kind of getting thatfirsthand, first-person
experience of a qualified,certified coach?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, that's a great question Because, yeah, like you
said, there's a lot of goodcontent, short form content and
social media and you know longerform content in.
You know, like YouTube, andeven content that you can
purchase.
You know that you can videotutorials that you can purchase
and I would say that some ofthat is actually quite good and
I'd say that there's a lot of itthat's really garbage.
(32:02):
That's like good entertainmentbut it's not, doesn't serve a
good function of teaching youreally much.
So, some of the common themesof those things video content as
a teaching tool.
One of the common things I seeis that they're often quite good
about breaking down, like anadvanced maneuver, into its
elemental pieces and helping youunderstand what are the pieces
(32:22):
in order to execute a bunny hop,or to what are all the what are
all here, understand the piecesthat go into jumping a mountain
bike.
So that's that's fantastic to,and it's helpful for a rider to
be able to like consciouslyunderstand what those pieces are
.
I call those show and tellvideos because they, uh, they're
kind of like hey, here's this,this like nifty advanced thing
(32:44):
that we're doing, and here I'mgoing to break it down into a
bunch of pieces.
Now you do it, okay, well.
So what those videos lack isthe.
Is the okay, well, how do youtake a rider who can't do those
pieces?
How do they acquire thefoundation and the skills and
the movement patterns in orderto be able to get to where they
can start to execute some ofthose things?
(33:05):
What pieces, steps do they needto put in place before that to
get to there?
So you know, what kinds of,yeah, mechanics do they need to
learn or fix, or skills thatthey need to learn before they
even get there?
So so oftentimes that kind ofvideo can show and tell.
Video content is missing that,like any, any progression of
development, it's like it's likea great to like tell you what
(33:27):
it is, but it's not like how toget there.
I guess another thing thatvideo content lacks is any kind
of customization of, uh, evenvideo content that has a
progression of like hey, dothese drills in this order?
Is that for some folks that maybe too boring for them, or for
other folks it may move tooquickly?
So everyone is coming fromdifferent places and you have a
(33:50):
human-centric approach to each.
Human has a different learningcurve and it might be good at
some parts of it, but not goodat other parts of it, and so
that learning progression reallyneeds to be custom for each
person, so that it's it doesn'tprogress too quickly or it's not
it's challenging enough.
Yeah, not challenging enough.
That's another, I guess,detriment of that.
(34:11):
And then all video contentlasts any kind of like analysis
and feedback.
So a really good coach isreally trained and in tune with
watching you execute what yourassignment is and then providing
you feedback with you know,both the things you're doing
correctly and then how to errordetection and correction, like
(34:32):
how to correct some of theerrors that you're having.
And it's difficult to do on yourown because your own
proprioception might be thatlike, hey, I'm doing this thing,
watch like I'm doing it great,right, and so a classic one that
is, like you know, like anassignment of like, uh, hinging
at the waist, getting your youryour shoulders closer to the
bars, like bending your elbowsmore to get your lower your
(34:53):
chest and getting close to thebars.
You know people would be likelook, coach, I'm getting really
low, look how close to thehandlebar I am.
You know I am, and they've onlymoved like an inch or two.
And you show them a video ofthemselves and it's like, well,
how low did you think you were?
And you'd be like man, my facewas almost getting ready to hit
the stem.
It was real close, coach.
And then they see a video ofthem doing it and they really
only moved like an inch fromtheir full upright position.
(35:15):
And so that's that differencein kind of proprioception that's
hard sometimes to detectyourself, that a trained eye can
see, and good coaches canprioritize those errors where
it's like you know the rider'sjust not quite getting it,
they're not quite getting it,it's not quite clicking for them
.
Well, maybe it's just assomething as simple as like the
(35:37):
angle of their feet on thepedals or or some something with
their body movement that thatsort of unlocks the ability to
do what they're doing.
You know, the, the maybe, justoftentimes it's all.
It's some kind of like simplefoundation thing that is off
just enough to prevent them fromhaving success at the what
they're trying to do.
But they would never figurethat out on their own if you
(35:57):
didn't, if there wasn't a coachthere to kind of like provide
that feedback to help out.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, would never figured that out on their own if
you didn't, if there wasn't acoach there to kind of like
provide that feedback to helpout.
Yeah, you know that tracks backto something we talked about a
little bit earlier, just interms of you know, you had the
people that are hanging on, thenyou had the people that are
trying to learn to drive theirbike.
I think I said that right.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
So in in that vein, what are some of those things
Like?
What are some of the basics?
There may be somebody listeningin here that says that really
sounds good for me.
I'm very interested.
Either I live here or I'm goingto be traveling here.
I need to look up, Josh.
So what are some of those kindof basic, fundamental things
that they should be getting andthat you are looking at, some of
those common errors that you'retrying to correct with them?
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah.
So a couple of things thateverybody can work on and give
you a peel back the curtain alittle bit to some of the stuff
that we are commonly teaching.
I'd say one of the biggestthings is a basic body position
of trying to be what we callcentered and then being able to
use your vertical range ofmotion, so like farther away
(36:55):
from the bike or closer to thebike strategically.
So let me explain this to folksthat, uh so the most common
error that I see of all levelriders is when folks are like
cruising across the parking lotstanding up.
They often look pretty good andthey're like.
You know their feet are bothequidistant from the ground.
We call it level pedals.
And you know they're like quiteupright.
(37:16):
You know arms and knees justslightly bent the chin's kind of
over the stem we call thatneutral position, you know that.
And knees just slightly bentthe chin's kind of over the stem
.
We call that a neutral position.
You know that's like a restfulposition.
It's kind of like standing inline at the bank.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
You could do that all day long.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
But then, okay, great , Now we're, we're like
approaching a rock garden and wewant to be more stable, to be
able, or have more movement, tobe able to like absorb the bike
as it chunders over top of thoserocks.
Well, chunders over top ofthose rocks, Well, what the
mistake that most people make isthat they they mostly just bend
their knees and get kind of farback on the bike.
Their arms stay kind ofstraight and what that does is
(37:48):
it puts them out of center, soit puts them, their weight is
biased towards the rear wheeland then they've got their legs
bent quite a lot.
So the outcome of that is thatthe front wheel has less
pressure on it, Front tire hasless pressure on it, Makes it
worse for steering, Makes itworse for braking, Makes it
(38:08):
worse for kind of driving thebike.
You know, you kind of get moreinto that, like you're just
hanging on getting drug along,and the reason why people end up
like that is that it's adefensive position.
They don't want to go over thebars.
For you know, over the front ofthe bars and you know,
especially like older bikes tothe uh, smaller wheels and the
wheel base is real short and inorder to ride those bikes and
(38:29):
not go over the front of thehandlebars, you had to.
You had to ride kind of farback.
You know like keep your weightback.
You know that classic, they'requite hard.
You know a lot more difficultto go over the bars.
And one of the ways you knowlike you don't go over the bars
(38:59):
like just getting lower andcloser to the bike.
You know it's sort of like apyramid, bent your knees a lot
and then your arms are quitestraight and your chest is kind
of high and you're kind of farback.
I said that looks kind of like agoalkeeper and getting ready to
take a penalty kick, Whereasthe position that we would like
people to be in is looks morelike a speed skater.
So basically, like the steps toget into that are to like bend
(39:21):
forward at the waist, bend yourelbows, lower your chest towards
the bars, chin over stem still,but that's a, you know, level
pedals.
So you kind of go through thatlike hinging forward first until
you're looking a little bitmore like a speed skater and
then, if you need to get evenlower, then you start bending
your knees, lower your wholehips and shoulders kind of at
the same time towards the bike,so that that, like it's a
(39:41):
difference in how you get closeto the bike.
Being more close to the bikemakes it more stable.
You know that kind of like thattip over pyramid thing and then
being able to be kind of likeyou think about total range of
motion vertically from all ashigh as you can go, like as tall
as you can be on a bike, to asclose as you can be to the bike,
and you think about that fromlike zero to a hundred, you know
(40:03):
somewhere in the middle there.
And if you kind of, if you'rein that position, then you can,
the bike can both move towardsyou.
Like if you're going over topof a rock, the bike can kind of
absorb to you, but then ifyou're getting getting ready to
go through a hole or somethinglike that, you can also feed the
bike away from you.
In general, like by having thatthat kind of centered position,
kind of think about like a cupof tea, that's like being
(40:23):
balanced on your head, andyou're going down a really
complicated trail and you'retrying not to spill that tea.
That's like balanced on top ofyour head.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Well, how would you do that?
Well, it's kind of like well,your head and your upper body
would kind of like move in anice smooth line and then the
bike would constantly be dancingunder you.
You know, being closer andfarther away, and kind of the
bike would move to the terrain,but your body center of mass
would be moving in kind of amore smooth version of that.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
I can see why you're such a great coach.
Yeah, I mean I'm makingconnections and all these things
.
This is good.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Good, good.
So I would say that, even likereal advanced riders were
working on nuances of that kindof center position, working on
nuances of that kind of centerposition, and one, one physical
cue that you can have thatyou're in that position is that
if you're carrying your weightin your feet, so you think about
, like your touch points of thebike, two feet and two hands
when you're standing up, um,that you want to be supporting
your body weight and your feet,and then your hands are, are on
(41:15):
the grips and are.
You know it's a light grip, butyou're not like pushing or
pulling on the bars in thatposition.
You're mostly like supportingyour weight in your feet, if
that makes sense.
So we have like heavy feet andlight hands, yeah yeah, and
that's a pretty good indicationthat you're centered over that.
If you get real far back, thenwhat ends up happening is that
you end up pulling on yourfingers.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
You feel pulling on your fingers rather than being
like a more light grip kind ofsituation.
Man, I relate to all that.
Everything we've done is justdescribed.
All my hanging on, that's allI've been doing, yeah right.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
So being more of in that driver position.
It's kind of like a moreaggressive type of stance, but
you can turn that on and off.
In places where the trail issmooth and straight you just go
back to standing up nice andtall like a giraffe, up nice and
tall like a giraffe, and thenyou know places where you need
to be ready.
You kind of get more into thatkind of ready or attack position
for obstacles or for corners orplaces.
You need to be more, more, um,more stable so you can move and
(42:10):
intentionally in that range youknow, vertically to be able to.
So so I'll work with that, withriders.
You know the real beginnerriders were like introducing
those things.
You know from the, from thevery beginning.
You know like, hey, on this,like grass field, you know like
let's practice those positionsand then you know just to figure
out how to do them without alot of complicated terrain.
And then, like advanced riders,you know we're we're trying to
(42:33):
figure out how to like massagethose positions more
strategically for specificobstacles and that sort of thing
.
So it's, you know, wide varietyusing.
But that's a real common placeto start.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
How do you pick the starting place for somebody?
So, beginners, I would imaginethat'd be a lot easier.
But if you had an intermediatethat comes in, how do you start
that whole process of trying touncover and discover what they?
You know what current stagethey're at and where they want
to go to?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, it's really a good multi-part process.
It really starts with thepre-screening before the booking
.
So then there's some intakequestions.
When people book a lesson, thatgather a little bit of
background of riding and we makesome determination of their
skill ability just based on someof those intake questions.
And that at least gets me towhen we're making the bookings
(43:18):
to pair them with the correctcoach in the correct terrain.
Second step is that when theyshow up then we do kind of an
interview and so then we talkmore in depth about what their
background is, what their goalsare, you know what type of
riding they've done in the pastand what kind of hangups they
have with with their riding orwhere they want to go with it.
You know that kind of thing.
We always include a skillsassessment as well.
(43:39):
So there's an on-bike skillsassessment and oftentimes like
kind of disguised as a warm-up.
You know it's like hey, we'regoing to go ride and get our
bodies moving and that sort ofthing.
But you know, with a fewminutes of riding with somebody
on a trail I can have a prettygood idea of what they.
You know where we need to startwith stuff.
So connecting all the dots ofthat kind of helps determine
where we start.
Connecting all the dots of thatkind of helps determine where we
(44:00):
start.
And then we always kind of area bit conservative about where
we start to, because the foreven for advanced level riders,
if they haven't had any previouslessons, then it may just serve
to get on the same, the samelevel, the same terminology on
some basic things and they maymove through it really quickly.
But you know, as we started inthat process, if they, if they
(44:21):
need more attention in thatspecific thing, then we'll just
like work on that for a bitbefore we move on.
But you know, a real advancedrider is going to you just tell
them what to do and they do itand then you just move on,
whereas a beginner rider isgoing to need a lot more steps,
a lot more like development onthat thing, to be able to be
reliable doing it, be consistentdoing it.
So those are all the steps tofigure out.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, very methodical in your approach.
Again, I think it goes back toyour education background and,
yeah, you definitely pull allthat stuff through.
So, before we go on to figuringout how people can book a
lesson with you or your team,how do you vet your own
instructors and what is thatonboarding process with them?
Because obviously you do agreat job, and Because obviously
you do a great job and I'm sureyou do a great job hiring your
(45:03):
staff, but how do you bring themalong as well?
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah, I really enjoy that process.
So, you know, I do a lot ofstaff training, you know, not
only for my company, but then,you know, obviously for other
companies as well, and so that'sa passion of mine to be able to
train other instructors.
So, yeah, my team, aaron, ingeneral, like companies that are
doing it well, there's kind oflike an apprenticeship and
(45:30):
mentorship sort of model.
So we have general stafftrainings where we're learning
or teaching like specific things, try to develop their knowledge
, and then the apprenticeshipmodel looks kind of like when
they first started do a lot ofshadowing of me or of other or
other instructors, so they kindof like watch other instructors
quite a lot, and then they theymove into this thing where
they're co-teaching, so with,like, you know, you have a task
(45:52):
and you're going to teach it,and I have a task and I'm going
to teach it, and maybe I'm incharge of the total model and
kind of like what we're doingnext.
But I kind of give you pieces toteach and then we work, you
know, towards like, hey, you'regoing to teach the whole lesson
and be in charge of the wholething and I'm going to watch and
give feedback.
So that kind of likeprogression of from shadowing
(46:13):
through co-teaching to beingshadowed and getting feedback is
like is a strong way to tobuild instructors abilities
pretty quick and then they'vebeen through the certifications
and all that kind of externalprofessional development and I
encourage them to go work otherfor other places too.
So not just my perspective, butother other people's expertise
(46:35):
as well.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Yeah, that's healthy.
How do people find out aboutbooking lessons with you,
booking lessons with your team?
How do we go about doing that?
Speaker 2 (46:42):
The website's really easy Mountain Bike Skills.
It's just mtbskillsfactorycom.
We're also on socials on thatsame handle, mtbskillsfactory,
so we're easy to find on thatstuff.
The booking stuff it shouldmake sense.
There's live availability onthe website so folks can see a
(47:06):
calendar and see what'savailable and pick a time and a
day and book it.
Certainly we're great athelping with questions too.
They can email us or call us ortext us or in all the different
ways, and we can certainly helpout with any of those questions
.
We have an email list that wecall the factory team, but
basically what that allows us todo is that when we publish our
calendar of group clinics, so wehave both private lessons that
(47:27):
are available all the time andthen we have kind of set group
clinics and so when the groupclinic calendar goes out, we
send it out to the factory teamfirst email list and allow those
folks to sign up for it beforeit kind of goes live to the
public.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's also a kind of a newsletter also of like
additional coaches, tips andthings like that.
And then we have some partnerdiscounts with companies that we
partner with that we give thosepass along those kind of like
appreciation discount codes toour factory team.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So I love that man.
I just signed up for that lastnight actually.
Oh sweet, yeah, yeah.
So I'm looking forward tostaying connected in that way.
Well, man, I've never coachedmountain biking, but I have
coached other sports and justI'm amazed at your approach to
it.
I think it's so solid and theconcept of great players don't
necessarily translate into greatcoaches, is true, but it's so
(48:15):
great when a great player or agreat rider like yourself does
translate into a coach that'sgoing to give back and they
understand the cues, theyunderstand it firsthand,
experientially, and they aretrying to teach to that level.
And I think how did you say it?
Your humanistic approach oryour human centric approach.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, it's kind of a that's a huge concept, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Well, josh, thanks so much, man for coming in here
and unpacking all of that.
I'm so glad that we didn't havea whole lot of calls before
this, because I'm finding out alot of this information
firsthand, which is so, so goodman.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
But you're doing great things and it's a service
that's definitely needed.
We've made the analogy.
We've kind of compared theskiing with the mountain biking
and some of the mishaps thathappen with that and how much
somebody, if they just get thatlittle bit of a baseline at the
beginning, it's going to reallykind of set them on a good path
to hopefully enjoy somethinglike skiing, whitewater,
kayaking, mountain biking,whatever it may be, for a very
(49:12):
long time, and I would imaginethat's part of your hope is that
they would get into it.
Progress through the sport.
It's something they can bedoing for as long as they can
walk, they can be riding, yeahWell, yeah, that's the mission
really get more people on bikesand to help them.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
You know, experience that in a in a positive way, I
mean.
Yeah, I mean you know mountainbiking has given me so much in
my life and you know, and it's,it's a super fun thing to do and
, yeah, I'd love to be able toshare that with folks that they
can.
They can do it safely and theycan do it well and they can
learn a lot and experience thatsame joy and then all the things
(49:46):
that they, the process thatthey apply towards learning how
to be a better mountain biker,is good learning for the rest of
their life.
They can apply those samelessons to their work or their
family or whatever else.
So there's that transferencepiece too, that we're using
recreation for joy, and then theprocess of learning.
(50:07):
Recreation is like a way tolearn ourselves and to learn the
processes that we can use tomake the rest of our lives
better too.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
So that's all part of the mission.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Pleasure to be here.
I appreciate you having me andthe opportunity to help educate
folks on, kind of like, whatmountain bike instruction is all
about and that it's and it's areal thing and that there's a
lot of folks doing a really goodjob with it.
So that's something I couldconsider.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
So thanks a ton Right on, josh.
Thank you, bud.
Thanks for joining us on thisincredible ride with Josh
Whitmore.
We hope his passion formountain biking and expert
coaching inspired you to takeyour skills to the next level.
Whether you're a beginner or aseasoned rider, the tips and
insights Josh shared can make ahuge difference in your
(50:48):
performance and enjoyment on thetrails.
If you're looking to continueyour mountain bike journey, be
sure to check outmtbskillsfactorycom for
world-class instruction thatcaters to all levels.
And remember investing inproper coaching and foundational
skills will pay off for yearsto come.
Well, that's going to do it forthis episode.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, please subscribe,rate and leave us a review.
(51:10):
Your feedback helps us tocontinue to bring you stories of
how these mountains and theoutdoors influence and shape our
lives.
Join me on Instagram andFacebook and drop me a line at
mike at explorationlocalcom ifyou ever have a suggestion for a
future episode.
Until next time, keep exploring, stay safe and, as always,
happy trails.
And remember I encourage you towander far, but explore local.
(51:35):
Thank you.
In this episode, we're going to take a deep dive
into the world of mountainbiking with Josh Whitmore, owner
and head coach of Mountain BikeSkills Factory.
We're going to hear Josh'sinspiring journey from his roots
in Brevard, north Carolina, tobecoming a leading mountain bike
instructor with over 25 yearsof coaching experience and a
professional racing career.
Josh explores the evolution oftrails, the rise of bike parks
(00:21):
like Canuga, chestnut Mountainand Old Fort, and why certified
instruction is essential for allriders, and we're going to
learn expert tips on bodypositioning, common rider
mistakes and how to find theright coach.
Plus, we're going to getinsights into the craftsmanship
behind high-quality mountainbikes and the comprehensive
approach to Mountain Bike SkillsFactory.
Whether you're a beginner orseasoned rider, this episode is
(00:43):
packed with tips and inspirationto take your ride and mine to
the next level.
I'll see you on the other side.
You're listening to ExplorationLocal, a podcast designed to
explore and celebrate the peopleand places that make the Blue
Ridge and Southern AppalachianMountains special and unique.
(01:05):
My name is Mike Andrus, thehost of Exploration Local.
Join us on our journey toexplore these mountains and
discover how they fuel thespirit of adventure.
We encourage you to wander far,but explore local.
Let's go.
I'm excited to have JoshWhitmore with me today.
He is the owner and head coachof Mountain Bike Skills Factory.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Excellent.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
One of the things that's really cool is that you
are a member of the PMBIA, whichI just learned is the
Professional Mountain BikeInstructors Association.
You do this not only here inWestern North Carolina, but you
do it all across the country andyou're the most active
instructor in all the countryfor the PMBIA.
(01:48):
That's pretty big stuff, man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, yeah.
So in addition to my companythat runs in this region, the
Mountain Bike Skills Factory, Ialso work for the Professional
Mountain Bike InstructorAssociation to teach the
certification courses for othermountain bike instructors.
So the PMBIA is theprofessional certifying body for
mountain bike instructors andso I do a lot of staff training
for other skills schools andguide services and summer camps
(02:13):
and bike parks and that sort ofthing.
So offer a lot of those courseshere, my home zone, but then I
travel quite a lot around theUnited States to teach those as
well.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Let's go back in time a little bit.
And when did you catch thispassion for mountain biking, and
when did it just sort of beginto take on its own trajectory?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, I really started from riding my bike to
school.
Honestly, is that?
Uh, so I had a single dad andhe was worked at the DuPont
plant, the x-ray film plant whenit would be before it was a
state forest.
There was an actual like x-rayfilm plant there.
So he was a shift worker and,you know, worked rotating shifts
and so I was kind of a feralchild a lot of the time.
And so, you know, I'd startedriding a bike to school, just so
(02:55):
I could get to school on my owntime or come back from swim
practice or whatever else I wasdoing.
And so that was kind of where Istarted riding and there were
trails in Pisgah, you know.
So I grew up in Brevard andthere were trails right there.
So, yeah, it was.
It was kind of a natural thingto start exploring on the bike
as a 12 or 13 year old and startto, you know, my own time, to
(03:18):
just like, well, where else canI go on this thing?
And it's like, oh, I can gointo the forest and I can ride,
there's trails I can ride on.
So that's kind of how it allgot started for me.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Cool.
And then, at what point in yourlife did you really kind of
figure out that man?
Helping people, coaching people, teaching people it's a thing
that you are passionate about,and the reason I asked that
question like how far back itgoes is because in my experience
, there are people that don'tjust sort of turn on the switch
and all of a sudden they go oh,I'm going to go coach.
(03:47):
There's like something in theirlife has kind of built up to
that point or something thatthey realize they just like
helping people, helpinginstruction, connecting dots
with people, learning new skills, all that kind of stuff.
I don't want to project that onyou, so maybe that doesn't
exist.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
No, no, it does, it does, yeah.
So I guess, uh, when I was ateenager and I started working
at summer camps, so there was alot of summer camps in the area
and obviously, and so then backthen, um, mountain biking was a
kind of a new activity to the tosummer camps.
You know, mountain, uh, summercamps are starting to get bikes
and have that as a program forthe kids and there wasn't a
whole lot of prior experiencewith that, and so basically it
was the kind of thing where,like, they figured out that I
had rode mountain bikes and thenlike, naturally, like, oh, that
(04:30):
means you're in charge of themountain bike program.
And then I was also had a localkid scholarship to Brevard
college.
So I was the part of the firstgraduating class of the
wilderness leadership,leadership and Experiential
Education degree program atBrevard College when it was
transitioning way back then itwas transitioning from a
two-year junior college to afour-year program.
(04:52):
So I was the first of thegraduating bachelor degrees from
Brevard College the first year,proud to say I was
valedictorian.
There were two of us.
I beat out the other guy by afew grade points, you know, both
of us kind of struggled throughbut we made it.
But anyway.
So that wilderness leadershipprogram was.
I'm not sure exactly why I wasinterested in that.
(05:13):
I think maybe because of summercamp world and it's like, oh,
this seems like a neat thing tobe able to.
Outdoor education in generalseemed like something I was
interested in, althoughsomewhere along in the lines I
started out with generaleducation classes there and then
I had there was this outdoor edclass and I didn't really
understand what it was.
But I saw that they wentbackpacking, rock climbing,
whitewater kayaking and someother things like all in one
(05:34):
class and I was like that soundslike a cool class.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
That's for me, yeah, so I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And then it was about halfway through the semester
that I figured out that, likewait, wait, wait, wait, you're
trying to teach me how to teachother people to do these things.
Like no, I don't know aboutthat, I just want to do it.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I would just rather do the things like.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I don't know about this teaching it thing, so I
felt like I kind of gothoodwinked into it but it but it
turned out to fit and uh andworked out pretty well and so
that's kind of where I gotstarted with it.
So I guess I've been I meanbeen teaching mountain bike
lessons really for I mean 20,more than 25 years now.
It's been quite a long time.
That hasn't been full-time.
All that time, you know, workedat summer camps and was
(06:13):
teaching some there and then andthen I was a professional
mountain bike racer after that.
So I went into mountain bikeracing and a lot of different
kinds of bicycle racing, but I'ma professional on the mountain
bike.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
All right.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
And then I always coached a little bit on the side
, so I would always do a littlebit of lessons here and there.
And then as I got further inthat career, I did more coaching
on the side.
And then when I eventually gottoo old to make any money racing
anymore, then coaching kind oftapered off and racing tapered
off, coaching took off and then.
So now I've been coaching fulltime since 2015 or 2016 or
(06:48):
something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
So that's cool, that's so, that's so fantastic.
I love it when you could finishwith a sport, but the sport's
not really finished with you yetand it's your time to sort of
give back and kind of help thenext generation sort of come
along.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I just really had this conversation recently with
someone who's like well, youknow, like, do you ever see
yourself doing something that'snot bikes?
And I was kind of like, well,you know, my whole life, you
know, it's like I'm sort of likebuilt into being an expert in
one thing.
I could start over.
But you know, I would have tostart over, you know, I would
have to like start from nothing,you know.
So it's sort of like I don'tfeel like I'm trapped in it.
(07:20):
I don't feel like I'm trappedin it, I love doing it, but it's
also kind of like all of mybackground kind of leading to
where I am now.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's great.
So 25 years of coaching, andI'm thinking that's probably
about the time maybe a littlebit before that when I started
actually mountain biking andgetting out and there wasn't a
whole lot of this instruction.
Back then it really was hey, ifyou find a group of people,
that they have a common interestand if you can pedal without
(07:49):
your chain falling off, let'sjust go kind of explore and
start doing the things right.
And so I'm amazed at that thatthere was instruction that goes
back that far.
I guess I am and I'm not, but Imean it makes sense, especially
if you're in this area or anyof the areas where you have such
great natural assets too.
But I'm really curious to knowfrom your perspective, like over
the last let's call it twodecades, how have you seen the
(08:11):
popularity of mountain bikingexpand and grow?
And you know, were there partsof that where it was slow and
then all of a sudden there'sbeen a spike.
I mean it seems like COVID hasnot has a whole lot to do with
it, but during COVID that was apretty big time where people
were getting outside, butthere's an explosion right now
of trail building and peoplegetting into the industries and
bikes for all price points andall those sorts of things.
(08:32):
So how have you seen it fromyour perspective, because you've
been into it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, yeah.
And then I guess, growing up inthis area in Brevard and being
a part of you in Western NorthCarolina and most of my life,
I'd say that you know it reallykind of dovetails nicely with
the story of transition of thearea from, you know, mountain
extraction industries to, youknow, recreation tourism.
You know it happened to be thatthere were already some
resources here that made it easyfor recreation tourism to
(09:00):
expand.
You know.
So we had national forests youknow Pisgah National Forest and
Nantahala National Forest andyou know that were there was
existing trail systems and thatsort of thing.
You know I'm old enough toremember when mountain biking
first became a thing that westarted riding mountain bikes on
trails in Pisgah and you knowwe would be on a bike somewhere
like way out in the forest andhikers would.
(09:21):
We'd come across hikers andthey would look at us and be
like how did you get that thinghere?
You rode a bicycle here and youknow we'd be like it's a
mountain bike.
They'd be like that's thewildest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Too funny.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
You know.
So, back then there weren'ttrails that were open to bikes
or closed to bikes, there werejust trails.
And then, you know, we startedriding bikes on them and you
know, eventually, you know the,with more and more riding
happening, you know, thencertain trails became, uh, okay,
to ride bikes, and other onesthey, you know, they made hiking
only, or horses, you know,whatever it was.
So they kind of like separatedsome of those out.
But so I would say that thatyou know we had a nice advantage
(09:56):
of the of the location as faras the mountains, and then you
know all existing nationalforest and trails and that sort
of thing that made all of thatkind of easy.
But yeah, pretty early on evenactually, this Western North
Carolina became a kind of amountain bike Mecca and that
there were because there arealready existing trails.
Then people were riding bikeson and they're quite good for
bikes that people came from allover to ride them, and so it
(10:19):
became known in that area.
I should find this article.
There was an article in like abicycle magazine or something
from the early nineties thatranked uh, avery Creek downhill
or Avery Creek trail in Pisgahnational forest is one of the
top three downhills in thecountry, or something like this.
It was like early nineties, youknow early, kind of more early
days of of mountain biking.
(10:39):
But you know, it kind of heldthat prestige just because it
was already here.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It kind of held that prestige just because it was
already here.
Yeah Well, we talked about thata little bit before we started
recording of just how much thisarea is a mecca, and I was
sharing some stories aboutpeople who have lived here.
They've moved out west andobviously the thought of
everything out there is biggerand better, but there's people
that say no, with a mountainbike there's so much more
concentrated trails that we canride here and they really kind
(11:04):
of prefer a lot of that singletrack that's in this whole
region.
That's characteristic of thisregion.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, yeah, I'd say so.
There's a lot of variety hereas well, and we can ride
year-round.
It never gets real hot in thesummer and then in the winter it
might snow a little bit, butwait a couple days and you're
back riding on the trails again.
So we tend to be able to rideyear round.
(11:31):
And then we kind of have thesethis size mountain that is good
for hiking and for mountainbiking in the way that they're.
They're big enough to make itexciting and difficult and
challenging, but not so big thatthey're that there's unused
terrain, you know you can thinkabout like you know the biggest,
the biggest mountains inColorado or wherever.
you know there's there's notmountain bike trails on the
highest, biggest mountains inColorado.
You know there's kind ofthere's sort of a zone of
elevation and steepness andstuff that makes sense for
(11:53):
mountain bikes and you knowthat's kind of describes all of
our mountains here honestly.
So we have really good terrainin that way and you know weather
and you know all that sort ofthing.
So it it makes makes for aperfect storm in that way.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah.
So let's talk a little bitbefore we get into the
instruction part, cause wereally want to focus on that too
.
Just the trails in general.
So we know that there's a lotof them and they're all
accessible and we have within aday's drive so many, I mean from
New York, from, you know, fromthe Keys to New York.
I mean people can be here,within a day to enjoy.
But you also talk about thevariety of the different trails
(12:28):
for all different levels.
And then I'd love to touch justa little bit on your
perspective of seeing, really,at least in our region, Western
North Carolina the explosion ofmountain bike trails that are
being made out there too.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, I guess, as you know, it all started with, you
know, the trails that were inthe national forest, the
existing trails that were there,which were really kind of
co-opted from like logging,extraction routes, and you know
we're talking about like oldlogging roads and old you know,
logging trails that would gobetween hunting or logging camps
and stuff like that.
But you think about, like youknow, the Brevard zone of Pisgah
(13:07):
and then over at Solly andNantahala National Forest were,
you know, some of the hotbeds ofthose existing trails, and then
you know we started gettingsome other, you know, like
DuPont State Forest, that cameon board and then they, some of
them, like a lot of the trailsthey were purpose built to be
multi-use for mountain bikes,hikers and horses, and so that
was early days of professionaltrail building and trail design
(13:31):
to be able to accommodate thosedifferent trail users on the
same surfaces, which Pisgahnever really had.
We just kind of adopted thetrails that were already there
in Pisgah.
So how to make the trailssustainable?
We live in a place that gets anincredible amount of rain, so
and how do you build a trailthat lasts, you know, with that
amount of rain and that amountof traffic and all that sort of
thing?
(13:51):
So that that was interesting.
And then you know, with the boomof recreation, tourism in
general and then just the sportof mountain biking, then you
know other sort of commercialendeavors, like private property
that people build trails on andthen charge a fee to ride them,
or shuttle services that youknow shuttle you to the top of
the mountain so you don't haveto pedal all the way up there,
(14:12):
and that sort of thing.
So we've got, you know, severalnew bike parks in the area,
like you know Canuga Bike Parkand Rock Creek Bike Park.
And with the amount of peoplethat do ride in this area in
general, even the NationalForest is trying to expand the
amount of trails.
So you think about all the newtrails that are being developed
around Old Fort and the.
G5 Collective and all of thatstuff is sort of concentrated to
(14:33):
try to be able to buildadditional terrain so that to
relieve some of the overusepressure in maybe the more
popular bits.
With all that said, yeah, itseems like every year here
there's a new trail systemthat's open.
You think about like FireMountain Trail System in
Cherokee or Chestnut TrailSystem in Chestnut Mountain in
Bicanton, and some of those arefree and municipal owned, city
(14:57):
owned, state owned.
Some of them, like Canuga orRock Creek, are private property
, commercial things.
There's more of that coming too.
There's going to be a new oneopen in Old Fort called the
Watershed Bike Park.
That's going to be probablystill another year out or so,
but they're already buildingtrails there.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's so great.
There are a lot of trails andthere are a lot of people that
look to this place as a mecca,that look to this place as a
Mecca.
So it only stands to reasonthat instruction, and really
good quality, certifiedinstruction, is taking off as
well.
And that's what you're doing,that's the niche that you're
serving in this industry.
Well, that's part of it, Iguess.
The other part is, like we'vetalked about earlier traveling
(15:37):
around teaching otherinstructors.
But let's talk a little bitabout your company, let's kind
of camp out and focus there, andlet's talk a little bit about
the rise in popularity of themountain biking instruction.
But maybe even before we getthere, just like why?
Like what's the why behind it?
And also we've talked about it.
(15:57):
But I'd love for you to kind ofunpack.
Hey, it's kind of a widespectrum.
It's for everybody who ismountain biking.
And well, I'm going to let youfinish that, so I don't want to
kind of give that piece away.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, well, you think aboutthose listeners that are already
mountain bikers.
Or, if you're thinking aboutgetting into mountain biking,
think about how did you learnhow to ride?
Most of the time, it's that yougot a bike, you started riding
it and started figuring it outjust by kind of doing it trial
and error.
Yeah, you might've got sometips from some friends.
(16:29):
These days, you know folks likethere's some video and tutorials
and some stuff out there andcontent that is sometimes
helpful, but, you know, veryrarely did we when we started
learning how to ride mountainbikes, did we folks out there.
Very rarely did they, you know,start with, like start with a
lesson, or have any kind ofstructured learning process of
how to acquire these skills, ofhow to, how to maneuver this
(16:52):
complicated thing on complicatedterrain.
What ends up happening is thatpeople kind of figure it out and
human beings are prettyintuitive with, you know, with
understanding body movement andtrying to balance, and some
folks learn it quicker thanothers.
I'd say that a lot of peoplelearn sort of bad habits as well
, like they kind of like getdecent, they can handle decently
(17:14):
difficult terrain in spite oftheir skills in some ways, and
then so you know it's just sortof like been that process for
most people of just kind oftrial and error figuring it out
on their own.
But you know you think aboutalso.
You know mountain biking haskind of a reputation of being
like extreme or dangerous or butit doesn't have to be that way,
(17:35):
you know you can.
Certainly it's sensationalizedin social media and stuff to see
.
You know the Friday fails andthe you know the crashes, the
Friday fails and the the uh, youknow the, the crashes and that
sortof thing.
You know that that getseyeballs on it, but, um, being a
mountain biker doesn't mean youhave to crash and hurt yourself
.
You know you can, you can ridesafely and and do well.
So, yeah, I'd say in in generalit, uh it kind of struck a
(17:57):
chord with me in the way that,in trying to be a professional
racer and trying with thisoutdoor education background, I
was really trying to understandhow to how to ride a bike in a
more conscious way and so that Icould improve it.
So my story with that real quick, was that as a racer I was a
little bit bigger, more muscularthan than I would say like your
world cup kind of like crosscountry racer, and a little
(18:18):
little tiny whippets that gouphill real fast.
I weighed a bit more than that,and so in order to compensate
for that disadvantage, I had tobe really good with everything
else.
And so then skills and drivingthe bike and making up time and
complicated terrain and on thedownhills was how I like
maintain to be competitive, andso I spent a lot of time in my
(18:39):
personal journey trying tounderstand how to drive a bike
better and faster so that Icould be a better racer, and so
then teaching other people,connecting that to my outdoor
education background you know,the methodology of how to teach
that to other people reallystruck a chord with folks.
It would be like a lot ofcomments would be like I sort of
do that and I kind of knew that, but I didn't really understand
, like really even the consciousparts of how you position your
(19:02):
body to go over a drop or arounda turn, or and they certainly
didn't have like a um, mostpeople don't have a conscious
process of being able to scanahead and see terrain that's
happening or that's coming andthen translate that
subconsciously into these arethe body movements I need to
make in order to drive the bikethrough that terrain.
(19:25):
Most people, the way that ithappens, is that they just kind
of ride into the terrain and seewhat happens, and then they
they end up being like this kindof reactive rider, like a
reactionary process, wherethey're just trying to react to
whatever's happening.
And so the analogy I use iskind of like rather than driving
the car, they're holding ontothe bumper and getting drug
along by the car down the road.
(19:45):
They're just kind of reactingto whatever's happening and
through the whole process ofskills instruction, then what
we're really trying to do is tryto move people towards being a
more conscious driver of thebike, where they're kind of
anticipating movements and thenare making the movements happen
as they're needed, rather thanbeing a reactionary rider man.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
You just described the former is me the movements
happen like as they're needed,rather than being a reactionary
rider man.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So you just described the first.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
The former is me.
It's grabbing the bumper andjust kind of holding on.
I was sharing that with youearlier and that very much
explains kind of my last 20 plusyears of just being a
reactionary, you know, rider andkind of hanging on and and it's
been really inconsistent for me.
But you know, I think I sharedwith you also that somebody, the
first connection that I hadwith driving, you know through
something, is just understandingmy speed, my gear and all of
(20:32):
that in my downhill to sort ofcarry into an uphill, and that
was huge.
That was just that one littletip was enough to sort of be a
game changer for me, feelinglike I had sort of improved a
little bit.
And it really didn't haveanything to do with you know,
how fast I wanted to go or howextreme I wanted to be or any of
that kind of stuff.
It was just this is just nowgetting into this and I'd like
(20:57):
her to kind of learn the rightway, but also just the
efficiency and being able to beout there and getting off the
trail and not feeling likeyou're beat to death you know,
and that's the way I feel a lotof times when I get off.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
So yeah, yeah, I guess.
And so folks that are justgetting started riding or more
beginner riders, get quite a lotout of it, just to be able to
feel more confident, morecapable and just more safe and
stable I guess in those kind oflike priorities, just to have
(21:31):
the ability to be able toproactively see things and then
do the right stuff, to not getthrown off the bike or that sort
of stuff, be able to tackledifferent trains.
So at the beginning it helpspeople to access more terrain
because they're just morecapable pretty quickly.
And then I guess anotherphenotype of people that work
with quite a lot are what Iwould call the intermediate
(21:53):
plateau.
So the intermediate plateau arefolks that have been riding for
a little while.
They've kind of been figuringit out on their own, they've
been riding lots of differenttrails and that sort of thing,
but then they they kind of reachthis plateau and ability where
they're not really gettingbetter anymore and so they're
riding the same trails the sameway and with the same results
and they they see the otherpeople going faster or they see
(22:13):
people doing other types offeatures they don't feel
confident doing or and theydon't know quite how to like
bridge that gap of like how do I, how do I continue to improve?
I've reached this plateau nowand so those type of riders
really benefit from, fromlessons to help like connect
those dots, to like help breakthrough that plateau, to
continue to improve.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Access more terrain, new features be maybe ride
faster if they want be able to.
Yeah, just feel like thatthey're more in control and all
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
You know, it's amazing that your wilderness
education, background andexperiences really comes through
with what you're saying rightthere I think, and then because
that's transferable, right.
So, like you said, if it's snowskiing, if it's rock climbing,
if it's I mean you name it, youfill in the blank.
All those principles are kindof all the same, and so I could
definitely see how and why youhave so many positive reviews
(23:09):
from some of your customers thatare out there.
In fact, one person I wrotethis down.
I thought this was really reallygood.
They said, josh, make sure tounderstand your current skills,
learning style and goals so youalways get the instruction you
need explained in a way thatmakes the most sense to you.
I thought that was prettyprofound when I read it.
I mean, I read through many ofthem, but that one really kind
(23:29):
of stuck out because it's likeyou're understanding the person,
what it is they're trying toget to, what challenges them
perhaps, where are they now,what's their current state, and
you want them to move into aflow state, no matter what the
stage is.
Because you can be I'm thinkingyou can have flow state as a
beginner, because I do For sureComing down some of these trails
, just hooping and hollering,just grin from ear to ear, but
then, as you go through, thosesame things are evident as well.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that speaks well to the art
of being a good coach in themountain bike world is that the
evolution of being a mountainbike coach is that when you
first get started, you learnsome curriculum, common
curriculum, and you learn how todeliver a set script.
So you learn how to deliver thiscurriculum and then as you get
(24:14):
better and better at it like,let's say, that you'd work more
private lessons with folks,where you work on one-on-one
with a client and you can sortof then branch out from the
general script and so then itbecomes a lot more customizable,
where you're trying tounderstand the background and
the current state of that clientand then trying to use the
(24:37):
knowledge and the curriculumthat you have to apply to that
client so that they like reachtheir goals in the most
efficient way possible.
So then I think that's whatreally keeps me in the flow
state of being a coach is thatit's it's highly adaptable to
each person.
And if I was in the state oflike um, of just delivering the
same curriculum over and overagain, then that would get kind
(25:00):
of mundane and boring.
But for me, the challenge oflike working with each person
individually and understandingyou know what do they need right
now, as their next step is islike a is something that just
turns into a flow state.
For me, that is a creativeendeavor, requires connection
with the client, understandingof, like you know, kind of
mastery of all of the skills andthen what terrain you have to
(25:20):
work with and how to maximizeall that stuff together.
So that's what keeps me in it,I think, in the in the long run.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
How do you pick the perfect mountain bike coach for
you?
How do people, based on whatthey just heard and knowing that
there's a difference, how dothey go about trying to find the
right one?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Maybe just start with some basic professionalism
questions of you know, do theyhave a business, commercial
liability insurance?
Do they have permission orpermits to be able to teach in
the places that they're teaching?
You know there's it's a littlebit of a wild west sometimes
that people are, you know,exchanging services for money
and don't even have a commercialoperating permit and Pisgah
(25:55):
National Forest, you know so ordon't have commercial liability
insurance, or you know thosekinds of things.
So just some of those basic,those kinds of basic questions
are a good starting point.
Beyond that, I think it's youcan dive a little bit into
background and experience of theinstructor and don't be afraid
to ask how long have you beendoing this?
How did you learn how, workingwith a company that had some
(26:21):
kind of methodology or moreexperienced instructors in place
that you could mentor andapprentice under?
The best coaches that I've seendevelop have come up through the
ranks under kind of like anapprenticeship type of
arrangement where they areseeking both outside
professional development butthen also exist in a place where
they can learn from other moreexperienced coaches.
(26:42):
Or did they start it themselves?
And if they haven't been doingit for very long, if they're
figuring it out on their own.
They're essentially kind oflike figuring out how to be a
coach kind of trial and errorwith you as the guinea pig.
So it may not be as efficient,maybe.
Okay, it may not be asefficient or as high quality as
someone who has come throughsome kind of a program of
(27:03):
training where they are more,where they get more highly
experienced apprenticeship ormentorship.
There are certificationprograms out there, like the
PMBIA is the main one and it'sthe kind of the worldwide
certification body for mountainbike constructors, and so that's
pretty universally accepted asthe different levels.
There's four different levelsof certification.
(27:23):
So depending on what level youare, you're sort of like your
scope of practice for teachingspecific things changes
throughout that.
But that's also a good markerof just the dedication that the
coach has to their ownprofessional development, that
they have sought out trainingand certification from other
sources.
And then I think as well, justyou know, do they work with
(27:46):
riders that are like you.
So, for instance, you knowthere are a lot of great
mountain bike coaches that arepretty new to mountain bike
coaching.
They are fantastic at workingwith specific populations, say,
like more beginner populationsin general.
Maybe they're really good.
Their experience thus far hasbeen with group clinics where
(28:06):
they're delivering more of ascripted curriculum rather than
like a custom on the fly kind oflike curriculum with a private
lesson.
You know, and there's a greatneed for those type of coaches
that are pretty new to it butare delivering high quality
curriculum.
You know, for beginners, youknow, I'd say in general, like
universally, like someone justgetting started mountain biking,
you know, there's a few thingsthat they, that we kind of teach
(28:28):
all of them and it's incrediblyhelpful.
And then the more advanced therider gets, the more nuanced the
instruction has to be to to beable to help that rider.
So newer coaches can be great,you know, if they, you know,
have the proper amount of liketraining and certification and
mentorship to be able to do that.
But you know, but yeah, so dothey.
(28:49):
So that's a good question toask.
You know, do they regularlywork with, with riders like you
or the rider that you want tobecome?
You know they're like I I refersome riders to other coaches
that are riders that I, that Idon't that there are other
coaches that may be better atworking with that specific type
of rider or the or for theirspecific goals.
So, for instance, like you knowI I teach regular mountain
(29:10):
bikers how to go over jumps anddo jumps and drops and that sort
of thing and do basic tricks inthe air, uh, like tail whips or
tables and stuff like that.
But like if you're in a dirtjump park on a dirt jump bike or
a BMX bike, like that's kind ofoutside of my scope of
expertise and like I, you know Idon't ride those types of bikes
and doing, you know, backflipsand three sixties and like those
(29:30):
that kind of jumping.
Like you know, it's like I canteach you know mountain bikes
how to jump all day, but like,yeah, get on a dirt jump park
then yeah, that's kind of out tomy.
So if someone comes wantingsomething like that, then I'm
happily, you know, referringthem to someone who does
specialize in that.
So, that's an example of that,of that kind of thing.
So and then the last thing Ithink would just be like, do you
(29:53):
jive with their personality?
You know there's it takes aconnection between the teacher
and the student and any kind oflearning environment in order to
have really effective learninghappen, and so that learning
environment is really, you know,do you think that you would
enjoy hanging out with them fora few hours?
And sometimes you just don'tjive with people, and that's
okay too.
Like you know, maybe that'slike some folks, you just jive
(30:16):
more with others.
You may even consider thegender of the person that you're
working with.
That there's in general.
It's kind of funny.
Like, one of the things I say alot of times is that if you're
strongly consider taking alesson from a female mountain
bike instructor and why is that?
Is because, like, it's harderfor a female in general to show
up in the mountain bike spaceand be taken seriously as like
(30:37):
being good at teaching yousomething.
So the ones that have made it,that are doing it regularly, are
really good at it, because theyhave to show up and demand that
respect through excellence andquality right away If they're.
If they're not very good at it,then unfortunately the you know
the I mean it's getting betterin the world in general.
(30:58):
But you know the you know thein general, like in a male
dominated sport, then it's it'sgetting better in the world in
general, but in general, like ina male-dominated sport, then
it's harder for them to getrespect.
So anyway, those are a fewlittle pieces that I typically
tell people when they're lookingfor mountain bike coaches.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Love it, love it.
Well, in a world today, hardpivot.
But in a world today of so muchonline video YouTube, you name
it we can get instruction outthere.
There's a lot of people havenew, you know, youtube channels
and I'm sure that there's somegood behind it.
But what's the differencebetween, like, how would you
(31:32):
draw the demarcation betweenwhat you're going to see online
and really kind of getting thatfirsthand, first-person
experience of a qualified,certified coach?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, that's a great question Because, yeah, like you
said, there's a lot of goodcontent, short form content and
social media and you know longerform content in.
You know, like YouTube, andeven content that you can
purchase.
You know that you can videotutorials that you can purchase
and I would say that some ofthat is actually quite good and
I'd say that there's a lot of itthat's really garbage.
(32:02):
That's like good entertainmentbut it's not, doesn't serve a
good function of teaching youreally much.
So, some of the common themesof those things video content as
a teaching tool.
One of the common things I seeis that they're often quite good
about breaking down, like anadvanced maneuver, into its
elemental pieces and helping youunderstand what are the pieces
(32:22):
in order to execute a bunny hop,or to what are all the what are
all here, understand the piecesthat go into jumping a mountain
bike.
So that's that's fantastic to,and it's helpful for a rider to
be able to like consciouslyunderstand what those pieces are
.
I call those show and tellvideos because they, uh, they're
kind of like hey, here's this,this like nifty advanced thing
(32:44):
that we're doing, and here I'mgoing to break it down into a
bunch of pieces.
Now you do it, okay, well.
So what those videos lack isthe.
Is the okay, well, how do youtake a rider who can't do those
pieces?
How do they acquire thefoundation and the skills and
the movement patterns in orderto be able to get to where they
can start to execute some ofthose things?
(33:05):
What pieces, steps do they needto put in place before that to
get to there?
So you know, what kinds of,yeah, mechanics do they need to
learn or fix, or skills thatthey need to learn before they
even get there?
So so oftentimes that kind ofvideo can show and tell.
Video content is missing that,like any, any progression of
development, it's like it's likea great to like tell you what
(33:27):
it is, but it's not like how toget there.
I guess another thing thatvideo content lacks is any kind
of customization of, uh, evenvideo content that has a
progression of like hey, dothese drills in this order?
Is that for some folks that maybe too boring for them, or for
other folks it may move tooquickly?
So everyone is coming fromdifferent places and you have a
(33:50):
human-centric approach to each.
Human has a different learningcurve and it might be good at
some parts of it, but not goodat other parts of it, and so
that learning progression reallyneeds to be custom for each
person, so that it's it doesn'tprogress too quickly or it's not
it's challenging enough.
Yeah, not challenging enough.
That's another, I guess,detriment of that.
(34:11):
And then all video contentlasts any kind of like analysis
and feedback.
So a really good coach isreally trained and in tune with
watching you execute what yourassignment is and then providing
you feedback with you know,both the things you're doing
correctly and then how to errordetection and correction, like
(34:32):
how to correct some of theerrors that you're having.
And it's difficult to do on yourown because your own
proprioception might be thatlike, hey, I'm doing this thing,
watch like I'm doing it great,right, and so a classic one that
is, like you know, like anassignment of like, uh, hinging
at the waist, getting your youryour shoulders closer to the
bars, like bending your elbowsmore to get your lower your
(34:53):
chest and getting close to thebars.
You know people would be likelook, coach, I'm getting really
low, look how close to thehandlebar I am.
You know I am, and they've onlymoved like an inch or two.
And you show them a video ofthemselves and it's like, well,
how low did you think you were?
And you'd be like man, my facewas almost getting ready to hit
the stem.
It was real close, coach.
And then they see a video ofthem doing it and they really
only moved like an inch fromtheir full upright position.
(35:15):
And so that's that differencein kind of proprioception that's
hard sometimes to detectyourself, that a trained eye can
see, and good coaches canprioritize those errors where
it's like you know the rider'sjust not quite getting it,
they're not quite getting it,it's not quite clicking for them
.
Well, maybe it's just assomething as simple as like the
(35:37):
angle of their feet on thepedals or or some something with
their body movement that thatsort of unlocks the ability to
do what they're doing.
You know, the, the maybe, justoftentimes it's all.
It's some kind of like simplefoundation thing that is off
just enough to prevent them fromhaving success at the what
they're trying to do.
But they would never figurethat out on their own if you
(35:57):
didn't, if there wasn't a coachthere to kind of like provide
that feedback to help out.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, would never figured that out on their own if
you didn't, if there wasn't acoach there to kind of like
provide that feedback to helpout.
Yeah, you know that tracks backto something we talked about a
little bit earlier, just interms of you know, you had the
people that are hanging on, thenyou had the people that are
trying to learn to drive theirbike.
I think I said that right.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
So in in that vein, what are some of those things
Like?
What are some of the basics?
There may be somebody listeningin here that says that really
sounds good for me.
I'm very interested.
Either I live here or I'm goingto be traveling here.
I need to look up, Josh.
So what are some of those kindof basic, fundamental things
that they should be getting andthat you are looking at, some of
those common errors that you'retrying to correct with them?
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah.
So a couple of things thateverybody can work on and give
you a peel back the curtain alittle bit to some of the stuff
that we are commonly teaching.
I'd say one of the biggestthings is a basic body position
of trying to be what we callcentered and then being able to
use your vertical range ofmotion, so like farther away
(36:55):
from the bike or closer to thebike strategically.
So let me explain this to folksthat, uh so the most common
error that I see of all levelriders is when folks are like
cruising across the parking lotstanding up.
They often look pretty good andthey're like.
You know their feet are bothequidistant from the ground.
We call it level pedals.
And you know they're like quiteupright.
(37:16):
You know arms and knees justslightly bent the chin's kind of
over the stem we call thatneutral position, you know that.
And knees just slightly bentthe chin's kind of over the stem
.
We call that a neutral position.
You know that's like a restfulposition.
It's kind of like standing inline at the bank.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
You could do that all day long.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
But then, okay, great , Now we're, we're like
approaching a rock garden and wewant to be more stable, to be
able, or have more movement, tobe able to like absorb the bike
as it chunders over top of thoserocks.
Well, chunders over top ofthose rocks, Well, what the
mistake that most people make isthat they they mostly just bend
their knees and get kind of farback on the bike.
Their arms stay kind ofstraight and what that does is
(37:48):
it puts them out of center, soit puts them, their weight is
biased towards the rear wheeland then they've got their legs
bent quite a lot.
So the outcome of that is thatthe front wheel has less
pressure on it, Front tire hasless pressure on it, Makes it
worse for steering, Makes itworse for braking, Makes it
(38:08):
worse for kind of driving thebike.
You know, you kind of get moreinto that, like you're just
hanging on getting drug along,and the reason why people end up
like that is that it's adefensive position.
They don't want to go over thebars.
For you know, over the front ofthe bars and you know,
especially like older bikes tothe uh, smaller wheels and the
wheel base is real short and inorder to ride those bikes and
(38:29):
not go over the front of thehandlebars, you had to.
You had to ride kind of farback.
You know like keep your weightback.
You know that classic, they'requite hard.
You know a lot more difficultto go over the bars.
And one of the ways you knowlike you don't go over the bars
(38:59):
like just getting lower andcloser to the bike.
You know it's sort of like apyramid, bent your knees a lot
and then your arms are quitestraight and your chest is kind
of high and you're kind of farback.
I said that looks kind of like agoalkeeper and getting ready to
take a penalty kick, Whereasthe position that we would like
people to be in is looks morelike a speed skater.
So basically, like the steps toget into that are to like bend
(39:21):
forward at the waist, bend yourelbows, lower your chest towards
the bars, chin over stem still,but that's a, you know, level
pedals.
So you kind of go through thatlike hinging forward first until
you're looking a little bitmore like a speed skater and
then, if you need to get evenlower, then you start bending
your knees, lower your wholehips and shoulders kind of at
the same time towards the bike,so that that, like it's a
(39:41):
difference in how you get closeto the bike.
Being more close to the bikemakes it more stable.
You know that kind of like thattip over pyramid thing and then
being able to be kind of likeyou think about total range of
motion vertically from all ashigh as you can go, like as tall
as you can be on a bike, to asclose as you can be to the bike,
and you think about that fromlike zero to a hundred, you know
(40:03):
somewhere in the middle there.
And if you kind of, if you'rein that position, then you can,
the bike can both move towardsyou.
Like if you're going over topof a rock, the bike can kind of
absorb to you, but then ifyou're getting getting ready to
go through a hole or somethinglike that, you can also feed the
bike away from you.
In general, like by having thatthat kind of centered position,
kind of think about like a cupof tea, that's like being
(40:23):
balanced on your head, andyou're going down a really
complicated trail and you'retrying not to spill that tea.
That's like balanced on top ofyour head.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Well, how would you do that?
Well, it's kind of like well,your head and your upper body
would kind of like move in anice smooth line and then the
bike would constantly be dancingunder you.
You know, being closer andfarther away, and kind of the
bike would move to the terrain,but your body center of mass
would be moving in kind of amore smooth version of that.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
I can see why you're such a great coach.
Yeah, I mean I'm makingconnections and all these things
.
This is good.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Good, good.
So I would say that, even likereal advanced riders were
working on nuances of that kindof center position, working on
nuances of that kind of centerposition, and one, one physical
cue that you can have thatyou're in that position is that
if you're carrying your weightin your feet, so you think about
, like your touch points of thebike, two feet and two hands
when you're standing up, um,that you want to be supporting
your body weight and your feet,and then your hands are, are on
(41:15):
the grips and are.
You know it's a light grip, butyou're not like pushing or
pulling on the bars in thatposition.
You're mostly like supportingyour weight in your feet, if
that makes sense.
So we have like heavy feet andlight hands, yeah yeah, and
that's a pretty good indicationthat you're centered over that.
If you get real far back, thenwhat ends up happening is that
you end up pulling on yourfingers.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
You feel pulling on your fingers rather than being
like a more light grip kind ofsituation.
Man, I relate to all that.
Everything we've done is justdescribed.
All my hanging on, that's allI've been doing, yeah right.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
So being more of in that driver position.
It's kind of like a moreaggressive type of stance, but
you can turn that on and off.
In places where the trail issmooth and straight you just go
back to standing up nice andtall like a giraffe, up nice and
tall like a giraffe, and thenyou know places where you need
to be ready.
You kind of get more into thatkind of ready or attack position
for obstacles or for corners orplaces.
You need to be more, more, um,more stable so you can move and
(42:10):
intentionally in that range youknow, vertically to be able to.
So so I'll work with that, withriders.
You know the real beginnerriders were like introducing
those things.
You know from the, from thevery beginning.
You know like, hey, on this,like grass field, you know like
let's practice those positionsand then you know just to figure
out how to do them without alot of complicated terrain.
And then, like advanced riders,you know we're we're trying to
(42:33):
figure out how to like massagethose positions more
strategically for specificobstacles and that sort of thing
.
So it's, you know, wide varietyusing.
But that's a real common placeto start.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
How do you pick the starting place for somebody?
So, beginners, I would imaginethat'd be a lot easier.
But if you had an intermediatethat comes in, how do you start
that whole process of trying touncover and discover what they?
You know what current stagethey're at and where they want
to go to?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, it's really a good multi-part process.
It really starts with thepre-screening before the booking
.
So then there's some intakequestions.
When people book a lesson, thatgather a little bit of
background of riding and we makesome determination of their
skill ability just based on someof those intake questions.
And that at least gets me towhen we're making the bookings
(43:18):
to pair them with the correctcoach in the correct terrain.
Second step is that when theyshow up then we do kind of an
interview and so then we talkmore in depth about what their
background is, what their goalsare, you know what type of
riding they've done in the pastand what kind of hangups they
have with with their riding orwhere they want to go with it.
You know that kind of thing.
We always include a skillsassessment as well.
(43:39):
So there's an on-bike skillsassessment and oftentimes like
kind of disguised as a warm-up.
You know it's like hey, we'regoing to go ride and get our
bodies moving and that sort ofthing.
But you know, with a fewminutes of riding with somebody
on a trail I can have a prettygood idea of what they.
You know where we need to startwith stuff.
So connecting all the dots ofthat kind of helps determine
where we start.
Connecting all the dots of thatkind of helps determine where we
(44:00):
start.
And then we always kind of area bit conservative about where
we start to, because the foreven for advanced level riders,
if they haven't had any previouslessons, then it may just serve
to get on the same, the samelevel, the same terminology on
some basic things and they maymove through it really quickly.
But you know, as we started inthat process, if they, if they
(44:21):
need more attention in thatspecific thing, then we'll just
like work on that for a bitbefore we move on.
But you know, a real advancedrider is going to you just tell
them what to do and they do itand then you just move on,
whereas a beginner rider isgoing to need a lot more steps,
a lot more like development onthat thing, to be able to be
reliable doing it, be consistentdoing it.
So those are all the steps tofigure out.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, very methodical in your approach.
Again, I think it goes back toyour education background and,
yeah, you definitely pull allthat stuff through.
So, before we go on to figuringout how people can book a
lesson with you or your team,how do you vet your own
instructors and what is thatonboarding process with them?
Because obviously you do agreat job, and Because obviously
you do a great job and I'm sureyou do a great job hiring your
(45:03):
staff, but how do you bring themalong as well?
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah, I really enjoy that process.
So, you know, I do a lot ofstaff training, you know, not
only for my company, but then,you know, obviously for other
companies as well, and so that'sa passion of mine to be able to
train other instructors.
So, yeah, my team, aaron, ingeneral, like companies that are
doing it well, there's kind oflike an apprenticeship and
(45:30):
mentorship sort of model.
So we have general stafftrainings where we're learning
or teaching like specific things, try to develop their knowledge
, and then the apprenticeshipmodel looks kind of like when
they first started do a lot ofshadowing of me or of other or
other instructors, so they kindof like watch other instructors
quite a lot, and then they theymove into this thing where
they're co-teaching, so with,like, you know, you have a task
(45:52):
and you're going to teach it,and I have a task and I'm going
to teach it, and maybe I'm incharge of the total model and
kind of like what we're doingnext.
But I kind of give you pieces toteach and then we work, you
know, towards like, hey, you'regoing to teach the whole lesson
and be in charge of the wholething and I'm going to watch and
give feedback.
So that kind of likeprogression of from shadowing
(46:13):
through co-teaching to beingshadowed and getting feedback is
like is a strong way to tobuild instructors abilities
pretty quick and then they'vebeen through the certifications
and all that kind of externalprofessional development and I
encourage them to go work otherfor other places too.
So not just my perspective, butother other people's expertise
(46:35):
as well.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Yeah, that's healthy.
How do people find out aboutbooking lessons with you,
booking lessons with your team?
How do we go about doing that?
Speaker 2 (46:42):
The website's really easy Mountain Bike Skills.
It's just mtbskillsfactorycom.
We're also on socials on thatsame handle, mtbskillsfactory,
so we're easy to find on thatstuff.
The booking stuff it shouldmake sense.
There's live availability onthe website so folks can see a
(47:06):
calendar and see what'savailable and pick a time and a
day and book it.
Certainly we're great athelping with questions too.
They can email us or call us ortext us or in all the different
ways, and we can certainly helpout with any of those questions
.
We have an email list that wecall the factory team, but
basically what that allows us todo is that when we publish our
calendar of group clinics, so wehave both private lessons that
(47:27):
are available all the time andthen we have kind of set group
clinics and so when the groupclinic calendar goes out, we
send it out to the factory teamfirst email list and allow those
folks to sign up for it beforeit kind of goes live to the
public.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's also a kind of a newsletter also of like
additional coaches, tips andthings like that.
And then we have some partnerdiscounts with companies that we
partner with that we give thosepass along those kind of like
appreciation discount codes toour factory team.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So I love that man.
I just signed up for that lastnight actually.
Oh sweet, yeah, yeah.
So I'm looking forward tostaying connected in that way.
Well, man, I've never coachedmountain biking, but I have
coached other sports and justI'm amazed at your approach to
it.
I think it's so solid and theconcept of great players don't
necessarily translate into greatcoaches, is true, but it's so
(48:15):
great when a great player or agreat rider like yourself does
translate into a coach that'sgoing to give back and they
understand the cues, theyunderstand it firsthand,
experientially, and they aretrying to teach to that level.
And I think how did you say it?
Your humanistic approach oryour human centric approach.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, it's kind of a that's a huge concept, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Well, josh, thanks so much, man for coming in here
and unpacking all of that.
I'm so glad that we didn't havea whole lot of calls before
this, because I'm finding out alot of this information
firsthand, which is so, so goodman.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
But you're doing great things and it's a service
that's definitely needed.
We've made the analogy.
We've kind of compared theskiing with the mountain biking
and some of the mishaps thathappen with that and how much
somebody, if they just get thatlittle bit of a baseline at the
beginning, it's going to reallykind of set them on a good path
to hopefully enjoy somethinglike skiing, whitewater,
kayaking, mountain biking,whatever it may be, for a very
(49:12):
long time, and I would imaginethat's part of your hope is that
they would get into it.
Progress through the sport.
It's something they can bedoing for as long as they can
walk, they can be riding, yeahWell, yeah, that's the mission
really get more people on bikesand to help them.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
You know, experience that in a in a positive way, I
mean.
Yeah, I mean you know mountainbiking has given me so much in
my life and you know, and it's,it's a super fun thing to do and
, yeah, I'd love to be able toshare that with folks that they
can.
They can do it safely and theycan do it well and they can
learn a lot and experience thatsame joy and then all the things
(49:46):
that they, the process thatthey apply towards learning how
to be a better mountain biker,is good learning for the rest of
their life.
They can apply those samelessons to their work or their
family or whatever else.
So there's that transferencepiece too, that we're using
recreation for joy, and then theprocess of learning.
(50:07):
Recreation is like a way tolearn ourselves and to learn the
processes that we can use tomake the rest of our lives
better too.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
So that's all part of the mission.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Pleasure to be here.
I appreciate you having me andthe opportunity to help educate
folks on, kind of like, whatmountain bike instruction is all
about and that it's and it's areal thing and that there's a
lot of folks doing a really goodjob with it.
So that's something I couldconsider.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
So thanks a ton Right on, josh.
Thank you, bud.
Thanks for joining us on thisincredible ride with Josh
Whitmore.
We hope his passion formountain biking and expert
coaching inspired you to takeyour skills to the next level.
Whether you're a beginner or aseasoned rider, the tips and
insights Josh shared can make ahuge difference in your
(50:48):
performance and enjoyment on thetrails.
If you're looking to continueyour mountain bike journey, be
sure to check outmtbskillsfactorycom for
world-class instruction thatcaters to all levels.
And remember investing inproper coaching and foundational
skills will pay off for yearsto come.
Well, that's going to do it forthis episode.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, please subscribe,rate and leave us a review.
(51:10):
Your feedback helps us tocontinue to bring you stories of
how these mountains and theoutdoors influence and shape our
lives.
Join me on Instagram andFacebook and drop me a line at
mike at explorationlocalcom ifyou ever have a suggestion for a
future episode.
Until next time, keep exploring, stay safe and, as always,
happy trails.
And remember I encourage you towander far, but explore local.
(51:35):
Thank you.
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