Ride Report With Julius Syvanen (MTBSkills Clinic)

MOD's, I don't really know where to post this. Please just move it to where it belongs. :wave:

August 23, 2008: Me and my friend Mike drove down to Sand Diego at Los Penasquitos Bike trail to meet up with Julius Syvanen, for a MTB Skills clinic. Yes people we are beginners and have only been riding exactly 1 year. I'll keep it short as I don't like reading longer than 5mins either. :read:

At 8:00 am, he started us with a basic lessons right from the parking lot such as balancing, front /rear lifting, hopping, theories with turns, some questions and answers from beginners like me, etc. etc. etc. we didn't go too much about bike set-up since we had our bike's set-up properly.

9'ish, were off to the trail to apply the basics and theories that we previously discussed. He would ride ahead of us so we would see the actual application and would yell out on when and where to apply the brakes. He will stop and have us go back and do it ourselves while he watches and tells us what we are doing wrong. He would also ride behind and observe little things that we do wrong but not notice it at all. A slight bad habit in our ridding style that he corrected made a big difference and gave us much more confidence, now I go through turns faster and harder, compared to before that I would go really slow or I would shoot past it and end up in the bushes, once in a while I hit some trees as they wont get out of my way ](*,). Literally we noticed our improvement right there and then, now its just the matter of having it as an instinct rather than thinking while riding (practice). We did some climbing too with some techie climbs thrown with it and how to negotiate with them. After 3 or so hours we were back at the parking lot and he gave us some more pointers with bike handling. After a few hours I was home, showered and re-freshed and checked my e-mail. NICE! he e-mailed us a recap on what we did and what we should do to get better at riding.

Overall it was a great ride, it was just like having a riding buddy and having a one-on-one bike instructor, since there was only me and my friend Mike, he was able to focus on each of us. I would say for the money we spent, you can't beat that. I may have left out a lot of details, but then if you really are interested in learning, I do recommend him. As I would tell some of my riding buddy, "KEEP AN OPEN MIND, TRY NOT TO THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING".

As he had mentioned, he will also have a DH clinic in a month or two. And I will definitely take that class too..

Contact:
Julius Syvanen
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.juliussyvanen.com