What is mountain bike coaching and what is mountain bike guiding?

When I announced to people that I'd quit my job as a teacher to be a mountain bike coach and guide, their response was overwhelmingly positive.

"Wow amazing!" and "Brilliant! What you've always wanted to do!" Were the kind of comments that I got. But, after a minute or so a good chunk of people would follow those comments with a question.

"What are you actually going to do?" or "So what is mountain bike coaching and guiding?"

As someone who has been riding and racing mountain bikes for almost 30 years and involved in coaching and guiding for over 10 years, I'd made the mistake of assuming that people would know this stuff. Why wouldn't they? Of course, if you have little or no experience of something then why would you know.

Coaching is a concept that many people do have an idea about. The "swim coach" or "football coach" etc. are people in slightly more mainstream sports that people have more knowledge of, or maybe a form of coaching and mentoring at work.

In pursuit of a definition to write down in this blog, I did a bit of research into coaching only to find several different definitions and ideas about what coaching is. So, I came to the conclusion that I should write down what I think.

As a coach, I'm here to help you get better at mountain biking and achieve your goals. Simple right? Well mountain biking is a broad church and encompasses many different types of skill. What many people think of in sport is either skills coaching or performance coaching. In mountain biking skills coaching is providing riders with the techniques they might need to tackle the trail features (climbs, corners, drop offs, jumps, rocks, roots) they will come across in their riding. Elements of this might be very close to what people define as teaching or instructing. Performance coaching is commonly thought about as increasing fitness/strength to become quicker. Of course the two go hand in hand but the idea is pretty simple; if you want to improve your MTB skills or general cycling skills for that matter, or you want some help getting fitter for cycling MTB Trail Guides can help.

Good! That's coaching sorted but what about guiding or MTB leadership?

Mountain bike guiding or leadership or guided rides, for me, have a different focus and most likely take place in a slightly different environment to mountain bike coaching. Effective MTB skills coaching is going to take place in a more controlled environment than guiding. A guided mountain bike ride is an opportunity to get away from the trail centres and explore different places. I mentioned earlier that mountain biking encompasses many different skills and if you want to venture a little bit further then there are skills such as route planning, trail-side repairs and navigation that come into play. The guided MTB ride focuses more on the journey, scenery, exploration and adventure than an MTB skills coaching session. This doesn't mean that some skills coaching won't take place but it's not the focus. So if you want a different focus to your mountain bike experience then a guided ride might be just the ticket.

One thing's for certain it doesn't matter whether you are a total beginner or an experienced rider talk to us about your goals and we're here to help you develop as a rider in whatever way you want.