Affiliate

Give the Gift of MTB Skills to Someone Who is Eager to Learn

In 2018, I’ve gotten more involved than ever with RLC: Ryan Leech Connection (“Online Mountain Bike Skills Coaching”).

I’m an RLC skills coach, a special projects/admin guy, a marketing affiliate, and a dedicated student in several of the RLC skills courses. 

So consider taking my biased advice: 

Give someone who’s ready to improve their MTB skills an RLC membership or a course!

See the special RLC Gift page here. 

And here’s a special deal from me:

You can get a whole month  of membership FREE (normally it’s 7 days) or $19 off a first purchase of any course by using this special code from me: GW19BC. Enter it on the checkout page.

How it works:

  1. Visit the RLC Gift page and click on the course (or membership) you’d like to give as a gift. That will take you to a checkout page
  2. Purchase the gift course or membership (don’t forget to enter my coupon code at checkout: GW19BC)
  3. Immediately after purchase you’ll receive an email with a unique web address
  4. Send that address to your favorite person where they will add their name and email to gain full access to the course or membership
  5. You’ll also get a cool gift card PDF that you can use when giving the gift. Print it out or send it digitally. Here’s an example of a gift card for the wheelie course:

And if you’re inclined to get yourself an RLC gift — a course or membership — go here.

Got questions? Contact me.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

Learning to ride, Video

Being an mtb student makes me a better coach

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I’ve made considerable progress in my jumping skills this year. I’ve been taking Ryan Leech’s Jump With Confidence course via his Ryan Leech Connection (RLC) online mountain bike skills coaching website and practicing several times/week at a local skills park where I’ve built several beginner-level table tops.

Here’s a one-minute clip of some of my recent beginner-level jump attempts this fall.  Yes, I know, there are visible flaws in these attempts which I’m still working to correct even as the ground is now frozen and covered with a few inches of snow (I’ve been shoveling). But the cool thing is my confidence is solid. The course is aptly named.

In 2017, my skills focus was on learning to bunny hop and manual via Ryan’s Bunny Hop Master Class and his Manual Master Class. Here’s a one-minute of my beginner-levels skills:

 

In 2015-16, my focus was on track stands, hopping, and rocking via Ryan’s Baseline Balance Skills course. Here are two short videos of me putting those skills to use on technical sections of some local trails:

I also happen to be one of several RLC skills coaches who answers questions and provides online feedback to those taking the online courses at the Ryan Leech Connection (RLC) online mountain bike skills coaching website.

RLC Coaches and Staff

 Here are a couple of marked-up images showing how I sometimes use a screenshot from video submitted by a student along with a screenshot from an instructor (I’ve blurred the faces of the students in these examples):

I’ve been recently learning what I’m teaching and I think that perspective, along with feedback from several coaches who are vastly more experienced than me, is partly what makes the courses at Ryan Leech Connection so valuable.

Join us, risk-free.

Site admin

Back to Mountain Bike Geezer; new design on the way

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In January of 2016, I began collaborating with Ryan Leech at his membership website, Ryan Leech Connection \ Online MTN Bike Skills Coaching  where I’m an online coach and a marketing affiliate.

As my work with Ryan continues to expand, I’ve decided to phase out my “MTB Skills Network” brand and return this site to its original roots, Mountain Bike Geezer.

Mountain Bike Geezer

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be revamping this website’s design and overall direction. Subscribe to my Mountain Bike Geezer email newsletter to keep up on all the developments.

Trail work

Developing construction skills for a skills park: a work in progress

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I published a post yesterday to my local mtb club’s blog titled, CROCT’s Sechler Skills Park continues to evolve.

The skills park is my primary responsibility as one of CROCT’s many volunteer trail workers. My motivation to work on it?

  • Our in-town Sechler Park MTB Trail is a river bottoms trail and doesn’t have a lot of challenging terrain. So having a skills park in the middle of it is way for local riders to practice their skills and challenge themselves
  • It’s handy to have a local skills park for instructional clinics. Kids who live in town can ride their bikes to the park via the local network of paved trails
  • I’m always working on my own riding skills and being able to construct features that are appropriate for my own development is a treat

Last summer, my interest in learning to jump via Ryan Leech’s Jumping with Confidence online course (affiliate link) spurred me to learn how to build beginner and intermediate level table top jumps. I had the full-time use a tractor with a bucket, free street reclamation dirt from the City of Northfield, a budget from CROCT to have it hauled in, and labor from other trail worker volunteers to help me shape, learn, test, and rebuild the jumps until we got them ‘good enough.’

By the end of the season, I’d gotten to where I could consider myself solid at beginner-level tabletops. Here’s a 1-minute video clip of me riding the 7 jumps that we built:

And the jumps proved to be a hit with kids and adventuresome adults, of course.

In addition to the 7 tabletop jumps (6 beginner-level, 1 intermediate-level), the skills park also now has:

  • 3 berms (1 large wood berm, 2 dirt berms)
  • 2 wood drops (1 beginner-level, 1 intermediate-level)
  • 2 large log piles
  • 1 line of 8 small rollers
  • 1 log skinny/logover obstacle, configured for several levels of difficulty
  • 2 railroad ties configured for uphill steps
  • 1 large boulder
  • Several skinnies (intermediate-expert) with changing configurations

We’ll be adding more features to the skills park this year.

Learning to ride, Podcast

Sessioning – Part 1: Episode 5 of the MTBSN podcast on Mountain Bike Radio

Episode #5 of my MTBSN podcast on Mountain Bike Radio is now available.

See the show notes and links on the MBR page for Episode #5.

Main topic: THE ART OF SESSIONING ON A MOUNTAIN BIKE, PART 1: FOCUSED PRACTICE OF A CHALLENGING OBSTACLE OR SECTION OF TERRAIN ALONG THE TRAIL

TRANSCRIPT

INTRO:

Hey welcome to Episode #5 of the Mountain Bike Skills Network podcast. My name is Griff Wigley, also known as the mountain bike geezer. I’m am the founder of the Mountain Bike Skills Network and the host of the Mountain Bike Skills Network Community, a busy group of over 2600 mountain bikers on Facebook, free for anyone to join.

Continue reading Sessioning — Part 1: Episode 5 of the MTBSN podcast on Mountain Bike Radio →

Patreon for MTBSN

Mountain Bike Skills Network Patreon page launched

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My 1-minute video announcing my new Mountain Bike Skills Network Patreon page to the MTBSN Community:

Some background:

I took a much-needed, two-week tent camping vacation with my wife to the Grand Canyon last month. I came back refreshed and ready to examine what I wanted to do with the Mountain Bike Skills Network (MTBSN) community in the next year.

One thing is clear to me: the MTBSN Community is a gem and my #1 goal is to help it become more useful to current members while it continues its organic growth.

To help this happen, I started investigating the ‘creator’ features of Patreon. What’s Patreon?

“Patreon is a membership platform that makes it easy for creators to get paid.”

I’ve recently become a Patreon patron of:

I liked what I saw of Patreon and how these guys use it. My MTBSN Patreon page went live last night.  A screenshot:

Learning and teaching mountain biking skills