Tag: <span>MTB Practice Lab</span>

I’m no longer updating this Mountain Bike Geezer blog regularly because all my time, energy, and enthusiasm is going towards my MTB Practice Lab on Substack.

Below is a screenshot of all my posts there for 2023 in reverse chronological order.  The items on the screenshot are not clickable, but you can easily get the clickable archive of posts here.

A dozen subscribers joined a month-long beta test of our first MTB online Practice Jam, which started on November 12 and ended on December 11. We used the Circle.so community platform to host the jam.

This small community of riders generated 90+ posts with hundreds of comments. Participants practiced various riding skills, but I didn’t do any skills coaching. The focus was on learning how to practice better, using the Elements of MTB Practice.

(See the rest of this post on the MTB Practice Lab newsletter website.)

For our recent Online Practice Jam (in which I practiced with everyone else), I filed the following Session #2 Activity Report during week #2.

I’m posting it here because it shows a practice regimen progression (not a riding skill progression) from a post I published in early November titled, What does putting chunking and proficiency-based goals into an MTB practice session look like?

Description:

I first warmed up with 5 minutes of fakies and skinnies. I then leaned against a different pole and did 10 static high manuals, getting 5 decent attemps of 10. I then did 5 butt buzzes, followed by 5 slow-speed low and short manuals. Examples of the latter:

(See the post in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.)

Earlier this month, I published a post titled MTB sessioning: Why it’s good for your practice regimen and how to do it better.

I now have a microlearning course on sessioning that consists of 14 digital cards to help you better learn some of the essential elements in that post. The cards include short content blurbs, a poll, links to two videos, and three short quizzes.

Here’s a screenshot of the cards (deliberately unreadable):
(See the post in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.)

MTB Practice Lab is a combination blog, newsletter, and community on the Substack platform. It’s all about:

Science-based strategies to help you get better at practicing mountain biking skills

Here are several launch-related items that you should know about:

• I’ve published an overview of the newsletter — why it’s unique, who it’s for, and my plans for the future. See it here.
• I’ve published ten posts, starting back in early July, so you can get a good idea of what types of content the newsletter will cover. Here’s a partial screenshot of the newsletter home page:
• Though I write it, the newsletter is about creating a practice community for mountain bikers worldwide. So please feel free to speak up in the comments of posts (or in replies back to me) with your reactions, questions, suggestions, and responses to others. I’m also eager to hear stories about your practice-related struggles and successes.
• I plan to send the newsletter out twice weekly, but since this is launch week, I’ll send it daily. I’ve got some stuff in mind that’s different from the 10 posts I’ve published thus far.
• Consider getting the Substack app to read and participate if you use a smartphone. It’s available for iOS now and Android soon. Android users can use an RSS app like Feedly in the meantime.
• MTB Practice Lab is currently free and not supported by advertising. To receive the newsletter via email, consider becoming a free subscriber. At some point, I’ll ask free subscribers to support my efforts by subscribing for a low monthly or annual fee. I plan to provide some cool and engaging extras for paid subscribers. But much of the email newsletter itself will remain free.

I’m excited about this new project. I hope you check it out.

I decided to gamify my drills for high manuals. It wasn’t exactly fun but I’m hooked for now

Read the post here in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.

No significant progress to report but the process is encouraging

Read the post here in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.

Musician Noa Kageyama’s “active, thoughtful, problem-solving” has its own rewards when applied to practicing MTB skills

Read the post here in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.

These quotes from Josh Kaufman, Trevor Ragan, and James Clear can help you past the initial discomfort

Read the post here in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.

MTB how-to instructions identify the big chunks for you. But they sometimes miss the small ones

Read the post here in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.

I can ride over sizeable boulders and logs, but I do it incorrectly. This means I can’t do big or tricky ones

Read the post here in the MTB Practice Lab newsletter.