Instructor, Coach or Guide?

A question we're often asked is, what's the difference between a guide, a coach and an instructor? What should I be looking for?

Put simply, instructing is teaching. Our half and full day sessions are led by instructors. They'll teach you how to ride: telling you the right position, showing you the best way brake or corner. They'll explain and demonstrate the skill you want to learn. You choose the skills you want to learn and the sessions you want to take. Sure you get to ask as many questions as you like, but the focus is on the instructor communicating the skill to you.

Coaching is about development. Our rider development courses are about putting together a programme of instruction and practice that takes you from one level of achievement to the next. You set the objective, whether that's simply to ride the big hills safely or knock seconds off your race time. Your coach helps you do it. Your coach will evaluate your starting level, identify the specific skills you need to develop, instruct you in them and supervise your practice.

But coaching is not just about developing technical skills, it's also about developing your fitness and stamina, attitude and focus. A qualified coach you will teach you the right types of exercise and how frequently you should do them; what's best to eat; how best to build and train your body for the task you are setting it. A coach will help you develop the right mental attitude, whether that's the determination to keep pushing to beat your personal best, or the self confidence to believe in your own navigation skills when cloud covers the hills and visibility is zilch.

Taking a guided ride is not so much about learning new skills or practicing, although of course we hope you will learn something, but about accessing greater 'off the bike' skills and experience than you already have - skills like navigation, trail selection and local knowledge - so that you and your group can attempt more difficult rides with greater confidence. Guiding is therefore about leadership. It is about building trust so that you choose to follow your guide, to take his advice and rely on his judgement.

A guide's primary responsibility is to keep you and your group safe. To do that he or she must be adept at recognising your capabilities (and limitations) and able to adapt a route to meet them. Please, don't be offended if you're asked to ride some technical sections before you set off. The place to fall off or to break your bike is most definitely not ten miles from the nearest road! But be sure, guides know as well as you do that a lot of the fun in mountain biking is in the challenge. If you want a real challenge your guide can ensure you get it!

Why a coach?

We're sometimes asked, why would I want a mountain bike instructor? Is it worth it? Should I get a coach for my son or daughter?

Take a step back and think a little about how we learn new physical skills.

In the main, we learn by trial and error. We try, we fail and we try again. We learn what we can and how to do it do by finding lots of ways that we can't. Then, when we've found a way that works, we repeat it over and over until its innate, until it's become a habit. As a child we're pre-programmed to do these this, to experiment and to repeat. It's the amazingly successful strategy by which we all learn the myriad skills we take for granted. It's how we learnt to pick up a cup, to walk, to run, to climb the stairs, to kick a ball.

Trouble is, when it comes to adventure sports - to skiing or canoeing or climbing or mountain biking - the ways we fail can be dangerous. It's no fun coming off a corner because your balance wasn't right or you braked the wrong amount or at the wrong time.

And after all that painful trial and error, when we finally hit on a way that works, is it the best way? Is the safest, surest way? Always? Sure, it's your way, but by now it's also our ingrained habit. A habit that will be really, really hard to break if it's wrong.

Where we learn is equally as important. Nobody takes their first driving lessons on a busy road. There's not the place to learn the basics of steering, of changing gear, of accelerating and braking. But why not? Because we're too focused on learning to see everything else that's going on around us. We're driving up to that white line and we're going to stop there; on the line, not before the line, not past the line, right on the line. Our world is the accelerator, the brake, the tarmac ahead and the line. Beyond that white space; our cognitive processes are overloading and our brain starts shutting everything it (perhaps inadvisably) thinks peripheral. We need a safe environment to learn in.

Even when we've mastered the basics, are we allowed on the road alone? No, we must have another, experienced driver beside us. Why? Because we don't yet have the experience to read the road ahead - to identify risks to ourselves and to others - before we encounter them. To pass the test we need a driving instructor who will teach us the right way, stop us from developing bad habits and keep us safe as we expand your horizons from the road in front of our nose to the road ahead.

The same with mountain biking. You're a beginner. You're on a trail, on a hill, in a forest. You're focused on that corner, or trail ahead. Not only aren't you yet experienced enough immediately to recognise the objective risks around you, that slippery root, that broken branch, that loose boulder, but chances are you won't even see them as you belt down the track.

Just as with learning to drive, you need to develop your mountain biking skills methodically, in a logical manner and in the right location. These skills build one on another and you need to learn and practice each a different location. Mountain biking, you can pick up skills or habits easily, but this man hinder development of riding trail features, and what is the right or wrong feature will itself depend upon your ability. Learning to handle a drop off? Too big or approached in the wrong way and all you'll learn is how to break your bike (hopefully not yourself). Too small, however, and you'll never gain the confidence to push yourself to face the new or unexpected. So, what's the right order? What's the right feature? And where's the boundary between challenge and danger?

This is where professional instruction and coaching come in.

You avoid the trial and error approach. We'll teach you the correct way the first time.

We'll watch your back. You're still on that trail, on that hill, in that forest, but your coach has the experience to see the risks, to make sure they don't bite.

We'll calibrate the difficulty. We'll let you push yourself enough to learn, but not to the point that you seriously overstep your ability.

So is a coach worth it? We think so. Particularly, we think young riders should be professionally taught. Properly taught the right techniques before they stumble on their own. Properly taught so they aren't trying to run before they can walk. Properly taught so they don't develop bad or unsafe habits. Properly taught by an experienced coach who can stretch them in a safe and controlled way.

All-in-all it's the best way for you, or your children, to learn.