Final 2019 group clinic in Park City

Yesterday we had our final Saturday clinic in Park City and it was a most excellent day! Each of the coaches worked with a group of women they sincerely enjoyed and saw improvements in every single rider! Stay tuned to hear more of their stories this week!

On Saturday we had a wide range of skill levels, so each group rode a slightly different trail. Each of these smiles tells you how much they enjoyed using their skills! The 4 coaches had a blast with this group.⁣

Kelly

Kelly is a former mountain bike racer and Masters National Champion. She was looking to regain some skills and confidence after a non-biking injury. She wanted to ride smoother, faster corners and to ride drops again. Coach Shelly spent time really dialing in her ability to lean the bike and rotate her hips to maintain speed in the corners. In addition, they worked on maintaining balance over the bike, when the tires leave the ground. It is inspiring to see her commitment to push through physical and me rail barriers to continue to enjoy biking!

Jennifer

Jennifer returned for her second private session with @ericatingey and made huge strides with her riding! After taking a few weeks to practice and let the skills sink in, she wanted to review, then improve her riding on this trail. She absolutely did! You can see her huge smile after succeeding! Really rewarding for a coach to watch a student make awesome progress!⁣

⁣

We still have another month of riding, book your private session at www.womeninthemountains.com

Backcountry Friends

Talk about huge improvements! These 3 stepped up their skills in a big way! Hillary came to the @backcountry last year and knew there were things she still wanted to work on. We improved her body position in the berms as well as line choice. Cassie has been riding for a little over a year and had never been coached. She picked up the skills immediately and looked super smooth by the last run. Carrie was an absolute beginner on her brand new bike! She was willing to try anything and was a very coachable, she followed all the cues she was given. They all had a great time and are ready to try new things on the trails!

Angie & Lexie

These sisters rocked the bike park yesterday! Angie and Lexie attended clinics with us in 2018. This summer, they were looking to increase their skills on more technical terrain including drops and jumps.  Coach Shelly built on what they already knew and got them riding at a whole new level. They were both really excited when they started riding through all the large rock gardens and sending some big air off the drops.  They even learned to ride the pump track! Super stoked to have our clients continue to excel at their riding!

Leadville finishers

Massive congrats to our clients and coach that finished The Leadville 100 last weekend! What an incredible accomplishment!

Charmaine

Charmaine returned to us for another session, this time her goals were to learn the pedal wheelie and the manual and she succeeded! Sign up for your private session at www.womeninthemountains.com to learn all the skills outlined below!

Coach @vsolomon36 started with the foundational movements.  Charmaine did a great job getting her front wheel up and starting to find the balance point with both wheelies and manuals! For wheelies, it really helped her to think about starting with her foot high and committing to the punch while looking ahead and keeping her arms straight. And for manuals, she had a real aha moment when she started thinking about the foot push as a leg press instead of a squat to help her really get her weight back. Charmaine created the habit to use her rear brake to save going off the back on wheelies. 

Then they moved to the pump track and Charmaine had a breakthrough moment with really getting tall to make the back of the bike heavy and the front light going thru the rollers. 

They finished up with working on drops. 

Overall she had a blast and was so happy with her improvement!

August cornering series

We finished our 2 part clinic practicing more dynamic movements on the bike.  Learning how to get the tires off the ground with wheel lifts and small drops. Next we took these new skills to the Pulp Friction trail and worked on maintaining dynamic balance over large rock gardens and rocky switchbacks. Meaghan and Carrie were very coachable to and are off to a really great start to enjoying all Park City has to offer now that they live here! Coaching: @wedgeshelly

Doug and Jen

We love working with visitors! These two came from Ohio to ride the beautiful and well groomed trails we have to offer in Park City. Doug & Jennifer are experienced riders that wanted to improve their jump and drop skills. 

Virginia went through the whole progression of wheel lifts on the basketball court, then worked on timing on the jump line, moved to the pump track to really feel what it feels like to have full extension, then went back to the jump line to put the skills together. Virginia then talked them through recentering in the air and landing, and Doug & Jen put it to use on the jumps! They were so happy to be there and SO happy to be getting a lesson. They had been looking forward to this vacation for months. After just riding Trailside (the first day of their trip), Jen was planning their next trip back to Park City!

Lisa

@lisa45215 is an inspiration to the coaches at Women in the Mountains. She has participated in a few clinics and recently had a private session with @vsolomon36. Lisa is committed to riding everything as smooth and safely as possible.

Virginia started Lisa off really breaking down the ready position, not only on the ground but also with the front wheel and the rear wheel on the bench of the picnic table, to see where "centered" is as the angle of the bike changes. Having worked on fore/aft movement, they went to working on getting up and down obstacles, to apply moving the bike back and forth going up, down, and over rocks. They then moved on to talking about vision and up/down and side to side movement on skinnies and in the pump track. Lisa was prepared with lots of questions and wanted to understand the mechanics of all of her movement, which we applied on the features!

August weekday series

Our weekday clinics are split into two sessions, giving participants a week to practice in between. We keep these classes small, giving riders maximum learning opportunities. 

You have one more chance for these 2-part clinics in September! Details on our home page: www.womeninthemountains.com

During this week’s session, Shelly coached an overview of body positions and bike/body separation.  She was able to challenge the participant’s balance on the bike on all the great features our local bike park has to offer. Next Monday she will move those skills to the trail and add even more real-life/useful skills! She had a great time getting to coach and ride with Meagan and Carrie. They are both new to Park City, having recently moved from Vermont, and were both ready to learn some new skills so they could tackle all the amazing trails we have to offer.

Emily and Jim day 2

Remember the rad couple that we posted about yesterday?! They actually had 2 sessions with @womeninthemountains last week! Day 2 was with coach @ericatingey and the focus was on cornering. We developed their technique for berms and differentiated it from technique for switch backs. They were stoked to have even more tools for their riding. They are practicing everything @vsolomon36 taught them on Day 1 as well as corners and switchbacks and will return for a tune up session in September! 

Emily and Jim Day 1

This couple was stoked to get some air with coach @vsolomon36 last week! Emily has taken a couple of clinics with us and she was ready to learn jumps and drops. Along with her husband, they were very successful. Here is a full account of the lesson:

They did the parking lot progression with ready position, then compressing the bike evenly, and moving into front wheel lifts, rear wheel lifts, successive front and rear wheel lifts, and level lifts. They got that all super quick, adjusting to a centered instead of back ready position so they could compress their bike evenly, and then getting their wheels off of the ground from a compress and release rather than a pull. 

Then they moved up to the wood features in the park, and worked on roll downs and then the low and push drop technique, but Virginia emphasized with them that that is just an option and a step in learning the different facets of doing drops, and we'd add the compress once the timing and form of just the push was dialed. 

They moved onto the middle rock in the drop zone and did some more low and push drops before adding the compression, making sure timing was spot on, they pushed out rather than coming up after their compress, and recentering to ride out the landing. 

Then they moved on to jumps, working first on the timing of our compress and extend on the right hand jump line, then going into the pump track so they could feel the timing and full extension better, then back to the jump line to work more on timing and extension and once they had that adding in absorbing the bike and recentering and actively landing instead of just falling out of the air with their bikes. They got it, and with a bit more speed were clearing the first two jumps of the jump line, and landing well!

Weekend clinic: super rad group

Jennifer

Really great private session with Jennifer. She just bought her first mountain bike from @contenderbicycles and wanted to feel confident on her beautiful new riding machine. We covered all of the basics and now she is ready to rock her backyard trails! She is going to practice for a few weeks and come back for another session in September!

Christy

Coach Shelly had the opportunity to coach Christy for the second time this summer. It was great to see how much she has improved from her first clinic earlier this season!  Christy is an avid skier (Alta Plug😊) and was interested to know how skiing and mountain biking were similar in skills.  Shelly helped her see the connection between keeping a strong and stable body and allowing the bike to move underneath you and how that correlates with the same strong athletic stance in skiing and using your legs to turn the skis.  They connected more dots in cornering, by getting Christy’s weight (hips) to the outside of the turn which is similar to getting pressuring to the outside ski before you turn. Looking forward to seeing more of this super fun woman on both the dirt and the snow!

Rebecca

It was really great getting to ride with Rebecca again. We were able to take the skills she learned last year in a clinic and really apply some more dynamic riding to the trail. We rode two loops in the Bobs Basin Area (Ant Farm and Crazy 8’s) and really worked on letting the bike move underneath us over the many rock features and how/when to brake and lean the bike more efficiently to corner safer and faster. It is really rewarding to see how women progress over the season in both their skills and confidence when they start with the fundamentals.

Florence can fly

Florence can fly! It took her 50 years to be bold enough to try. 

Florence broke through personal barriers to get to here.And now she gets to ride with out any fear. 

It was the most empowering day for her & coach Erica Tingey. Together they were hugging and singing. 

Allison and Ben

Allison and Ben scheduled a semi-private clinic with Shelly so they could learn together. They have a few years of riding experience but no formal skills instruction. They were quick to see how separating their bodies from their bikes makes riding so much easier, smoother, and faster! Trailside Bike Park was a great place to challenge their riding over technical terrain while allowing them to develop it at their own pace. Riding bikes is really fun, riding bikes with your spouse is super fun!!! 

Taylor the dentist from Montana

Coach Virginia had a blast with Taylor, who was in town for a dental conference. 

“Awesome group! Erica got me set up with a lesson super fast, picked an awesome area to practice skills I wanted to improve, and recommended a great bike shop for a rental. Virginia was an awesome coach who really knows their stuff! Highly recommend to anyone who wants to improve their skills in the Park City area.”