I Wish I Knew This Before I Started Mountain Biking!

I love mountain biking. It's the raddest thing you could ever do on this planet. I love it so much that I even managed to race for 16 years around the world for my job. Along the way, I certainly didn't make things easy for myself. Today, we're going to take a look at a few things I wish I'd known when I first started riding. Starting out in this sport can be really tough. The varied trails and specifically jumps terrified me, especially as one of the most unexperienced riders in my friendship group. A lot of my friends had already been riding and racing for a number of years when I first started out, which put the pressure on me to try and get up to speed as fast as I could. This meant I was taking way more risks than I needed to. Pushing those limits and riding so far over my skill level ended with just one thing, crashing, and I mean a lot of crashing. From broken bones to skinned knees and elbows, it really took the shine off of what should have been some of the best years of riding in my life. What I've realized now on reflection is that if I'd just taken my time to take a step back and progress slowly, one, I would have ended up exactly where I am now here today, but also I would have saved myself a lot of pain in the process. One of the things I've realized as a rider as I've grown up is that you don't always have to push your limits. Riding the smaller features for the first time gives you the same buzz as it does when you're a more experienced rider hitting bigger features, but with far less risk. Don't rush it. Don't have to push yourself way above the limit. Just enjoy the ride and get out there and do it. Another reason I wish I hadn't rushed into things is I missed out on some core skills, and this really left some holes in my technique. An example of this is switching to clips. I love clip pedals, and I'm a massive advocate of them. As I found out recently, switching back to flats, I really don't have the skills and know what I'm doing when it comes to riding them. I wish I'd stayed on them a bit longer to learn good body position and also just had more fun when I was out on my bike. Unfortunately, I was adamant I needed to be the fastest, and I saw a lot of the races on them, so I switched when I was about 16. I would really recommend if you're just starting out, don't rush into clips, enjoy the flat pedals, and just enjoy the progression in general. Crashing is scary. You can see it all over the internet. You see these massive fails, huge crashes, and it is a part of our sport. It still terrifies me to this day, but I have learned a few ways to help process that fear, and I wish I'd learned them when I was younger. As a beginner, every single feature you hit is the unknown, and unfortunately, with the unknown comes fear. Now, as I've got older, I've worked out ways to process that fear, and one of them is data. I like to process experience as data, and so the more experience I can give myself by riding different trails and different features, the better the data, and therefore, the more calculated I can be as a rider. Unfortunately, crashes do happen even to the best of us, but that doesn't have to be considered a bad thing, and we can process that fear of crashing. Crashing gives us information not only on what went wrong, but also how we can do things better in the future. Yes, there is still a risk of injury, but if we wear the correct protection when riding, then we can mitigate that risk and reduce it. Owen and I have had countless arguments over wearing protection. I firmly believe, especially as a beginner, you should be wearing as much protection as possible to reduce your risk, especially when you're learning and taking risks on new features. Wearing things like a helmet, knee pads, and gloves, for me, are a minimum, but as you get better, you might choose to wear a full-face helmet, a back brace. I guess it depends exactly how sendy you're wanting to get. For me, I wear as much protection as I possibly can when I'm hitting new features because it helps me to be more confident and also attack those features for the first time. We've heard everyone talk about it, getting your suspension and your bike set up correct is an absolute game-changer, but let's be clear, when I first started out, I had an absolute nightmare. I had this lovely cross-country bike, but I was adamant I needed more suspension travel. I actually went out and bought a longer stroke shock with more travel and tried to cram it into my bike, and I almost broke the bike doing it. I also found when I was racing, I got this lovely race bike, eventually started racing downhill, and it had Boxer World Cups on it, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with all the compression dials, so I would just twist them and hope for the best. Now, what that did is that really affected how I rode my bike, and I didn't really realize it until later on how your suspension setup can really affect your posture, but also your confidence in terms of riding. If you have your suspension too soft, and then you go down a steep hill, your suspension dives, and then what you do is you ride really straight-armed, whereas if you've got the right amount of suspension and air in your fork, you can actually lean into it, and this gives you way more confidence and improves your riding technique. I saw countless guests when I was working as a guide come to me complaining of arm pump, and this is another symptom of having your suspension setup incorrectly. They had all of their high-speed compression wound all the way on there, their rebound super slow, and most importantly, they hadn't actually set their sag. Whatever your fork is, whether it's RockShox or Fox, they generally have a really good setup guide down on the lower leg. You can use this to get yourself a really good base setup, put your compression dials generally in the middle of the bike, and this will give you a great place to start to feel more confident on your bike and also improve your posture. If you want to take things a step further and really get the most out of your suspension, take it to a pro tuner. They will tune the bike to your weight and they will also give you some top tips and tricks on how to do your bar roll, stem length, all of those fun things. Now, that is a bit of money, and if you don't want to spend the money, we over at GMBN Tech have done some amazing videos on how to set your bike up and some top tips on how you might change your cockpit, et cetera. As a kid, I watched all of the mountain bike movies. I watched Three Focus, Follow Me, Seasons, you name it, I watched it. I also read all the mountain bike magazines looking at the shiniest new tech, looking at all the upgrades I could possibly put on my bike. As a 14-year-old boy, this wasn't really a reality. Not only was it way too expensive and way out of my price bracket, but my parents didn't see the point in investing in it when I was going to grow out of it just a year later. However, as a typical 14-year-old boy, I couldn't help the feeling that I'd be going faster and having more fun if I just had the latest piece of tech. Fast forward to right now, I have the latest tech and I've ridden some incredible bikes over the years. This one right here has all of the latest and greatest tech on it and it truly is an incredible steed. To my 14-year-old self, is this the best investment of money and time? I don't think so. I think I should have invested more in myself and in my riding and taking myself off on trips to build my range of experience, which would have made me a better rider. Then when I grew up to my age right now, buy yourself one of these. If you can afford it, buy it. It's unbelievable, but that's a way better way to do it than being obsessed with having the latest tech when you're such a young age. As I mentioned before, when I was growing up, I was by far the worst in my friendship group. My mates were super quick and I spent most of my time crashing my brains out trying to keep up. Fast forward a few years and I've started to work out how to ride. I'm getting better at the racing, but my mates are still miles ahead of me. Eventually, I plucked up the courage and I asked them how they were getting so much better. They confessed that they began coaching. I was very angry that I didn't know this sooner, but needless to say, I immediately went and spoke to the coach. The coach quickly identified a few key areas for me to work on. First up, I needed to drop my heels better. Secondly, I needed to get better bend in my elbows. Lastly, and most importantly, I need to look further ahead down the trail. These were super helpful pointers. The most important part was he was able to show me on an iPad exactly what I was doing wrong. This allowed me to then take this onto the trails when I was out with my friends and gave me purposeful practice and I improved straight away. So much so that I continued having coaching throughout the rest of my career until literally the end of last year. I absolutely loved it and I still do some of those drills that he gave me early on in my career to this day. It does make me wonder if I could have been a better rider had I had coaching earlier, which is why it is a key point to those first starting out and something I wish I'd known when I first started riding. Now for the big one, what it's really like to be a professional cyclist. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be a pro like many of you guys. I idolized riders like Sam Hill, Brendan Faircloth, Gee Atherton. Those guys were truly pioneers of their sport and they were just riding so quick. I loved to watch them ride. I never really thought it would be a reality, if I'm honest. I rode as hard as I could and I tried to enjoy my riding. Eventually, I found myself lining up at the EWS up against riders like Sam Hill. A truly insane feat, but being a pro rider wasn't quite what I imagined. See, growing up, I imagined that riding as a pro was literally going to bike parks, ripping turns, making cool videos, and that was literally it. What I neglected to think about was the training. The guys who race at that level train so hard. For me to even be on the same fitness level, let alone make up for some of my lacking in skills, really was a hard time. I had to train every single day, especially when I was in that semi-pro bit where I was riding and working at the same time. I had to work so hard. I just didn't realize it. I thought it was all about ripping bike parks and shooting cool videos. The other part is the travel. That is the best and the worst part about racing. I absolutely love the fact that I've been able to go around the world riding and racing my bike in some of the most insane locations. Like everyone, I found my wife, I found a house, I found a home here in the Forest of Dean. It made traveling away that much harder. When I was away, I found myself obviously missing home, missing my wife. That takes its toll eventually on you. When you're young and you're going away racing, it's all fun and all exciting, but it definitely takes its toll. It's something that I didn't expect to be a, not a downside, but a harder part of being a professional cyclist. Finally, one of the biggest things I wish I'd known about being a pro cyclist is the pressure of social media. Now, I grew up in the age where Facebook and Instagram were just starting when I was about 16, 17. I got on it early. I started producing media just for fun and more to document my riding. Obviously, it's helped me in my career. Now, it's a huge part of being a professional cyclist. You can't really be a pro without it. I think what we don't see is the pressure that that brings. When you go out for a ride, you no longer can just go for a ride for fun. You have to take your phone, you have to push yourself to get that sick clip, and you have to take some pretty high risks to be seen as the pro. You have to do these crazy gaps on Instagram to make sure you get the likes and the views and your followers. I definitely ended up down quite a dark path in terms of being really obsessed with the numbers of followers, likes, and just what people thought of me instead of focusing more on just riding my bike and being quick and enjoying it. That's all very negative. Those are very small parts of being a pro. I don't want to sound like I'm telling everyone it's the worst job ever. It is the best job ever. I wouldn't change anything for the world. Without being a pro and doing all of those things, I wouldn't be right here, right now speaking to you guys on the camera. Definitely, it's still the goal and should be goal for all of those aspiring youngsters out there. Just be aware, it's not just riding your bike. There is a lot of hard work that goes into it too. You really have to work like any other job to make sure you're successful. There we have it, guys, a few things that I've learned being a professional cyclist that I wish I'd known that little bit sooner. If you're an amateur or you're just starting out in the sport, I hope these can help you and stop you making those same mistakes that I did when I was growing up in this sport. If you like this video, don't forget to like and subscribe. Also, if you're a cyclist on your own journey, drop in the comments below some of your top tips and tricks you wish you'd known when you first started.