Claim OwnershipDONUTS & BIKES: The Mountain Bike Coaching Podcast
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DONUTS & BIKES - The Mountain Bike Coaching Podcast - will help transform your riding or coaching while delighting your taste buds! The hosts, Paul Howard (GSMBC President & Education Director, ZEP MTB Camps Owner & Head Coach, PMBIA Founder & Past- President) and Kristian Jackson (Senior Lecturer at Appalachian State University’s Department of Recreation Management & Physical Education, Trail Boss Rocky Knob Bike Park, GSMBC Coach Mentor) are two of the top-tier, industry leading mountain bike coaches and instructor trainers, with over 40 years of collective experience. Listen in as Donuts & Bikes pairs all things MTB skills and coaching, along with a feature donut on every episode. Get your ride and eat on and bite into Donuts & Bikes!
If you like what we do and want to support the show, please feel free to check out our patreon page at www.patreon.com/donutsandbikes where listeners can choose to donate only a few bucks per month. The proceeds will go directly to helping us create engaging and valuable content, for you, the listeners.
27 Episodes
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Welcome to the Mountain Bike Coaching Podcast: Donuts & Bikes! Listen to this brief info and preview episode to learn more about the hosts, Kristian Jackson and Paul Howard, who they are, what they do and why they are creating this new, industry first, mountain bike coaching podcast. The episode also digs into how these podcasts will work and what to expect. If you're a mountain biker interested in not only progressing their skills, but also keen to dig into deeper conversations r...
Riders, do you want to progress more efficiently? Coaches, do you want to be better riders? In this episode, we unpack the saying “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” in the context of coaching and riding to unlock some ideas to improve performance. In this episode we discuss: · Possible origins of this saying · Racing as measurement of percentages · Riding at speed might not mean riding at 100% · Slowi...
Are you a trail builder, passionate about building the best trails possible?Perhaps you're a coach that wants to learn more about trail building? Are you are rider that wants to learn more about how to use different trails to progress your riding? Either way, this episode is for you as we dig into the relationship between building trails and coaching, and why these two things should come together more often to help maximize the value, enjoyment and sustainability of trails, for eve...
How does the learning process interact with our work of coaching riders? What are some of the core practices of coaching mountain bikers? In this episode, we begin to unpack answers to these questions. We dig into some of the ways people learn on bikes and shine a light on a few techniques and concepts we use to train riders to become more effective in their efforts. Here we discuss: The learning culture and debunking the adage “if you’re not crashing you’re not learning.”The apprenticeship...
Cornering: the piece of our riding we can always improve and seemingly can never 'perfect'... the holy grail of mountain biking! In this episode we discuss some of the myths and pitfalls riders can fall into and dive into some of the details behind the fundamental skills that a) will improve your cornering and b) you can work on anywhere, corners or no corners! For coaches... there's a wealth of insight here to up your game and help make your cornering sessions more efficient, effectiv...
Learning to drop can be intimidating. Learning to teach drops can be even more fright-inducing. But it doesn't, and more importantly, shouldn't have to be that way. In this episode, we how examine how good coaching is good risk management and that skills-based coaching is a powerful way to build purposeful progressions. Drops come in all sizes, shapes, and configurations and as a result, there usually isn't a single "right way" to ride a drop. In this episode we focus in on the skills...
1You asked, and we brought it to you: a manual episode! Join us as we breakdown one of the raddest things you can do on a bike. Here, we separate a basic "puddle manual" from the "BMX manual" and focus on learning the simplest version first. In this episode we discuss: A bit of theory on stability and balanceHow skill development relates to stability and balanceHow this impacts our teachingSome pre-reqs for the manual Terrain choiceStretchingBike set upGoal setting Why...
Becoming a World Cup Racer involves much more than learning to be a good rider. Coaching at the highest level is more than just teaching. Claire Buchar knows these things. She shreds harder post-World Cup, rides smoother than most, keeps it humble, and enjoys a good (vegan) donut. We sat down with the Canadian mountain bike legend to discuss her formative experiences as a racer, and how she has translated those learnings into coaching, and, life in general. Claire's resume runs ...
Paul and Kristian jump on the mics to discuss why jumping is an important skill for all mountain bikers and how learning to jump can transform all areas of your riding. The hosts chat through their own backgrounds as riders and discover they were both paperboys, were both shaped by technical trails, and both learned to really jump as adults. The conversation spans from the 80s and 90s, to their first trips to Whistler where they were influenced by the trails as well as the culture, and...
Can we learn how to improve our confidence just like we do our position or braking skills? Can we learn how to deal with fear, anxiety or stress, just like we deal with training our muscles to get stronger? Can we really change how we react to or feel about something that we perceive as risky? This is the first part of our discussion on Confidence & Fear, where Kristian and Paul unpack all sorts of riding and coaching nuggets to help all the riders and coaches out there. Some hig...
This week we continue the conversation and dig into this fascinating riding and coaching topic with some of the PMBIA's rad US Instructor Trainers. Shanna Powell, Meredith McFarland, and Harlan Price join us in a 1920's farmhouse on the edge of Dupont State Recreation Forest for our first in-person show. We put the coaches on the mics and ask them to discuss personal perspectives on confidence and fear. The result is an expansive and honest conversation about how our confidence g...
Cornering is a perennial hot-topic for coaches, riders, You-Tubers, and even Podcasters. Why is it such a popular subject? Well, simply put, it’s one of the raddest things you can do on a bike. Being good at it involves a refined application of all the mountain biking skills – which is a daunting task for riders and coaches alike. In this episode, we revisit the topic of cornering. This time we take an angle to explore what might be holding us back from getting better at changing direct...
It's World Cup Season! Racing is back and we wanted to use this opportunity to discuss why lining up at a start gate is about so much more than wanting to stand on a podium. In this episode we explore the myriad of unseen benefits of racings for riders as well as some basic tips for "how to race." The show focuses on: Why people don't race and barriers to racingRacing cultureMotivations for racingThe importance of clarifying goalsFocusing on process over resultsCompetition: Movi...
Working with kids on bikes can provide some of the most rewarding moments for coaches. These times can also provide daunting challenges and seemingly endless frustration. In this episode, Paul and Kristian discuss some insights for successful youth coaching learned from over 20 years of practice. Topics this time include: Our backgrounds working with kidsThe power of ConnectionLearning as an act of admitting you don’t know somethingConnection as mechanism of trust and comfortablenessConnectio...
How can we keep coaching and riding into old(er) age? In this episode, your hosts reveal that they are not youngsters, while also divulging a few clues on how they've managed to keep the stoke for riding and coaching over the decades. This discussion builds from the last episode and expands these ideas to adult mountain bikers. Listen in for details on: Adults vs kids – what are some differences in how they learn and how they ride?Riding and getting olderInspiration and ridingWhy learni...
Are adults just big kids? The answer, as always, is yes and no. Adults present some specific challenges in the way the learn as compared to kids. In this episode your hosts focus on three important ideas to help your understanding of how to coach adult riders: Connectedness, Language, and Mindsets. Here we dig into: Creating connections that foster trust How the coach is a guide through cognitive terrain as much as the physical terrainHow adults sometimes need to re-learn how to learnThe...
If you’ve ever wanted to nail down your endos, stoppies, nose manuals, nose pivots or euro turns, then this episode is for you! In this weeks episode we dig into why everyone should learn these tricks (maneuvers) and just how much they can transform your overall skills and riding, anywhere and everywhere. There's a number of different ways to teach these maneuvers, but listen in as we dig into some examples to help transform your riding or coaching... Friends with the front of the bikeD...
Berms, turns and cutties... cornering is rad so listen in to part 3 of our series on cornering to help get you 'learning ya turning'! Cornering can quickly become complicated due to the variety of skills, biomechanical movements, terrain configurations, and speeds. This episode aims to simplify the rotational component of cornering that can help intermediate and advanced riders drive the bike through corners. We start this week's episode with a quick chat about being inspired by olde...
Are mountain bike coaching and instructing the same thing? How are they similar? Why are the different? Does it matter? If so what does this mean for the mountain bike industry? In this episode Paul and Kristian take on this questions to discover how the answers impact the impact we have as coaches and instructors. In this show: Paul and Kristian explain the radio silence of the last yearWhat's coming up in season 4!An update on the Global Syndicate of Mountain Bike CoachesA historica...
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