Everyone experiences fear, even MTB pros. There’s a lot more honesty around on social media from some of the top racers these days about the fact that they feel fear, and it’s nice to know that even the world’s best are scared sometimes. They are human after all!
I suppose it probably takes more to scare the professionals than it does us. That said, you can be sure that at one time, they were scared of the same obstacles as us, but by overcoming their fear they were able to keep progressing to the top of their game.
Despite all this refreshing honesty (Tahnée Seagrave is especially good at this on her Instagram, go follow if you don’t already), not many people elaborate on how they overcome fear.
It’s this that lead me to create a video on it. I do have a loose process which I follow when trying to push myself. It’s never been a conscious process, it just happens. Like much of mountain biking it’s been learnt “on the job” so to speak, and I imagine that everyone has a slightly different approach. Nevertheless, if you at least had a framework to work from and fine-tune to your requirements, perhaps you could start to conquer some of your fears and step up to the next level in your riding.
You can learn about my process in this video, or read on…
10 Steps to Overcoming Fear
One: Set a Goal
This will probably happen almost automatically – it’s the big scary thing you have selected to try and throw yourself at, right? When I went to Morgins, I had the vague idea that I wanted to jump the road gap at the top, so that’s all it was. A vague idea.
I did want to get back into the “bigger jumps” game though, and as I’d spent most of it in Morzine, I did get the opportunity to do that this summer. Without that, I think it extremely unlikely that I would even have entertained thoughts of doing the road gap at Morgins. So intermediary goals which help bring you closer to your ultimate goal are extremely useful – for me, lots of repetitions on smaller and/or less scary versions of the same thing.
Two: Build Confidence
Your intermediary goal should help you with this, as you’ll be getting closer and closer to achieving something of a similar magnitude to your ultimate goal. That will make the ultimate goal seem much more within your reach.
It’s also really important to build confidence on the day. I had arrived in Morgins hoping to hit the jump, but for the first 2-3 laps, I didn’t really feel like it was going to happen. So I set it aside and just rode. I built confidence in the amount of grip I had, how I was feeling on the bike, all of those sorts of things.
Three: Be Patient
I didn’t include this in the video, this and confidence are very nearly the same thing. As I said above, I didn’t really think it was going to be my day, so I’d just set it aside. After a while my thoughts came back round to it after we had all stopped to look at it, and I realised I wanted to take the opportunity to do it. Partly because Morgins is a 3h drive from home, and secondly because I don’t often get to ride with people who are capable of pushing me and themselves. Setting it aside and just enjoying riding was effectively just being patient and seeing how I felt as the day went on. This day, it worked out well!
Four: Rationalise
You need to be rational about what it is you want to do. Many of us have irrational fears, for me it’s wooden take-offs. I hate them. Why? Because they might be slippery, they look scary, and they might be slippery.. ah yes I said that.. but if it’s dry, it’s not going to be slippery is it? I did say it was irrational!
With the road gap in Morgins, it was easy to look at the landing, which appeared to have a square-ish edge, and say “oh no, that’s too scary, look at that scary lip on the landing”. That’s quite a negative approach. It was better to consider what we needed to do, not what we thought we couldn’t do. So we talked about the speed we’d need to approach with, and what was in the run-up which would help us to figure out if we’d got it right or not.
Five: Work through it with Friends
This is the best. If you have positive thinking friends (i.e looking specifically at what is needed for success, not just positive mental attitude. Obviously that does help, but that’s not what I’m referring to here) who will happily discuss and rationalise with you, then it can help to take away a lot of the doubt. You can pool all of your thoughts and experience, and sometimes it helps that people who know your riding style/ability are likely to be able to make a fairly accurate estimation of whether or not this obstacle is within your grasp. Of course, that does mean you need to have trustworthy friends who will only tell you to do it if they truly believe you can do it. Beware the “friends” who just say yes cos they wanna see a good crash!
This can be a bit tricky if everyone lacks confidence. In my video, one of my friends mentions waiting for the helicopter to arrive. In this context it was just a joke, and we took it as such, but if no one is feeling confident enough to be able to rationalise positively, your team work may not be as effective as ours was. In that situation what can you do? Well..
Six: Watch someone else
Whether it’s a friend or a stranger, watching someone else is incredibly informative. Especially if you can question them afterwards. Either way, you should be able to observe their entry speed, their line, whether they braked or pedalled, and how it worked out. What mistakes did they make? What can you learn from what you saw?
In my case, Graham went for it and, despite his rationalisation, pedalled before it. Unsurprisingly (to me at least), he overshot by miles. What I learnt was that I did not need to pedal. I also noticed that he didn’t finish his turn before he took off, which meant he was still turning left. So I needed to carry good speed through the turn before, I could pump or jump the small table-top in the run-up, and I needed to make sure I’d straightened up for the take-off.
I could have learnt that from a stranger too. It’s nicer if you can see a friend do it because you know their riding abilities and history, but if you’re the strongest rider in your group and it’s going to be you that has to “unlock” the obstacle then you may need to watch people you don’t know.
Seven: Visualise
Visualisation is another super helpful technique to use, especially if an element of your obstacle is blind – step-up or step-down jumps are a prime example of this. Make sure you’ve had a look at the run in, and at the landing, or exit if it’s not a jump. You can then fix these things in your mind’s eye so that you know what to expect at each stage. If your run up is not straight (like with mine, where I had several berms to ride first), then add that into the memory banks – likewise with the run-out if it’s in any way complicated. You can then take a moment before you drop-in to just run through what you’re going to do, when, and what you’re going to see. That could include how many pedal strokes to do to get going, whether and/or where to brake, the line you need to take, etc.
You might need to take a run-up to practice your run in if it’s complicated with the need to pedal/brake/hit the perfect line, but I would recommend doing this as few times as possible. Once your run-up seems good, it’s time to go. Repeated run-ups without actually doing the obstacle can actually make things worse in that you start to habitually stop each time, or it just increases the fear/stress factor. You may be able to dispense with visualisation if you can get a tow-in. Either way, better to get it done and move on to the next stage – consolidation.
Eight: Get a Tow-In
If you’re still not sure about hitting it by yourself, a tow-in can be extremely useful. Ideally from a friend once again, and preferably someone who’s about the same speed as you, or who will be able to adjust their speed to enable you to follow. AND someone who takes nice lines and doesn’t do any sudden last minute weird moves. You want a trustworthy Tractor for you as the Trailer 😉 .
Once again, in the absence of a friend to follow, if you’ve been watching someone else repeatedly hitting the obstacle for a while, and established that they are a solid rider who you could follow, why not ask them if they would mind giving you a tow-in. Nintey-nine percent of the time, that rider is going to be delighted to help you nail a new obstacle and share in your buzz!
Nine: Consolidation
The first time you send it [whatever it is], it’s still going to be scary. However, the more times you do it, the more comfortable you will become. Even if you can only send it twice, that’s better than just once. The day that I did the gap jump the first time, I was only able to do it twice but immediately felt more comfortable on the second go. When I returned 3 weeks later, I was still a bit scared to do it again because basically I hadn’t consolidated enough previously. That said, I was still happier to hit it this time, and did not experience the same level of fear once I’d decided I would be doing it. Frustratingly I did mess up my run up on the first attempt of the day, but quickly sorted that out to hit it with ease.
Ten: Ride the Confidence Wave
This is very much an optional step, but once you have consolidated on your main scary obstacle, you might as well take that confidence and use it to hit other things whilst you’re at it. This is how you progress, and keep on progressing. I went off and jumped various other gaps, including another long fade jump which did make me gasp, heart in mouth. I only got to do that once so was sad not to be able to consolidate it on that day, but I went away totally buzzing about all that I’d managed to tick off that day. I also knew that I could hold in mind what I’d been able to do, as well as how I did it. So as long as I came back reasonably soon, I would be able to pick up exactly where I left off.
So with that framework, you can hopefully go away and take the bits that work for you, add in variations of your own, and start conquering scary things. Your confidence will automatically build along the way, enabling you to keep progressing, and who knows where you’ll end up!
My re-acquired “bigger jumps” confidence is hopefully going to take me over some big jumps at Revolution and Dyfi Bikeparks (in Wales) in a few weeks time. I’m definitely apprehensive, but I know with some patience, rationalisation, hopefully a tow-in or two plus some visualisation, I should be able to tick off some more scary business!
I’d love to hear from you about what scary stuff you’ve conquered lately, and what you did to help get it done – leave me a comment here, or on the YouTube video!