Ever since I started Mountain Biking I've struggled with getting airtime. This past year was my 4th MTB season and I experienced some pretty dramatic progression on the jumps (as it was my main focus this year) I really wanted to document this progression in a way that might help others so here are a bunch of my personal tips on how to get more confident on jumps. (specifically Whistler Bike Park's A-Line) This isn't a "How to Jump" video, as it goes more into how to safely progress and grow your confidence.

Intro: 0:00
Overview: 0:50
How to Safely Progress: 1:25
How to Practice: 2:11
How to Apply Skills on the Trail: 3:28
A-Line Section Comparisons (2020 vs 2021): 5:09
Outro: 8:48
Bonus Clip: 9:22

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The trails in this video are on the Mt. Tzouhalem Trail Network, starting off with Double D, then Resurrection, and lastly, Loam Line.

I'm recording this with a chest-mounted GoPro Hero 7 black
4K 30 fps superwide
Post-processed
Hyper smooth

Thanks for watching and happy riding! See you later :)

SCRIPT:

I think we can all agree that progression is a huge part of mountain biking. The feeling you get when you finally clear that jump or clean that section you’ve been trying, again and again, is like no other. Progression is sometimes associated with risk though, and it’s true that pushing your limits can be dangerous if you’re doing it the wrong way, or for the wrong reasons. I’ve spent countless hours watching youtube videos on how to progress on jumps, so today I really want to share my personal experience through my journey and hopefully provide some unique tips to improve and reduce the risk of your own progression.


Over the next few minutes or so, I’m going to go through my progression from consistently casing every jump on Aline, to feeling super comfortable clearing the entire trail. I had the privilege to be riding in these clips with some of my best friends and family and it’s been so cool to see everyone’s progression just as much as mine. To clarify before I get into it, this won’t be a “how to jump video”, I know enough of those exist. This will be more of how I learned to progress and hopefully you can too.

The first thing I want to focus on is that progression doesn’t happen overnight. I found that especially when at Whistler, there feels a lot of pressure to just send it, and people will tell you things like “The jumps ride themselves” or “Just hold on and you’ll be fine” and while Whistler has by far the most confidence-inspiring, and consistent jumps, it doesn’t mean you should expect yourself to feel comfortable in the air for 30ft when all you’ve ridden is 10 ft tables. This is where getting super comfortable on smaller jumps like “Crank it up” for a while can really help. So take your time, Aline isn’t going anywhere.

Another thing is, if you don’t practice jumping at home, it’s silly to think you’ll be able to just send a 30ft table with full confidence. For reference, between my 2020 whistler trip, and this year, I rode my local jump trail probably over 100 times, slowly getting more and more comfortable in the air. Progression is something that takes place over a long period of time, and the best way I found to prepare for Whistler was to just find some local jumps and ride them once or twice a week. This works great even if they’re small jumps. The consistent practice made it so when I was given much bigger jumps, they didn’t really feel bigger since I was just applying the same technique on a larger scale.


Next thing I want to talk about is how to make the most of your progression when you’re riding Aline.

First, take as many breaks in the trail as you can, without stopping right in the middle. Your body probably isn’t used to descending that much at once, and the last thing you want is going off a jump when you can hardly feel your fingers.

Next is a tip my friends found quite helpful which is instead of just trying to send as many jumps on Aline as you can, ride it a few times and find the ones you’re comfortable with and focus on dialling those. Once you feel good on those, pick 1 or 2 more that you want to commit to on your next lap, and work up from there. This helped me a lot with my progression.

Last is don’t overthink the process. I got sucked into the trap of watching all these “how to jump” videos and they were all giving me way too much information. Of course, you want to make sure you have a general idea of the technique, but your body is pretty good at figuring out physics on it’s own by repetition.