I Crashed Hard and I Cried | Overcoming Fear & Anxiety on a Mountain bike

Curb drop it. No, don't huck. Day two. Day two. Off we go. To the nougs. I'm being sensitive. Hey. Raffy. It wasn't like that dry. I guess so. Alright. So we're dropping in on Painted Black here. This is the trail that got me pretty shook up. Coach Willem Kooper of CCF helping me walk through some sh**. Basically what happened is I got super nervous on a new trail focusing on my technique but really just in my head too much. And I really just started to overthink everything. And the one thing that Willem really drills in my head is to not overthink and really just focus on the simple things that you know you have to work on. Like eyes up, stay calm and stay in your tack position is what I'm working on right now. What happened is first run dropped in pretty smooth nice little left berm I came into this got super nervous got to this section and it all just built up. So I got really tense I stiffened up I lost all of my ability to dance on the bike and stay in that attack stance and then it just got progressively worse. So keep in mind Jimmy was riding this trail blind. I had ridden it a couple times before and I wanted to just give him some cues as if he were at a race. Like hey man this stuff's coming up here's what you need to do. So he really did just attack this blind. Regardless of all the errors he made that was a really good thing. He didn't stop he committed and went off the feature that's ahead. But like he was saying he was nervous. This was the most technical trail we had ridden on the weekend so far. He'd gotten comfortable on kind of a flowy blue trail and this is the first black diamond. So yep now there's some rocks it's a little more technical a little bit more blown out. And like Jimmy was saying So yeah I came through this section super shaky and basically what I did is got nervous and stiffened up. That's one of the biggest things I'm learning now is to stay calm focus on the trail ahead you're gonna make mistakes but if you can stay in your attack position and stay relaxed normally you can come out of it. So as I came through this saw this tree straight ahead was way off balance didn't want to stop and keep in mind I'd given him the cue you're going to land and you need to be ready for a tight left hand turn and that it was really important to squash the drop and get onto the ground as quick as he could. So with that in mind Jimmy tell them what happened. Yeah so by the time I got here I was bouncing around and as you can see I mean it's pretty intimidating. It's not the biggest drop in the world but because I was so stiff because I wasn't focused on eyes up and really just staying nimble on the bike I ended up coming pretty much straight off this landed in the middle had my head down so I wasn't looking into the corner the bike bounced by the time I looked up the corner was too close and I just went over tea kettle into the corner pretty hard. You good man? Yeah just taking a nap I dropped the drop. Yeah you hucked it didn't you? You good? Yeah just knocked the wind out of me for a second. Yeah that was interesting. I'm awake. I got off the thing and then I got nervous and just kind of let myself slow wash. What's up guys Jimmy from MTB Travel Review I hate to cut the video but I wanted to give you guys a little context into what was happening in this moment and the reason that I made this video. Most of you don't know me that well you don't really know me at all but in real life I suffer from severe anxiety and it makes life really difficult at times. One of the reasons I really love mountain biking is that it helps me push through these tougher moments. You can't tell in this video but after this crash and after messing up this little section after I'm so frustrated that I'm basically in tears and I'm so down on myself that you know it's like I forgot how to mountain bike. But that is why I keep doing this. That's why I hang out with people like Team Granite and Willem because they help me push through these moments and they make me a better person. A lot of mountain bikers deal with anxiety I know I'm not alone in that so if you do deal with it make sure that you confront these things that you push through your fears and that you have confidence in yourself so you can grow as a mountain biker and as a person. These moments are some of the most important moments for me and they're the ones that I truly remember and really do help me become a better person and a better rider. So if you deal with this if you get this anxiety and frustration on the trail that's okay. Other people get it it happens but push through it keep riding and you will get better. So then what did we do? We stopped and we analyzed what went wrong came up with a few things to work on in the next next attempt at the trail and then we also made sure that we went right back up and hit this trail again. And the reason why I like to do that is if you just face your fear right away right after you've made the error but with a plan that you know has a better likelihood of working out you're going to get over your fear better and ultimately move forward in your day or in your riding or in whatever you're trying to do on your bike. And the biggest thing that Jimmy made the mistake on was coming into this and his instinct is when he gets tense his arms get really tight which makes the bike hard to control and then his eyes drop to his front wheel. That's very common in most people. On a feature like this because it's it's pretty fast it's steep so the drop falls away from you quickly if you're not on the drop and your eyes aren't in the apex of the turn it's going to be much harder to hit this. So the next time we went around we worked on a few things a few cues and the biggest one for him was breathe because when you breathe you generally are more calm and relaxed and eyes up so that he's able to anticipate the terrain. The next lap through we went off this drop he knew exactly what to do and he squashed it whipped right around the corner a lot of people think that to go faster you just hammer a trail harder not always a lot of times you need to figure out the trail and how to ride it smoother and carry more momentum and that's really what he ultimately did and it always comes back to the things you can learn in parking lot drills. Eyes up breathe look through keep your good body position and more importantly have confidence in yourself and your abilities. Let's do it. Eyes up breathe Got it. Yeah. Good. Yeah. You need to remind yourself the biggest thing focus on eyes up and breathe everything else is there remember you're good at riding bikes. The highline was butter. Easy. So smooth. Oh that's easy. But it's literally I get in my head and it's whatever it is it's always something. So eyes up and breathe the rest of this trail. Yeah. Okay. Is there Big breath. Let's go. Again I'm lucky to have someone like Willem to walk me through these things but for me it was facing my fear. I was scared I was shook up Willem could tell I was frustrated but I had to go back up there I focused on the simple cues most people are very capable mountain bikers and you can do a lot more than you think so staying calm focusing on the simple things and just making sure you conquer your fears. Now there are limitations I'm not telling you to go huck everything that scares you but for this I knew this drop was well within my abilities I went back up I did it again and I'm going to walk away today really happy and stoked on some progression. So few things to keep in mind nobody's perfect this isn't easy and just keep it simple. Breathe eyes up and work with somebody that knows what they're talking about. It's extremely helpful for me to have somebody to say this is what you did wrong this is how we can fix it and today I'm walking out with my head held high so good day kudos to this guy ride bikes! Yeah!