- Time to learn
how to learn.
(energetic beat music)
Hello everyone. And welcome
to an extra special limited edition,
coaching series here on Pinkbike.
We've made 10, top-shelf, grade A,
juicy videos for you to wrap your minds around.
I split mountain biking up
into what I believe to be the core skills
that when learned can be applied
to everything you will come across when riding a bike.
Each video in the series is going to link into the next
and refer to each other to build up the full picture.
So if you think something is missing, don't worry.
It'll probably be coming up in a future vid.
By the time this is done,
you should be able to give all your mates
unwanted riding feedback like
a hypocritical douchebag.
- Yeah, I [Indistinct] that time.
Did you see that?
That was sick. Nailed it.
- No. Didn't nail it.
You actually break right in the middle of the corner
worst place you could have braked,
killed your exit speed. Just...
- All right. - No.
I mean, you might as well not even call
in, if you're gonna do it like that.
- So today, to prime you all for the series to come,
I want it to tackle something that I think is way
more important than watching your 15th
how to manual video.
That is how to actually learn a new skill.
Humans are amazingly complicated
intelligent inquisitive beings, which means
among other things, we will actively seek to
learn new skills that are not crucial to our survival.
I've just been watching my baby son learn to
open the washing machine and put things inside it
and then clap to himself in delight, as accomplishment,
which is just, it's adorable.
This joyous feeling of the dopamine
hit your brain receives, is addictive.
And when you are young
these moments of learning come so thick and fast.
But as you get older, time becomes more valuable.
Your energy levels feel more finite
and unless new skill is relevant for work
it can feel hard to justify the effort.
Procrastination is the enemy of learning
and there is no surefire way to combat it,
other than to seize the moments when your motivation peaks.
This is different for everyone
and can be influenced by stress, moods, music,
weather, friends, and all manner of different things.
All I know is when you feel a spark of motivation,
you better grab on to it.
Time to learn how to learn.
Before you even get started,
you have to make a positive mental decision to
actually learn the new skill.
This is goal setting
and it's the key to any successful endeavor.
A goal is not a guarantee of success
but it gives you a target to aim for.
Without a target, you're just blindly shooting at nothing,
which can be really good fun, just not very productive.
Today I'm going to set myself a goal
of learning a new skill,
which is something I haven't done in ages.
For this reason, I felt that for
the opening episode, we should kick things
off in style and bring in an expert on learning new things.
This is Mike Boyd.
- Sup', man.
- What's happening?
(group laughing)
- This time I'm teaching you then.
- Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, taught you last time.
So now repeat the favor.
Over the last six years, Mike has dedicated his time
to learning new skills and documenting them
on his YouTube channel.
He's agreed to help out today with my rusty learning skills
and he's also quite handy on a bike himself.
So I reckon he should try and learn the chosen skill too.
As we're on a one-day shoot,
I decided to pick something that I thought wouldn't
be too challenging, but still pretty cool.
It's called a crankflip.
I'm going to need an example.
Max, can you?
You can do crankflips, yeah?
- [Max] Aye
- All right, do one.
- Can you see?
- My goal is just to land one cleanly,
to the pedals on flat ground, but if
things go, well, maybe try it on a jump too.
What do you reckon?
- I reckon that's ambiguous,
but I'll be badass if you stomped out today.
- With our goal set now you've got to plan things out.
This can be anything from I'll go on a ride today
and I'll just spend half an hour trying the new skill
all the way to, I'll assign one hour every Saturday
for the next three calendar months
and I'll document my progress in my skill journal.
I'm thinking somewhere in the middle would be ideal
but we only have a few hours today.
So that's going to be our timescale to try
and reach our goal.
You can tackle the learning process by yourself
which some people will definitely prefer,
or maybe you don't have a choice
because your friends are all straddle weapons
that only ride for the distance, bro.
That's not a problem if you're working on a chill skill
but if it's something riskier, I'd highly advise
convincing those friends to tag along
or even join you in the learning process.
Not only will it be safer
but collaborative learning is easier,
more fun, and has way more tow hitches.
On the topic of safety, I dress accordingly.
If you're trying something high-speed, high-energy,
or just downright reckless, go all out,
full face helmet, neck brace, armor, knee pads,
just the full works.
- Lot's of people are laughing at me for these shin guards
but we'll see who's laughing at the end of the day.
Just listen to that.
(petal clanking)
No bother.
- Learning the crankflip on the flat is going to
be reasonably low-risk with our protection.
When a skill is low-risk,
you can dive straight in and just try the whole thing.
Who knows? You might just get it straight off the bat.
(group laughing)
I think we have to see, we just about started filming
and Mike may have already landed one.
(group laughing)
(Mike groans)
- [Max] And there you go, how to Learn.
(electronic beat music)
- I kinda landed butt first, I think.
(men oohing)
Can you imagine how bad that would've
been without shin guards?
- Death.
- Here we go.
Here we go. (beep)
(group laughing)
- If you don't, you should try and break the skills down.
I'm struggling.
I'm going to try the little parts first.
You can focus on practicing each individual component
to familiarize yourself with them before attempting to
stitch them altogether.
- [Mike] Yes. - [Max] Yo.
(group laughing)
- [Ben] Close.
- [Mike] That was pretty good.
- There are a few important things to remember
during this process.
Number one is to make definitive changes,
if something isn't working.
Interesting. I've spotted something.
I just keep going like this pedals level, jump,
and then kick in and slipping my foot off the back.
It's easy to fall into the habit of doing just
the same thing over and over again,
thinking it'll somehow just happen.
You need to really mix things up to learn
how big changes will affect the outcome.
When Mike jumps, his pedals are like this
but I got to do
a fifth of a rotation back.
And then, kick. It's weird.
There we go. Was that it?
- Oh, yeah. - [Ben] Yeah.
- [Max] That was clean.
- [Ben] He's got it before me.
- The butt never touched the seat there.
- [Ben] Dammit. Right. Okay, okay.
(Max oohing)
Kind of.
- [Max] Oh, yes. - [Mike] Yeah.
- It's not as clean as Max.
- [Max] No.
- I feel like I'm landing here
and Max is just... - [Mike] Yeah.
(group laughing)
- Gonna not look at the pedals.
(group groaning)
(group chattering)
- We're both landing quite soft.
We're both kind of like that,
almost the seat there is a backup, in case you miss.
But what you want to do is just be like,
"No, I can do this."
And you just land like...
Confident.
I've just thought about it and I've got it.
(laughs)
Oh, I jumped too high.
I'm pleased with that one.
Your body and brain will lie to you.
So many times I've been teaching people
and I'll tell them to do something,
they'll go have a go,
and then they come back to me like,
"That was so much better. Nailed it. Nailed it."
I'm like, "That was exactly the same. Exactly the same."
Learning what to feel for and
how to feel it, takes practice.
So I recommend you cheat.
Get a friend to watch or better yet
film what you were doing in slow motion.
If you're out on your own
just balance your phone on a tripod or even a tree branch.
There is no alternative to cold
hard video evidence to slap you back into reality.
- Oh.
We're both starting to get it,
not consistently yet, though.
- No.
- So we've managed to kind of figure
out the different steps
and now we're getting adventurous.
We're getting adventurous, Max.
We want to start trying to add
in either, a hop or a jump.
- I'm going to try an hop one.
- I might shin myself.
Who's laughing at my shinnies now ay?
- [Ben] Oh, that was sweet.
- I kind of sat down a little.
- Still.
(group laughing)
- [Ben] Oh, that was clean.
Legs didn't soften at all. You were just like...
- It's a two-moving thing, innit?
Like three-motion, you just get the hop
but then once you're there,
just do exactly what you were doing before.
- So I don't think I've got it quick enough
but we need to get the skill totally locked in
because we're going to add a whole new skill
to what we're already doing.
You can't do that if you're having to
consciously think about two different things.
So we need to get them both,
not quite in muscle memory but close enough.
- It looks like you've,
I know you were saying, the flips looks slow
but they're not actually faster than Max's.
- Oh.
- The reason I thought Max's crankflips were so nice
is cause they were slow.
It wasn't in a hurry.
Do you know? - Yeah.
So you've got that down and like
this is where I think I'll leave you to it
Cause I can't really hop and I can't really jump.
- I thought I was doing it too slow.
I was sure I was doing it slower than my body lied to me.
It lied.
So I got my buddy said, "Actually, you got this.".
- [Mike] Wow, that was like an over-rotation.
(group chattering)
- I'm trying to make it consistent.
So that movement of just getting them spinning,
feet back on.
Feet back on is locked.
Visualizations can really help,
especially if you're working on a high-risk skill.
Focus on each individual body part and
imagine what they will do and what it will feel like
as they perform their task.
I've got it. I've got it.
Pull from prior experiences and similar skills to try
and form the best image in your head
of what you are about to do.
I know for racing, I'll imagine my race runs
and it really helps with learning the track.
You do look like a bit
of a daft idiot when you're doing it though.
You got to own it.
I don't got it. I don't got it.
(group laughing)
- [Max] Yo.
Oh, that was so close.
- If possible, slow things down.
This doesn't really apply to the trick
we're working on today.
But for trail skills, where normally you're moving fast
you need to slow things done.
You cannot apply conscious change while going at
your default speed.
The conscious analytical part of your brain is
just too slow to react fast enough.
By the time you thought right now, I need to pump
through my legs here, you're already out
the other side off the feature, offline,
going too fast and headed straight for a tree.
Slow it down. If you can,
work through the learning process until you make
those connections in your brain to move a conscious
action into an unconscious action, that's called
muscle memory and it's blazing fast.
Once the skill is locked in there, you can then
turn on the afterburners.
- [Max] Catch it in the air, believe.
(electronic beat music)
- Watch out for fatigue of the body and brain.
Obviously as the body gets tired performing physical
skills become harder but it's the mental fatigue
that will halt the learning process.
- It looks like I'm suffering from fatigue. (laughs)
(group laughing)
- [Max] Do you find that when you really want to
get something that you just do it
over and over again, and just?
- Yeah. I've got better at stopping that,
like setting timers, sticking to it.
And I used to do 40 minutes and I've now even
reduced it to 15 minute sessions,
which sounds sorta daft.
Sounds like you're not doing anything at all,
but if you can completely avoid that phase where
you're going backwards, you don't get so
upset with yourself.
- [Max] Yeah, yeah.
- If it's just constant progress,
the way to do that is by taking regular breaks.
You want to leave the skill being hungry
to learn more for the next time,
but that's really hard to do
cause you just want to get it done,
you want to learn it now.
- [Max] Yeah, yeah.
- And you think that more time equals better skill level,
but today we've only got one day
so that's all just pointless.
(men laughing)
- Learn to spot the signs of hitting that mental wall
and take a break.
Eat some food, drink some water,
or just call it for the day
because at night that's sometimes where the magic happens.
During sleep, your body cleans up
a lot of the new messy connections made
in the brain when learning
and I've had more than a few occasions
where I've tried again the next day
and nailed that impossible thing, first time.
Finally, you will suck.
You will suck hard.
You will. (laughs)
And that's absolutely fine.
This is one of the hardest things to get over
for some people.
It can cause you to get embarrassed,
frustrated, and even give up
but failure is the route to success.
- You're looking like a dafter.
People are staring at you,
you're looking stupid,
but because I've done this so many times,
you realize people just don't care.
People don't care what you do.
Like if there was other bikers here, they would just be
so absorbed in the jumps that they wouldn't
even notice us doing this.
So I think that embarrassment of doing something new
and looking like an idiot...
- Everyone fails and learns.
Fails, again. Learns, again.
Until, eventually, you can do it.
That rider, that just nailed the skill that you're
trying to learn and is now watching you fail,
is not judging you.
They are pumped seeing you putting the effort in
to learn just like they did.
I think the mountain biking community in particular,
is really supportive of this process.
So don't be shy to get out there and just suck
because you will get better.
To wrap this up while the key points to remember
are smoothly, displayed somewhere, on screen.
I really want to encourage something
for all mountain bikers to embrace,
you need to play.
Mess around in the car park,
try silly things, pop manuals down the roads,
stop on trail and session that time.
Challenge your mates to a daft challenge,
it's through play that you learn the most effectively.
Going through all the steps that you talk about
in your videos has worked,
but is there anything you specifically do
that's maybe different.
- I think if there's anything that I do more
than anyone I know is it's I really celebrate my success.
I'll scream and shout on camera.
I'll really enjoy the moment.
And I'll even go home and crack open a bottle of wine
with Kim when we get home.
Yeah.
I really relish what I've done.
I don't play it down.
I big up. Even thought it's just a crankflip,
I'm like...(cheering)
I don't think there's any need to
hold it all in, just
enjoy it.
(electronic beat music)
(cheering)
(men laughing)
- Flippin fair play when I asked you to come
and I was like, "I'll get him to try."
I was like, "There's no way. No way you're going to get it."
And you were like, "There's no way."
And then you did it.
So, yeah. Cheers for coming along, man.
Appreciate it.
(group chattering)
(group laughing)
Yes, dude.
(group laughing)
Hopefully you learned something today and
if you're excited for the series, give a little thumbs up.
Just give a wee poke.
Yeah. Cheers.
If you've got any questions, I'm going to be hanging around
in the comments for about an hour
after this goes live to try and answer them all.
Now it's all up to you.
Get out there, learn something new,
encourage others to learn.
Keep it fun.
Develop the skills.
Subscribe to the channel.
And I'll see in the next video.
It's all about getting the perfect bikes setup
and it's a oh, it's a doozy, it's a long boy.
How long? How long has it, Max?
- [Max] Half an hour.
- Half an hour.
See you there.
(comical music)