Playing around on historic train-car cattle loading ramps in Ogden, UT. I see these types of features every day all around me, and can't help but ask myself, "can I ride my bike on that???" Here I'm practicing timing, weight shift & balance, and body shock absorption.
A trackstand is an essential skill for mountain bikers, offering the ability to balance on your bike while remaining stationary. Mastering this technique can help you manage tricky situations on the trail, like navigating steep inclines, nailing tight switchbacks, or negotiating technical obstacles.
By slowly, incrementally, safely, an progressively learning how to ride across skinny or narrow features, the rider begins to build-in a second nature. Once out on a singletrack trail all of the now built-in nuance, micro movements, weight shifting, adjustments, and balance are automatically recalled by the body at speed. Think less about the trail, and simply enjoy riding.. any trail, on any bike, anywhere!
Put on your mountain biking "worldview-glasses", and you will see every little piece of playground that you can hop on, boost off of, and play with. Here, I've found a rectangular shaped rock while out on trail, and the challenge was to get up on it, and back off without putting a foot down.
Once you begin to see the world through a mountain biking lens, tree roots are not just urban decoration, but can be ridden in a unique way. Put on your metaphorical "MTB worldview glasses" and look around for features you can ride right at home! Location: Ogden, UT - Ogden River Parkway, near Washington Blvd underpass.
Learn how to slow down, waaaaaaaaaaay down. Build balance, muscle memory, bike weighting, and intuitive micro-adjust movements, so that when you scale up the speed, your body can automatically, intuitively adapt to changes in terrain, trail, and line inputs.