Mastering Fear

Don't stress over it and get on with life. I don't want to get injured more than I need to prove anything to myself. Maybe another day when I'm ON IT, conditions are right and I have friends with me. We need to learn that we can keep it at 7/10 but be happy with it and confident in yourself and however you choose to ride.

Build up to it gradually. Give yourself easy wins before hand. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it. Two run ins and it’s done or not that run.

I use to rock climb. Which is very much once it’s scary then it’s probably to late for being scared to be a viable option.

With cycling I don’t ride anything that demanding. I either do it or walk. I don’t ever really remember trying again or the decision getting to me.

No that’s not quite true. I wish I’d ridden the slab at Dalbeattie, but I was in charge of 2 teenagers and was fairly committed to being very conservative. As looking after your injured father in the middle of know where is too much to ask

It's interesting you brought up rock climbing. Before riding I was massively into it, I think there's a lot of parallels between the two when it comes to the mental side of things.

I came across this a few years ago, thought it was good, although I don't much remember much of what he said. I recall something about fear being rational, being ready to move on if you're just not feeling it or tired, and have everything right about your bike.

Get off and walk the area. Get to know what it looks like from every angle, so theres no surprises in store.
You don't want to pick a line where you come off(if its a drop off or jump) where landing is going to then take you into rocks or trees.

My internal monologue has to say "yes" as I ride towards a trail obstacle. Some days I ride all the tricky sections, sometimes not. I'm ok with this though.

I must admit to not sessioning sections in the past, I do more now though, mostly to teach my son how to ride then. This definitely helps build experience and confidence.

Come back in the dry on the big bike, much .ore likely to do it and find that actually I can.
Then it's much less scary on the HT or in the wet, although i do sometimes still wimp out and save it for dry days when I'm on the big bike and have my full face on...

A tow in helps a lot.

I ride with an 'Enduro' group some Wednesday mornings. They're all coaches/racers/bike industry bods and a couple of levels above me.

I was chasing them around on a hardtail last year which gave me some great excuses.

There's one route where we link a track called Rockadile into another called Fallen. They're well named. I normally picked my way through Rockadile a bit slower than the rest of them. Fallen starts with a an off camber rock slab followed by a left turn onto a 90 right rockslab. I can do it, but by rolling from the side on to the first slab.

Then I got a FS bike I was able to keep up enough to find out that they drop blind at speed onto the slab (5ft drop?)

I looked at it and couldn't figure i'd ever be able to do it. Then one day I got the chance to go in right behind someone at the right speed. Now I can do it.

I’ve given up. Last night the I was out with the Tuesday riding group, they went ‘off trail’ to the natural downhill sections that were more than steep, with roots and holes everywhere, along with the soaking wet ground, there was so little grip. I walked both, one was so steep I couldnt even walk it with the bike, I had to let it go down on its own, as I struggled to stay upright. I’m not sure it’s even fear, I know I cant do those sections, so just dont even try any more.

This is my biggest annoyance with my riding just now...I'm just not riding what I used to and the stuff I am riding there is a big bit of me that is convinced it is going to go pear-shaped before and during and afterwards it is a genuine surprise that I managed it without coming off.

I need to find a place with a selection of drops and tech features and then find the time to just go and play on it all and build up.

It absolutely winds me up but I've not worked out yet how to stop this way of thinking.

My second annoyance is my fitness - which is slowly getting better, but I'm thinking there is a link between the 2 as when I'm feeling tired the negative thoughts are far stronger...basically, I've got myself in a place with my own biking where I'm over-analysing absolutely everything.

This is a tricky situation to explain to someone how you do it.

It's about experience, feelings, emotions and desire.

Experience - have I ridden something similar? can you apply that skill to this situation? Is there an easy way to bail if it all goes wrong?

Feelings - has the ride gone well so far? am I on a high from riding well so far?

Emotions - am I happy to take a chance today?

Desire - how much do I want to ride this? how much does this scare me? Which one is winning today?

3. I’m capable of this and I’m going to give it a go.

I've a rule that says when faced with an obstacle that I think I can do, but I'm scared, I give myself three goes at it and that's it, move on and leave it for another time. I know I'll get it eventually. That's after I've got off, had a walk of it, looked at it from all angles and had a think about the options. Sessioning, I think the young persons call it. 😉

If you are hitting things 7/10 times I think that's a strong ratio for progression.
Fear is your friend and mastering it doesn't mean switching it off.

What are the 'all gone wrong' consequences of the features you're riding 7/10 times, is the fear justified?

Sessioning for me is about mitigating the danger. Ie work on all the parts, the run in, what I need to do, the landing, the run out etc so that it isn't just a huck and hope thing. Once I have worked everything and know it isn't actually dangerous, then fear is just a feeling. Yeah, I am only really talking about dad-gaps, or dad-drops, but I would rather put the time in to get them right than avoid that trail or walk it.

As I get older and injureder I've been taking a safer choice more often than not, with only small regrets. But saying that, all of my big crashes have been on innocuous terrain anyway. My last one, I don't remember it happening at all (or the following 40 minutes, though I don't believe I was knocked out) so I'm sort of at a loss about whether to be feeling extra fear about it all or not.

Yeah, I was knocked out (I think, not sure. There were suddenly other riders shouting at me etc..?), on a soft loamy corner bashing sort of trail. I did go back and inspect the scene when I felt better and could see where my front wheel had dug in after passing a tree as I had missed the start of the berm and hit it later and deeper. I think being focussed on missing the tree had meant I had missed the start of the berm. Anyway I went back and rode it a lot until I could hit it at my (not that fast) full speed as I didn't want a mental block over that sort of thing.

The real takeaway from this was how I ended up crashing in the first place. It was because I just rode it first go and fast. I hadn't ridden it slowly or got off to check. Instead I saw some kid on a DH bike pinning it and thought it looked fine. So if you are an old fragile rider like me.... don't do that. Nothing wrong with a nice slow sighter run and then sessioning any hard bits.

I have been very slow at gaining confidence. Started MTB in earnest around autumn 2019 and there were certain parts of the Glentress Red I had to walk. It's taken me this long just to build up confidence to ride the trails at Inners or the easier Golfie trails without stopping, and still pretty slow.

For me, whilst there is a general growth in my confidence over time and I expect this to continue, I am just pretty risk averse. I have a perfectly capable modern FS bike but I am usually the slowest of us going downhill on a group ride - I think I just irrationally don't trust my body positioning, or tires or something and overthink things*

This does also vary from day to day. Sometimes I am a nervous wreck and the smallest obstacle will feel like a Hardline track. Whereas sometimes I can breeze down stuff quite readily and really feel like I have improved. Sessioning stuff that is right on the limit of my skill over and over, and gradually moving up really helps.

What is good is going back to trails you used to find hard and absolutely railing them and wondering how you ever were scared - that really buttresses my confidence for going the other direction. I still don't think I will ever have the bottle to ride the big slab at Laggan though.

*in saying that - I had a go of my mate's Enduro bike which is arguably better sized for me than my own and obvs slacker etc, and it was like an instant skill boost. Pretty nuts how big of a difference a bit of extra reach and a wheel further in front made.

Ride with others. Get to know who has a similar skill set to you and also know who is little better or a little worse. Base your concepts of what you should / could be doing on what they do.

I find a "quick look and just go" approach helps. If i stop, get off and look at something i can talk myself out of it too easily. I can switch my brain off for 5 seconds but not for 1 minute. So thats my window.

Uplift days are great for building technical skills. Being able to go back to a feature again and again helps a lot. Bike Park Wales is the best place I know for trail progression.

Also get some coaching, made a massive difference for me.

Do you have a modern bike @dickbarton? I ride stuff way harder than I used to, and I'm far less brave and generally less-skilled (ride less MTB in general). Modern geometry med / long travel bikes are just different machines to what we used to ride.

Another way of looking at it - What is the price of failure?

If you're on your own then the 0.5% chance of cocking it up and being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a compound fracture isn't worth it...

The most scared I’ve been on a bike for ages was at Llandegla.

I thought I was all done and just pootling back to the cafe. Then I was suddenly going round a steep rocky switch back with death drop. Ok so there was a wooden railing but it was a touch short ending about a foot short of my closest approach to the edge.

Shortly after that I was riding up a 15% gradient thinking how can this be a green route? Then I met some walkers. Then it slowly dawned on me that although the signs were green they were green foot steps!! I was in a walking trail

Which means the switch back was genuinely scary as no one had assessed it a rideable and the drop really was a cliff

@Garry_Lager - yeah, reasonably modern (Bird Aeris 120). After posting my admission, I suspect part of my issue is a lack of practice - most of my riding is now done as coaching kids, so the riding I do tends to be to get to a coaching spot - where I tend to be extra eyes rather than actually coaching the technique. As the coach, I'm 'happy' not to be riding the techie stuff in case I come a cropper as that would stop the coaching immediately.

When things are going well, it feels awesome, so it is possible, I just need to get the head sorted and legs/lungs firing!

I think I'm needing to get some time where I just go to the local jumps and practice them until I feel happier with what I'm doing; The local spot for some drops and practice and build up the drop height...the fear and fitness may just be convenient excuses but it might really just be complete lack of practicing stuff. Once I get more confident with that, I should have less 'fail' thoughts going on in my head and it should help start progression.

When I coach the kids, I keep telling them that practice, practice and practice some more - I should really be doing that myself as well!

What is it that freaks you out? I think that's key.

If its steep, rocky and scary but relies on little more than bigger kahonas then its a case of shutting off the brain for a little bit and just doing it. If its a gap or large drop that actually requires genuine skill then i think you really do need a certain level of confidence otherwise its far to easy to "dead sailor" it and find yourself in A&E.

Thanks for the replies everyone, there's some good stuff that's been mentioned. The video in particular was very good.
Funnily enough an example I was going to give has already been mentioned, the slab thing at Laggan.
I rode there for the first time last year. I rode pretty much everything but when it came to the slab I was shitting my pants and couldn't work out why. I've ridden similar things before so it wasn't a lack of experience, I'd been riding well all day so confidence was high but for whatever reason that particular day you couldn't have paid me to ride it. Failing to do something I know I'm capable of annoyed me so much I went back a couple of months later specifically to do it. 2nd time round I just did it with no problems.
Improving and progressing at things I enjoy is very important to me but after reading the replies I think I'm perhaps too focused on that side of things. I'll endeavour to chill out a bit in future!

Properly knowing what you're doing is the answer. That involves coaching or otherwise having the balls to screw it up several times with potential injury. I've always preferred the former which is the longer route but more satisfying as it's a solid base to go to the next level. It's very hard going back to basics for a lot of us who've been riding for years but it's a step back for five forward in my experience.

My weekend riding usually is on my own in areas Miles from home. plus at 54 I dont bounce very well. So I'm very circumspect and risk averse these days.

Out with my riding group then I'll give most stuff a go. I do find the steep enduro stuff to be beyond me these days. Massive respect for everyone who rides that stuff.