Gene Hamilton is one of a handful of coaches that specializes in mountain bike skills coaching. He’s got that rare talent of being fast (Silver and Bronze in World Downhill Championships) and knowing why and how to teach it.
I had the great pleasure of taking a one-on-one private lesson from him last year. The session opened my eyes to a different way of approaching mountain biking and, as a direct result of my time with Gene, I’ve improved my XC skills significantly over the last few months. Read the rest of this entry »
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Over the past decade the number of coaches available to the general public has risen enormously. It seemed for a long time that coaches were thought to be only for the elite athletes but that sentiment has changed in many sports. Now, with a shift in attitudes, amateur athletes benefit as much if not more from personal coaching.
I first became aware of Dave Morris through the mtbr forums in the mid 1990’s. Like any online forum, this one had passionate particpants but one in particular, MTBDOC, was a vet/masters mountain bike racer who had been coached by Dave for several years. His posts spoke
of a regular joe with normal genetic potential and a full time job, who realized significant fitness gains on limited training time.
Around that time there were some articles published in Bicycling and Mountain Bike Action that discussed some of the training principles used by Dave and I started putting some of these ideas into practice after my wife and I had our first child. I found that I was able to ride relatively well on extremely limited saddle time.
I gave up racing for a few years while our children were young but returned to the scene two years ago. I sought out Dave for some coaching to try and make a go at racing while still placing my family and regular job first. It’s one thing for coaches to train elite athletes to championships but it’s another to take a basic amateur and help them improve on their limited time schedule. I’m just a sample size of 1 but my experience with Dave’s coaching principles has been awesome, and I am riding stronger than ever before on limited training volume.
Dave agreed to an interview and I hope you’ll find it interesting. He has a unique perspective on the sport, having spent a large part of his career working with hundreds of elite and amateur level cyclists, as well as being on the front line of sports research. Read the rest of this entry »
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Niner Bikes was founded by Chris Sugai and Steve Domahidy, who both fell in love with the big-wheeled mountain bike format a couple of years ago. The pair saw a great business opportunity in the burgeoning 29″er movement and they jumped head first into their new project after many conversations and plenty of thought.
Niner Bikes focuses solely on building 29″er frames and the frames are designed in house, with great attention to detail. Prototypes are subjected to countless hours of testing in all sorts or terrain and production models are gauged according to rigorous quality controls.
Recently, the duo sat down to answer a series of questions from our very own Guitar Ted. Read the rest of this entry »
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Up until a few years ago, bicycle tire maker Kenda was known not for its top-of-the-line mountain and road bike tires, but for its low-end rubber that went on hundreds of thousands of mass merchant bikes around the world.
Started in Taiwan in 1967, Kenda was doing just fine as a business selling tires for bicycles, motorcycles and automobiles. In the early 1980s, one of the four sons of the company’s founder decided to move to the United States in hopes of improving Kenda’s market share in North America. He settled in Ohio, only because that was where Huffy, one of the largest bicycle manufacturers in the US at the time, was located.
In 1997 along came Jim Wannamaker, and he helped add a new focus to the company with the introduction of the premium line of tires. Read the rest of this entry »
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Today’s writeup by Dan is the first in an ongoing series where we ask 10 questions of somebody who works in the biking industry. While we hope that these posts are informative and entertaining, the main reason we’re doing it is to offer everyone ‘out there’ a glimpse into the inner workings of the world that is Bike.
One last thing: don’t expect weekly updates in this new category — I know that I’d break that promise — but don’t expect them to occur only once every six months either. In other words, you should be able to read another ‘10 questions’ more regularly than not. And keep in mind that each TBH contributor is free to approach this thing in their own way, so I expect that that will add a little drama to the whole thing.
Ok, ok. One more: Make sure you add your thoughts or questions after each item in the series!
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