Photos: Tandem Photography (Unless Noted)
A one-day skills clinic can change the way you think about riding. A good coach can show you what proper body position looks like, walk you through braking technique, and give you a few drills to work on. You'll leave feeling like something clicked.
But here's the thing: knowing what to do and doing it instinctively when the trail gets steep and rough are two very different things. That gap — between understanding and automatic execution — is where real speed lives. And closing that gap takes time.
The Problem With One-Off Coaching
Skills clinics are valuable. We're not knocking them. But they have a limitation: you learn something new, go home excited, and then... slowly drift back to your old habits. Without repetition, without someone watching and correcting, the new patterns don't stick.
Your body defaults to what it knows when things get hard. If you've been braking too late into corners for three years, one afternoon of drills isn't going to override that. You need weeks of practice, in varied terrain, with coaching feedback along the way.
How Progressive Training Actually Works
Untamed runs 12 weeks for a reason. Each phase builds on the last:
Early weeks focus on fundamentals — body position, braking zones, basic cornering. We're not trying to make you faster yet. We're fixing the habits that are holding you back and building a foundation that can support speed later.
Middle weeks add complexity. Steeper terrain, linking sections together, reading the trail further ahead. The fundamentals start becoming automatic, which frees up mental bandwidth for higher-level decisions.
Final weeks are about application. Longer descents, race-pace efforts, technical features that would have felt sketchy in week one. By now, you're not thinking about body position — you're just riding faster.
It's Not Just Bike Skills
The on-bike coaching is the core of the program, but it's supported by off-season strength training with Enhanced Performance. There's a reason for that: your body needs to be capable of holding the positions that make you fast.
Core stability keeps you balanced when the trail gets choppy. Eccentric leg strength lets you absorb impacts without getting bucked. Upper body endurance means you're not fatigued and tense halfway down a long descent. All of that translates directly to speed — not because you're fitter, but because your body can do what your brain is asking it to do.
The Confidence Factor
Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough: hesitation is slow. When you're unsure about a line or a feature, you brake check, you tense up, you second-guess. All of that scrubs speed.
Confidence isn't just a feeling — it's a performance factor. And confidence comes from repetition. From cleaning something ten times until it's boring. From having a coach confirm that yes, you're doing it right, so you can commit fully next time.
Twelve weeks of structured progression builds that confidence systematically. By the end of the season, you're not hoping you can make a section — you know you can, because you've done it.
Coached by People Who Actually Race
The coaches behind Untamed aren't just certified — they're competitive racers who spend their weekends on start gates and podiums. That matters. When someone tells you to commit earlier or hold your speed through a section, it helps to know they've done it under a clock, with consequences.
There's a difference between knowing the theory and having raced the same trails you're learning on. Our coaches have both.
Join Untamed 2026
Registration is open December 15th through February 15th.
