I’ve been riding for a number of years, with a bit of racing for fun. For teaching I had coached casually for a couple years and had previously taken the PMBI Level 1 Instructor course, in New Zealand.

At the beginning of the year I was pretty burnt out from study and work, so I decided to take a break from study, quit my full time desk job and book a trip to Whistler for 7 weeks of pure riding! I was keen to do a MTB camp to improve my skills, ride some new tracks, meet some new people, and most importantly have a good time.

The ZEP Instructor Training camp appealed to me as I had been instructing MTB casually for a couple of years, and had taken part in a level one course run by Paul when PMBI visited NZ. I was keen to learn more about MTB coaching so I could be a better instructor, and knew that ZEP and PMBI are good at what they do and that I would gain a lot from spending a few weeks with them.

I already had my PMBI Level 1 from New Zealand, so I kind of had pretty high expectations. The three day Level 1 was great, but now I had signed up for a five week training camp with ZEP, in Whistler! Like anything that's expensive, you hope it's worthwhile. I was hoping my riding would be pushed to the next level and I really wanted to learn more about teaching. Really break it down, learn more about riding techniques and different teaching and coaching methods to pass them on to students.

The course itself was awesome! Five weeks of riding and learning with a brilliant crew of people in the Whistler Bike Park - this was my first time in Whistler and it blew my mind! I really wanted to work on improving my own riding and had never been taught/coached before other than the level 1 course, so working with some excellent coaches was so valuable.

A highlight of the camp for me was the confidence boost from having a trained eye believe that, "yes you can" ride that feature. This helped me push myself and I managed to ride some features and trails I don't think I would have ridden otherwise. Stoke levels were high! I am now so much more aware of my own riding, techniques I can use in different situations, things I can do to improve, and what I can experiment with.

Having had this deep exploration into my own riding has made it easier to convey concepts and techniques to others while instructing. Also, appreciating what a good coach can do for a rider has totally validated what an awesome job being an mtb instructor is! It is rewarding knowing that as an instructor you can contribute to helping a rider learn something new or improve themselves in some way. The ZEP and PMBI coaches were brilliant!

I was offered a job with the Whistler Mountain Bike Park and started work as a DFX coach on the dailies program, coaching kids. A few days in, I got a call from my manager and was asked whether I wanted to take a club group for the summer, as I had my Level 2 and they needed someone who could coach jumping. I thought this sounded ideal, as I would be able to teach the same kids all summer and see them progress, which is one of the reasons I love coaching. This was the best decision I made, as I had an awesome season, teaching some kids that, at the start of the season, were easily lapping black trails like A-line and Original Sin and working on double black trails. I also took 2 of my groups on ‘Top of the World’ - one of my goals for the season.

I was busy most of the summer with lessons, working a minimum of 35 hours a week. My riding improved dramatically and I rode pretty much every trail in the Bike Park! September and October were a lot quieter, so I really had a chance to work on my personal riding. During the whole season, I rode more than 400 laps and descended over 150,000 vertical metres.

One of the season highlights was Crankworx, which I would thoroughly recommend to all bikers. Most major bike companies come to Whistler for the event and allow you to demo their bikes which is cool. I met lots of pro riders and saw all the events in person, including Red Bull Joyride from the VIP area (courtesy of a parent of one of the kids I was teaching - thank you again for that Kevin!)

I came away from the course with a bunch of new friends from around the world, a Level 2 PMBI instructor qualification, and a whole load of new knowledge ready to put into practice, as well as having the best Summer of riding ever with some awesome people! I look forward to continuing to work on improving my instructing and riding from here and having a good time doing it.

I've since got a job co-ordinating a youth mtb programme, and instructing womens mtb workshops in New Zealand for Summer, and will be heading back to Canada on a work visa next summer where I hope to continue working as an instructor. Thanks ZEP for helping me get the skills to do such a cool job!

I have been riding mountain bikes for around 12 years, beginning in the UK and then in New Zealand for the last 10 years. Whilst mountain biking has always been my passion, I have also enjoyed riding bikes of other shapes and sizes. The technical and physical progression within mountain biking is why I love it so much, feeling your riding improve is just so satisfying, which is probably why I have focused on Mountain Biking for so long.

I have never really been a competitive rider, I prefer getting out on my trail bike and exploring the wilderness or cutting some laps at the bike park with some pals. There is nothing better than getting on a bike and silencing all the day to day thoughts in my mind.

I have ridden throughout most of New Zealand, making some amazing friends along the way and riding some of the worlds best trails. I hope it continues that way!

I signed up for a ZEP camp for two main reasons. First, I wanted to make a positive move away from my stable office job into the MTB industry. I decided that I was going to follow my dreams, and work towards a role in MTB coaching. Second, I wanted to be able to share my passion for the sport, get people stoked on riding their bikes and help progress their riding skills.

Before I had signed up to a ZEP camp, I was finding that I was being asked by beginner riders how to perform certain manoeuvres on their bikes – for example one rider asked me “how can I corner faster?”. I’d consider myself a competent rider, but most of my riding skills have come from experience and sometimes learning the hard way. Put simply, I didn’t have a clue what to say to the guy. I struggled to explain what I was doing with either my bike or body, and why I was doing it – it was all locked within my subconscious and muscle memory. Despite my years of riding, I wasn’t able to offer much more than “I dunno, you just do it”.

It made me think that it would be so rewarding to be able to break down manoeuvres like cornering, offer some quality advice on how its done, and see this guy’s riding improve. So, I signed up to a ZEP five week camp to get the understanding and skills to become an instructor. I quit my office job the following week and have never looked back!

I had never had any experience with coaching before, so I was coming into the ZEP camp with an open mind and ready to learn. I just made sure that I kept my eyes and ears open at all times to learn as much as I could!

The ZEP camp was undoubtedly the best five weeks I have had on a mountain bike. Perhaps more importantly, I also found it was the most valuable five weeks on a mountain bike. The camp was an incredible learning experience, both for improving my own riding and learning how to teach others to improve theirs, too.

The instructors at ZEP were awesome, it was great to spend time with each instructor and listen to their individual perspectives on different subjects. Whether it was about my riding or teaching, each instructor offered constructive, friendly feedback on how to improve. Putting the feedback into practice often ended up with a ‘lightbulb’ moment, noticing the improvement is a fantastic feeling. It was cool to see how each instructor has developed their own style of teaching, and each one noticed different things about my riding. The quality and depth of instruction was a huge highlight for me. Off the bikes, ZEP were always available to help out in any way and really made you feel looked after.

The PMBI courses within the camp gave a great goal to focus on and work towards. Being with the ZEP instructors prior to the PMBI courses meant that I was familiar with the concepts within the courses, but the courses still had a huge amount of fresh material. The PMBI courses had more of a emphasis on practice teaching and working from the PMBI framework on how to teach skills and manoeuvres. I particularly loved learning about the biomechanics and physics behind these skills – and then learning how to communicate these to students.

What better location than Whistler to ride for five weeks? Having the choice of either riding the bike park or exploring the local trail networks was great - the riding in Whistler is everything I had heard about, and more. Our condo was on Blackcomb mountain, an ideal launching pad to explore the Blackcomb mountain trails on “rest” days.

The other ZEP campers were a brilliant bunch of people to share the experience with. I know that they will be lifetime friends, and there are plenty of future rides and beers that will be had together!

Since the ZEP camp, I’ve moved to Queenstown in New Zealand. I am working in a bike shop at the moment and getting involved within the local scene, meeting new people and riding heaps. My intention is to return to Whistler for the 2018 season and work in the bike park as an instructor, which the PMBI qualifications have enabled me to do. I love living in NZ and my long term goal is to guide or teach mountain biking here.

I can really feel myself applying the concepts and teaching points from the ZEP camp and PMBI courses to make sure my riding is always improving. As a bit of a side effect of having acquired this knowledge, I have now become my own number one critic – usually getting through sections of trail, thinking how I can change things to make me ride it better next time!

At the end of our second to last day of riding, our instructor gave us a few options of what we could potentially ride on our last day. One of the campers flippantly suggested a heli drop followed by a bit of chuckle. Well, ZEP had the chopper booked and organized everything within an hour, and we all had a once in a lifetime ride down rainbow mountain the following morning.

This was a perfect example of the flexibility of the camp and the efforts of ZEP’s crew to make the camp as rad as possible. After about a billion pictures, we finally got down the mountain and took a dip in the lake – a fairy-tale end to the camp!

Most importantly, I feel like if someone asked me a question on what to do to improve an aspect of their riding, I could now answer it with confidence. The ZEP camp and PMBI courses have given me a logical structure to teach from, a much deeper understanding of the sport and some awesome experiences to share with other riders.

I have been mountain biking since I was two, visited my first trail centre when I was 6 and entered my first xc race when I was 9. Since then, I have competed in multiple xc races and xc orienteering competitions. When I was 12, I completed a 100km (1700m climb) off road ride around the Isle of White. In my early teens, I started to shift my riding more towards gravity riding at trail centres and downhill centres with uplifts and competed in Enduro events around England and Wales.

On a Family holiday to the USA, I rode at Snowmass and had my first taste of chairlift assisted riding and was instantly hooked. I went to a skills clinic and by the end of the day, I rode down their hardest trail, Valhalla, clearing all the jumps and features; one of the best trails I had ridden at that point. I thought the guy running my lesson had a pretty cool job and that maybe I could do that one day. The next summer, I rode at Les Arcs in the French Alps and this greatly improved my downhill riding skills, giving me more confidence on steep terrain, roots, drops and jumps.

In summer 2016, I finished school and on the day of my last exam, I flew out to New Zealand, for their winter season, where I took the Snowtrainers’ Snowboard Instructor training course and passed my Children’s Certification, Level 1 and Level 2 SBINZ qualifications. As soon as I was qualified, I was itching to instruct and arranged to spend the 16/17 winter in Japan as a Snowboard instructor, which was a truly amazing experience. I was blown away by the amount of snow and my riding and teaching greatly improved. I gained experience teaching a large variety of people from diverse backgrounds, with a range of skill levels and goals and this helped to progress my teaching.

My positive experiences instructing in other disciplines, such as tennis and snowboarding, gave me the desire to instruct mountain biking and to receive the same satisfaction in seeing my students progress, in another of the sports that I love. I did some research about courses and found the ZEP course in Whistler and I thought what better place to do a season and a training course, than the capital of mountain biking.

The course also sounded great, as the methodology (PMBI) has a lot of similarities with snowboarding, so this would allow me to transfer over my previous knowledge to a new sport. I also liked how the exams we would be taking were the official qualifications of Whistler Bike Park, which are internationally recognized, and how the course set you up well for a job at the Bike Park.

I did not have high expectations of the accommodation as on the snowboard instructor course, the accommodation in New Zealand was very primitive, with 4 people in bunk beds crammed in tiny rooms and no hot water or heating for some of the time. When I arrived in Whistler, I was very surprised to find how awesome the accommodation was - large rooms, balconies, hot tub, fire pit, large, comfy lounge area with a massive tv, secure bike storage and a gondola set up as a workshop with tools and bike stands for maintaining bikes.

I initially planned to do the 3-week course and take my Level 1 PMBI and then take my Level 2 at the end of the season. However, a few weeks before the course, I was offered the opportunity to extend my course and take the Level 2 as well.

I drew up the pros and cons and decided it was worth the gamble as PMBI offers a free resit and I was planning to take my Level 2 at the end of the season anyway. I was a bit apprehensive about the progression I would need to make in my riding, in such a short time, to pass my Level 2 and was worried about the risk of injury, but my coach Duncan Mainland did a great job at keeping me safe and getting my riding up to scratch!

On the 1st day the coaches sorted us into groups based on an initial skills assessment performing various manoeuvres, such as bunny hops and wheel lifts and a game of foot down (riding in an enclosed area and not being allowed to put our feet down). We then proceeded onto our first xc ride of the camp around Lost Lake. When I came onto the course I considered myself a reasonable rider and thought I could tackle some pretty tough stuff in the UK; Whistler soon proved this wrong. The most challenging trails we rode were blues and they were up there with some of the harder xc trails I had ridden before. It was sick! And what was with all the wood?!

I wasn’t quite prepared for how intense the riding days were going to be and came home each day completely exhausted. We stayed at Bear Back Biking’s chalet and I need to give a big shout out to Will, the chef, who managed to keep 13 hungry bikers satisfied every day, with truly delicious meals - I still miss those brownies!

Soon enough, it was Bike Park Opening Day. The night before we had all been watching youtube videos of various trails and a wave of fear/excitement began to build. I didn’t sleep much that night, it was Whistmass! 1st chair we were all buzzing, couldn’t wait to ride! We rode down ‘Easy Does It’ to begin with; a lap many coaches got to know very well, when teaching beginner lessons. Throughout the rest of day, we worked our way through some blue tech trails and then in the afternoon worked on our jumping technique, before getting a couple of laps in on ‘Crank It Up’. I loved it! Then to finish off a great 1st week we had ‘apres’ at the GLC, all included as part of the course, which was a nice touch. Week two was spent working on a mix of riding and teaching and everyone improved dramatically! Second half of the week was exam time and everyone was nervous again. This had come around very quickly! I learnt a lot during the exam and nearly everyone else passed 1st time. The person who didn’t, passed the following week. There was a big celebration that night and our first chance to discover the Whistler night life, which is lively!

Week three was about rider development and my group were tackling some double blacks, including some favourites such as ‘Dirt Merchant’ and ‘Schleyer’ and getting comfortable lapping ‘A Line’, which was awesome! At the end of the week we were given special access, to take the gondola to the top of Whistler for a snow ride! This involved a lot of crashes as we all careered down ski runs out of control, but was great fun and we all made it down in one piece. However, I didn’t realize quite how tired I was, when I returned through the Bike Park, I crashed on our lap down ‘A Line’ - goodbye helmet 1! Still, riding down the snow was an amazing experience and one I shall remember for the rest of my life. The last weeks concentrated on Level 2, riding much harder trails and learning how to teach advanced level riders on them, with a focus on jumps and drops. I improved a huge amount, but was still worried whether I was at the standard required for the exam. I worked hard over the weekend on both my teaching and riding and studied the manual as much as I could. Soon enough exam week came around and the nerves for everyone were high again. I went through the exam riding to the best of my ability and tried to give the best lessons I could and before I knew it the exam was over.

That was it! Five weeks and several thousand pounds invested into what was now going to be a pass/fail result, that would impact my coming instructing season. Waiting and not knowing whether I passed was the hardest part, my mind and heart were racing! Paul eventually called us all in and started handing out results, not many people had certificates and when he gave me the papers. I saw my results sheet and no certificate and thought I had failed. I then realized the certificate was hidden behind - I had done it! I’d passed!!!

The training provided on the course was super relevant to the industry and set me up very well for the PMBI exams. It provided a lot of information in a short period of time and the trainers were good at explaining everything. The riding training was also great, teaching me things I would previously not even have considered doing on my bike, that initially felt completely wrong and daunting, but when you got used to them, worked very well and made sense. I found the training really helped me as an instructor and has set me up in a good position to progress to higher levels and to continue down my career path as an instructor for snowboarding and mountain biking.

Having my Level 2 and working in Whistler, also set me up very well to get pro deals with bike companies, bike clothing brands and bike equipment manufacturers. I made lots of new friends from all around the World, on both the course and my season in Whistler, they were just as stoked on biking as I am and they will always be people I can go riding with.