Fear of features
Posted on 27th March 2025 at 16:18
Fear is a natural part of mountain biking. In fact, learning how to manage fear is a skill in itself—one that can make your riding safer and more fun and progressive.
Where Does Fear Come From?
Understanding fear is the first step to overcoming it. Fear is born from the unknown. If you don’t know how something will feel, how your bike will react, or how you’ll land, your brain will naturally signal danger. On top of that, fear often manifests in high-emotion moments—recognising this is crucial to managing it.
How to Reduce the Unknown
Once you know which feature you want to tackle, your job is to reduce the ‘unknowns’ surrounding it. Let’s say it’s a drop-off. What aspects feel uncertain? The technique? The feeling of airtime? The landing?
You can tackle these uncertainties in two ways:
Build confidence on smaller versions – Find smaller drops and practise until they feel natural, so you’re not overthinking technique when you step up.
Visualise success – Top athletes use visualisation to prepare for big challenges. Picture every step of the drop: rolling in, taking off, airtime, landing smoothly, and riding away with confidence.
Managing Your Emotions
Even after reducing the unknowns, emotions can still run high—and that’s completely normal. The trick is to shift from emotional thinking to practical thinking. Fear-based emotions won’t help you complete the feature, but focusing on a key technique will.
Use a mental cue, a simple phrase to focus on during your approach. For drops, something like “move late” can remind you to shift your weight at the right time. Keep it simple and clear.
Decide Early
This is one of the most effective strategies for tackling a feature for the first time. Don’t wait until you’re dropping in to decide whether you’re going for it—make your decision before you push back to the start.
A good approach is:
Scope the feature – Take a good look at it and analyse the run-in.
Test the run-in – Roll in without committing, just to get a feel for speed.
Visualise – Replay the successful execution in your mind.
Commit before you start your final approach – your mind might try to second-guess you, but once you’ve gone through the process, trust yourself and drop in.
Recap: The Step-by-Step Process
Practise on smaller, similar features to build confidence.
Test the run-in to get comfortable with speed and approach.
Visualise yourself successfully completing the feature.
Think practically by using a simple mental cue.
Decide to commit before you get to the top.
Final tip is to ride with friends when trying new things, it's fun, helps build confidence and it's a whole lot safer. Enjoy!
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