Upgrade Your Off-Road Riding Skills With Enduro Champ Chris Birch

[DirtBag]

While many of us are eagerly anticipating the next time we’re able to go out and have a proper ride, we’re probably not thinking a lot about rider training right now. After all, that involves other people, right? Even if you love to take hands-on rider training courses and advance your skills, other people just aren’t a good idea right now.  

Thankfully, while a certain degree of hands-on training is undoubtedly helpful, not everything has to be that way. It also doesn’t have to involve another person, particularly if you’re the kind of rider who can pick stuff up from watching helpful coaching videos during your down time. That’s where eight-time New Zealand enduro champion and off-road coach Chris Birch comes in. 

Birch has been riding enduro competitively for years, and has podiumed seven times at Red Bull Romaniacs, even winning it outright in 2010. He’s also New Zealand’s most successful Dakar Rally competitor. The guy knows his stuff, and to help support his off-road competition habit, he’s been coaching and training other riders so that they learn their own stuff, too.  

While Birch does offer hands-on courses in New Zealand, Australia, and on demand globally, he’s also just unveiled his brand-new Vimeo off-road training video course. It’s called Say No To Slow, and while we all know that no amount of video watching can ever replace hours of seat time, drilling important concepts into your head can help all of us improve our skills when we’re back out on our bikes.  

In total, there are 16 training videos available right now on Vimeo On Demand, which you can buy separately if you like, or purchase the whole lot for US $35. From standing position on your bike and off-road bike setup, to high-speed slides and log-jumping, Birch’s video series is also available with both English and Spanish subtitles. The whole thing lasts a little over three hours if you wanted to watch every clip back-to-back.  

No matter your level of experience, there’s always something new to learn, some new skill level within yourself that you can unlock. This might be a great way to do exactly that! 

Sources: Vimeo, Chris Birch 

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[Grace (BikeHedonia)]

I remember someone asking him, "was racing Dakar hard?" and he laughed and said no - because all he had to do was ride. In fact, it was the only race event where he actually put ON weight (from all the Argentine barbecues he would stop at between the end of the stage and the bivouac point).  The thing that made it easy was having a support team to do the maintenance and logistics. "No, Dakar wasn't hard," he said. "Not compared to all those years racing small enduro eventus in New Zealand every weekend - you'd drive down on Friday night, race Saturday and Sunday, work on the bikes on Saturday night, and drive back on Sunday night, and then get up on Monday morning and go and do your real job. That was hard."

So, kudos to him for having put in the hard yards to get to a place where he gets to ride motorbikes for a living, and for being a nice bloke too.