Learning about trick progression

Being in Cape Town during its windy season has afforded me not only refuge from the long winter back at home in the UK but also some of the best riding I have seen in a long time.

As everyone knows, Cape Town is where many of the pros come during winter.  Its consistent, varied and sometimes challenging conditions make for a perfect training ground and no better place for Progression to capture some of these tricks, trials and tribulations for our usual eye of analysis.

My job the last few days has been to log all of the footage we are shooting – 400 clips one day, 300 clips the next.  I am seeing back mobes in my sleep now! What this task has provided me with though is the concept and construct of trick progression – the foundation and obsession of the Progression brand itself!

Rob laughed at me (as I am sure most would) as I diagnosed ‘advanced’ tricks through my ‘intermediate’ eyes but I found it personally useful so that’s why I am sharing. Breaking down a trick with a random name means you actually understand what it is as well as giving you easy steps to learn the trick components separately first before putting them all together.  For example:

Back Mobe – Layman’s description:

A Back Mobe is an unhooked backroll, into another the same way whilst passing the bar in the air.

Back Mobe – Official Description:

A Back Mobe is a powered unhooked backroll with a frontside 360 with an airpass.

From this description we can work out the progressions up to this trick:

• Powered Unhooked Back Roll
• Powered Unhooked back Roll with ‘frontside 180’ (which is effectively just landing toeside)
• Powered unhooked backroll with a ‘frontside 360’ landing wrapped (without passing the bar) which is also called a ‘Back to Wrapped’
• Then you can make the final step by passing the bar – and voila, you have nailed a Back Mobe.

Check out this ‘Trick Progression’ video for the Back Mobe that we filmed  at the awesome spot brandvlei

As I said, essentially this is ‘Progression’ in a nutshell.  Breaking down the tricks into smaller elements so you can learn it easily, methodically and safely.

In addition to our core trick coverage on the DVDs we are slowly building a huge online library of every trick (its at about 500 now!) that can help you understand the composition and relationship of any trick you can possibly want to learn.

So there really is no excuse to be doing those same tricks session after session any more!  Get the most out of your session and learn more with Progression.