"I Can Do It"- Rider Exudes Confidence As She Sends Whistler's Dirt Merchant

One of the most important facets of mountain biking is the mental side of it. Mountain biking is a scary sport with large dangerous features. Not being in the right headspace can be catastrophic.

Positive reinforcement is always a helpful tool. Watch as April Zastrow encourages herself and clears a large jump on Whistler’s Dirt Merchant below.

In this video, Zastrow overcomes her fear and clears this step up. This jump is an enormous feature on an already daunting trail. It requires going off a 10-foot drop and carrying speed to jump over a visibly very large gap. It is a very well-built trail and the jump works perfectly, but it is incredibly scary.

April had the following to say about her attempt.

“I was scared of the step up and had chickened out on my first attempt. After that, I immediately could feel a familiar place in my mind where I let my fear overtake me and not let me succeed. I felt if I bailed on my second attempt I would get stuck there. So I quickly made a game plan to repeat words of affirmations out loud to block out any negative talk and allow myself to commit. And as you can see in the video it worked!”

In interviews, pros talk about how important headspace is for riding bikes. As we saw with Michaela Shiffrin at the last Olympics, the wrong headspace can be devastating for athletic performance.

It is great to see a rider overcome fears and conquer scary features.

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