Transcript
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In this episode, we're going to take a deep dive into the world of mountain biking with Josh Whitmore, owner and head coach of Mountain Bike Skills Factory.
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We're going to hear Josh's inspiring journey from his roots in Brevard, north Carolina, to becoming a leading mountain bike instructor with over 25 years of coaching experience and a professional racing career.
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Josh explores the evolution of trails, the rise of bike parks like Canuga, chestnut Mountain and Old Fort, and why certified instruction is essential for all riders, and we're going to learn expert tips on body positioning, common rider mistakes and how to find the right coach.
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Plus, we're going to get insights into the craftsmanship behind high-quality mountain bikes and the comprehensive approach to Mountain Bike Skills Factory.
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Whether you're a beginner or seasoned rider, this episode is packed with tips and inspiration to take your ride and mine to the next level.
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I'll see you on the other side.
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You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique.
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My name is Mike Andrus, the host of Exploration Local.
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Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel the spirit of adventure.
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We encourage you to wander far, but explore local.
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Let's go.
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I'm excited to have Josh Whitmore with me today.
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He is the owner and head coach of Mountain Bike Skills Factory.
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Josh, welcome to the show.
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Excellent.
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Yeah, thanks for having me.
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One of the things that's really cool is that you are a member of the PMBIA, which I just learned is the Professional Mountain Bike Instructors Association.
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You do this not only here in Western North Carolina, but you do it all across the country and you're the most active instructor in all the country for the PMBIA.
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That's pretty big stuff, man.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So in addition to my company that runs in this region, the Mountain Bike Skills Factory, I also work for the Professional Mountain Bike Instructor Association to teach the certification courses for other mountain bike instructors.
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So the PMBIA is the professional certifying body for mountain bike instructors and so I do a lot of staff training for other skills schools and guide services and summer camps and bike parks and that sort of thing.
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So offer a lot of those courses here, my home zone, but then I travel quite a lot around the United States to teach those as well.
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So that's amazing.
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Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
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Let's go back in time a little bit.
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And when did you catch this passion for mountain biking, and when did it just sort of begin to take on its own trajectory?
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Yeah, I really started from riding my bike to school.
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Honestly, is that?
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Uh, so I had a single dad and he was worked at the DuPont plant, the x-ray film plant when it would be before it was a state forest.
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There was an actual like x-ray film plant there.
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So he was a shift worker and, you know, worked rotating shifts and so I was kind of a feral child a lot of the time.
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And so, you know, I'd started riding a bike to school, just so I could get to school on my own time or come back from swim practice or whatever else I was doing.
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And so that was kind of where I started riding and there were trails in Pisgah, you know.
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So I grew up in Brevard and there were trails right there.
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So, yeah, it was.
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It was kind of a natural thing to start exploring on the bike as a 12 or 13 year old and start to, you know, my own time, to just like, well, where else can I go on this thing?
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And it's like, oh, I can go into the forest and I can ride, there's trails I can ride on.
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So that's kind of how it all got started for me.
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Cool.
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And then, at what point in your life did you really kind of figure out that man?
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Helping people, coaching people, teaching people it's a thing that you are passionate about, and the reason I asked that question like how far back it goes is because in my experience, there are people that don't just sort of turn on the switch and all of a sudden they go oh, I'm going to go coach.
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There's like something in their life has kind of built up to that point or something that they realize they just like helping people, helping instruction, connecting dots with people, learning new skills, all that kind of stuff.
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I don't want to project that on you, so maybe that doesn't exist.
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No, no, it does, it does, yeah.
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So I guess, uh, when I was a teenager and I started working at summer camps, so there was a lot of summer camps in the area and obviously, and so then back then, um, mountain biking was a kind of a new activity to the to summer camps.
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You know, mountain, uh, summer camps are starting to get bikes and have that as a program for the kids and there wasn't a whole lot of prior experience with that, and so basically it was the kind of thing where, like, they figured out that I had rode mountain bikes and then like, naturally, like, oh, that means you're in charge of the mountain bike program.
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And then I was also had a local kid scholarship to Brevard college.
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So I was the part of the first graduating class of the wilderness leadership, leadership and Experiential Education degree program at Brevard College when it was transitioning way back then it was transitioning from a two-year junior college to a four-year program.
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So I was the first of the graduating bachelor degrees from Brevard College the first year, proud to say I was valedictorian.
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There were two of us.
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I beat out the other guy by a few grade points, you know, both of us kind of struggled through but we made it.
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But anyway.
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So that wilderness leadership program was.
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I'm not sure exactly why I was interested in that.
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I think maybe because of summer camp world and it's like, oh, this seems like a neat thing to be able to.
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Outdoor education in general seemed like something I was interested in, although somewhere along in the lines I started out with general education classes there and then I had there was this outdoor ed class and I didn't really understand what it was.
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But I saw that they went backpacking, rock climbing, whitewater kayaking and some other things like all in one class and I was like that sounds like a cool class.
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That's for me, yeah, so I'm going to do that.
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And then it was about halfway through the semester that I figured out that, like wait, wait, wait, wait, you're trying to teach me how to teach other people to do these things.
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Like no, I don't know about that, I just want to do it.
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I would just rather do the things like.
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I don't know about this teaching it thing, so I felt like I kind of got hoodwinked into it but it but it turned out to fit and uh and worked out pretty well and so that's kind of where I got started with it.
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So I guess I've been I mean been teaching mountain bike lessons really for I mean 20, more than 25 years now.
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It's been quite a long time.
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That hasn't been full-time.
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All that time, you know, worked at summer camps and was teaching some there and then and then I was a professional mountain bike racer after that.
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So I went into mountain bike racing and a lot of different kinds of bicycle racing, but I'm a professional on the mountain bike.
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All right.
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And then I always coached a little bit on the side, so I would always do a little bit of lessons here and there.
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And then as I got further in that career, I did more coaching on the side.
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And then when I eventually got too old to make any money racing anymore, then coaching kind of tapered off and racing tapered off, coaching took off and then.
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So now I've been coaching full time since 2015 or 2016 or something like that.
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So that's cool, that's so, that's so fantastic.
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I love it when you could finish with a sport, but the sport's not really finished with you yet and it's your time to sort of give back and kind of help the next generation sort of come along.
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I just really had this conversation recently with someone who's like well, you know, like, do you ever see yourself doing something that's not bikes?
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And I was kind of like, well, you know, my whole life, you know, it's like I'm sort of like built into being an expert in one thing.
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I could start over.
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But you know, I would have to start over, you know, I would have to like start from nothing, you know.
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So it's sort of like I don't feel like I'm trapped in it.
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I don't feel like I'm trapped in it, I love doing it, but it's also kind of like all of my background kind of leading to where I am now.
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That's great.
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So 25 years of coaching, and I'm thinking that's probably about the time maybe a little bit before that when I started actually mountain biking and getting out and there wasn't a whole lot of this instruction.
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Back then it really was hey, if you find a group of people, that they have a common interest and if you can pedal without your chain falling off, let's just go kind of explore and start doing the things right.
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And so I'm amazed at that that there was instruction that goes back that far.
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I guess I am and I'm not, but I mean it makes sense, especially if you're in this area or any of the areas where you have such great natural assets too.
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But I'm really curious to know from your perspective, like over the last let's call it two decades, how have you seen the popularity of mountain biking expand and grow?
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And you know, were there parts of that where it was slow and then all of a sudden there's been a spike.
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I mean it seems like COVID has not has a whole lot to do with it, but during COVID that was a pretty big time where people were getting outside, but there's an explosion right now of trail building and people getting into the industries and bikes for all price points and all those sorts of things.
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So how have you seen it from your perspective, because you've been into it.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And then I guess, growing up in this area in Brevard and being a part of you in Western North Carolina and most of my life, I'd say that you know it really kind of dovetails nicely with the story of transition of the area from, you know, mountain extraction industries to, you know, recreation tourism.
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You know it happened to be that there were already some resources here that made it easy for recreation tourism to expand.
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You know.
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So we had national forests you know Pisgah National Forest and Nantahala National Forest and you know that were there was existing trail systems and that sort of thing.
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You know I'm old enough to remember when mountain biking first became a thing that we started riding mountain bikes on trails in Pisgah and you know we would be on a bike somewhere like way out in the forest and hikers would.
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We'd come across hikers and they would look at us and be like how did you get that thing here?
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You rode a bicycle here and you know we'd be like it's a mountain bike.
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They'd be like that's the wildest thing I've ever seen.
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Too funny.
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You know.
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So, back then there weren't trails that were open to bikes or closed to bikes, there were just trails.
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And then, you know, we started riding bikes on them and you know, eventually, you know the, with more and more riding happening, you know, then certain trails became, uh, okay, to ride bikes, and other ones they, you know, they made hiking only, or horses, you know, whatever it was.
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So they kind of like separated some of those out.
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But so I would say that that you know we had a nice advantage of the of the location as far as the mountains, and then you know all existing national forest and trails and that sort of thing that made all of that kind of easy.
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But yeah, pretty early on even actually, this Western North Carolina became a kind of a mountain bike Mecca and that there were because there are already existing trails.
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Then people were riding bikes on and they're quite good for bikes that people came from all over to ride them, and so it became known in that area.
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I should find this article.
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There was an article in like a bicycle magazine or something from the early nineties that ranked uh, avery Creek downhill or Avery Creek trail in Pisgah national forest is one of the top three downhills in the country, or something like this.
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It was like early nineties, you know early, kind of more early days of of mountain biking.
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But you know, it kind of held that prestige just because it was already here.
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It kind of held that prestige just because it was already here.
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Yeah Well, we talked about that a little bit before we started recording of just how much this area is a mecca, and I was sharing some stories about people who have lived here.
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They've moved out west and obviously the thought of everything out there is bigger and better, but there's people that say no, with a mountain bike there's so much more concentrated trails that we can ride here and they really kind of prefer a lot of that single track that's in this whole region.
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That's characteristic of this region.
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Yeah, yeah, I'd say so.
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There's a lot of variety here as well, and we can ride year-round.
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It never gets real hot in the summer and then in the winter it might snow a little bit, but wait a couple days and you're back riding on the trails again.
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So we tend to be able to ride year round.
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And then we kind of have these this size mountain that is good for hiking and for mountain biking in the way that they're.
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They're big enough to make it exciting and difficult and challenging, but not so big that they're that there's unused terrain, you know you can think about like you know the biggest, the biggest mountains in Colorado or wherever.
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you know there's there's not mountain bike trails on the highest, biggest mountains in Colorado.
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You know there's kind of there's sort of a zone of elevation and steepness and stuff that makes sense for mountain bikes and you know that's kind of describes all of our mountains here honestly.
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So we have really good terrain in that way and you know weather and you know all that sort of thing.
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So it it makes makes for a perfect storm in that way.
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Yeah.
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So let's talk a little bit before we get into the instruction part, cause we really want to focus on that too.
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Just the trails in general.
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So we know that there's a lot of them and they're all accessible and we have within a day's drive so many, I mean from New York, from, you know, from the Keys to New York.
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I mean people can be here, within a day to enjoy.
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But you also talk about the variety of the different trails for all different levels.
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And then I'd love to touch just a little bit on your perspective of seeing, really, at least in our region, Western North Carolina the explosion of mountain bike trails that are being made out there too.
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Well, I guess, as you know, it all started with, you know, the trails that were in the national forest, the existing trails that were there, which were really kind of co-opted from like logging, extraction routes, and you know we're talking about like old logging roads and old you know, logging trails that would go between hunting or logging camps and stuff like that.
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But you think about, like you know, the Brevard zone of Pisgah and then over at Solly and Nantahala National Forest were, you know, some of the hotbeds of those existing trails, and then you know we started getting some other, you know, like DuPont State Forest, that came on board and then they, some of them, like a lot of the trails they were purpose built to be multi-use for mountain bikes, hikers and horses, and so that was early days of professional trail building and trail design to be able to accommodate those different trail users on the same surfaces, which Pisgah never really had.
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We just kind of adopted the trails that were already there in Pisgah.
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So how to make the trails sustainable?
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We live in a place that gets an incredible amount of rain, so and how do you build a trail that lasts, you know, with that amount of rain and that amount of traffic and all that sort of thing?
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So that that was interesting.
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And then you know, with the boom of recreation, tourism in general and then just the sport of mountain biking, then you know other sort of commercial endeavors, like private property that people build trails on and then charge a fee to ride them, or shuttle services that you know shuttle you to the top of the mountain so you don't have to pedal all the way up there, and that sort of thing.
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So we've got, you know, several new bike parks in the area, like you know Canuga Bike Park and Rock Creek Bike Park.
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And with the amount of people that do ride in this area in general, even the National Forest is trying to expand the amount of trails.
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So you think about all the new trails that are being developed around Old Fort and the.
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G5 Collective and all of that stuff is sort of concentrated to try to be able to build additional terrain so that to relieve some of the overuse pressure in maybe the more popular bits.
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With all that said, yeah, it seems like every year here there's a new trail system that's open.
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You think about like Fire Mountain Trail System in Cherokee or Chestnut Trail System in Chestnut Mountain in Bicanton, and some of those are free and municipal owned, city owned, state owned.
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Some of them, like Canuga or Rock Creek, are private property, commercial things.
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There's more of that coming too.
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There's going to be a new one open in Old Fort called the Watershed Bike Park.
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That's going to be probably still another year out or so, but they're already building trails there.
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That's so great.
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There are a lot of trails and there are a lot of people that look to this place as a mecca, that look to this place as a Mecca.
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So it only stands to reason that instruction, and really good quality, certified instruction, is taking off as well.
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And that's what you're doing, that's the niche that you're serving in this industry.
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Well, that's part of it, I guess.
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The other part is, like we've talked about earlier traveling around teaching other instructors.
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But let's talk a little bit about your company, let's kind of camp out and focus there, and let's talk a little bit about the rise in popularity of the mountain biking instruction.
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But maybe even before we get there, just like why?
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Like what's the why behind it?
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And also we've talked about it.
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But I'd love for you to kind of unpack.
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Hey, it's kind of a wide spectrum.
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It's for everybody who is mountain biking.
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And well, I'm going to let you finish that, so I don't want to kind of give that piece away.
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Oh, yeah, for sure.
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Yeah, well, you think about those listeners that are already mountain bikers.
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Or, if you're thinking about getting into mountain biking, think about how did you learn how to ride?
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Most of the time, it's that you got a bike, you started riding it and started figuring it out just by kind of doing it trial and error.
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Yeah, you might've got some tips from some friends.
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These days, you know folks like there's some video and tutorials and some stuff out there and content that is sometimes helpful, but, you know, very rarely did we when we started learning how to ride mountain bikes, did we folks out there.
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Very rarely did they, you know, start with, like start with a lesson, or have any kind of structured learning process of how to acquire these skills, of how to, how to maneuver this complicated thing on complicated terrain.
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What ends up happening is that people kind of figure it out and human beings are pretty intuitive with, you know, with understanding body movement and trying to balance, and some folks learn it quicker than others.
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I'd say that a lot of people learn sort of bad habits as well, like they kind of like get decent, they can handle decently difficult terrain in spite of their skills in some ways, and then so you know it's just sort of like been that process for most people of just kind of trial and error figuring it out on their own.
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But you know you think about also.
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You know mountain biking has kind of a reputation of being like extreme or dangerous or but it doesn't have to be that way, you know you can.
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Certainly it's sensationalized in social media and stuff to see.
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You know the Friday fails and the you know the crashes, the Friday fails and the the uh, you know the, the crashes and that sort
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of thing.
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You know that that gets eyeballs on it, but, um, being a mountain biker doesn't mean you have to crash and hurt yourself.
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You know you can, you can ride safely and and do well.
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So, yeah, I'd say in in general it, uh it kind of struck a chord with me in the way that, in trying to be a professional racer and trying with this outdoor education background, I was really trying to understand how to how to ride a bike in a more conscious way and so that I could improve it.
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So my story with that real quick, was that as a racer I was a little bit bigger, more muscular than than I would say like your world cup kind of like cross country racer, and a little little tiny whippets that go uphill real fast.
00:18:20.463 --> 00:18:28.085
I weighed a bit more than that, and so in order to compensate for that disadvantage, I had to be really good with everything else.
00:18:28.085 --> 00:18:52.851
And so then skills and driving the bike and making up time and complicated terrain and on the downhills was how I like maintain to be competitive, and so I spent a lot of time in my personal journey trying to understand how to drive a bike better and faster so that I could be a better racer, and so then teaching other people, connecting that to my outdoor education background you know, the methodology of how to teach that to other people really struck a chord with folks.
00:18:52.851 --> 00:19:24.492
It would be like a lot of comments would be like I sort of do that and I kind of knew that, but I didn't really understand, like really even the conscious parts of how you position your body to go over a drop or around a turn, or and they certainly didn't have like a um, most people don't have a conscious process of being able to scan ahead and see terrain that's happening or that's coming and then translate that subconsciously into these are the body movements I need to make in order to drive the bike through that terrain.
00:19:25.161 --> 00:19:38.848
Most people, the way that it happens, is that they just kind of ride into the terrain and see what happens, and then they they end up being like this kind of reactive rider, like a reactionary process, where they're just trying to react to whatever's happening.
00:19:38.848 --> 00:19:45.212
And so the analogy I use is kind of like rather than driving the car, they're holding onto the bumper and getting drug along by the car down the road.
00:19:45.212 --> 00:20:04.576
They're just kind of reacting to whatever's happening and through the whole process of skills instruction, then what we're really trying to do is try to move people towards being a more conscious driver of the bike, where they're kind of anticipating movements and then are making the movements happen as they're needed, rather than being a reactionary rider man.
00:20:05.176 --> 00:20:09.000
You just described the former is me the movements happen like as they're needed, rather than being a reactionary rider man.
00:20:09.660 --> 00:20:10.306
So you just described the first.
00:20:10.326 --> 00:20:10.670
The former is me.
00:20:10.690 --> 00:20:11.740
It's grabbing the bumper and just kind of holding on.
00:20:11.839 --> 00:20:23.523
I was sharing that with you earlier and that very much explains kind of my last 20 plus years of just being a reactionary, you know, rider and kind of hanging on and and it's been really inconsistent for me.
00:20:23.644 --> 00:20:37.210
But you know, I think I shared with you also that somebody, the first connection that I had with driving, you know through something, is just understanding my speed, my gear and all of that in my downhill to sort of carry into an uphill, and that was huge.
00:20:37.210 --> 00:20:43.732
That was just that one little tip was enough to sort of be a game changer for me, feeling like I had sort of improved a little bit.
00:20:43.732 --> 00:20:49.215
And it really didn't have anything to do with you know, how fast I wanted to go or how extreme I wanted to be or any of that kind of stuff.
00:20:49.215 --> 00:21:08.984
It was just this is just now getting into this and I'd like her to kind of learn the right way, but also just the efficiency and being able to be out there and getting off the trail and not feeling like you're beat to death you know, and that's the way I feel a lot of times when I get off.
00:21:09.045 --> 00:21:11.546
So yeah, yeah, I guess.
00:21:11.546 --> 00:21:41.299
And so folks that are just getting started riding or more beginner riders, get quite a lot out of it, just to be able to feel more confident, more capable and just more safe and stable I guess in those kind of like priorities, just to have the ability to be able to proactively see things and then do the right stuff, to not get thrown off the bike or that sort of stuff, be able to tackle different trains.
00:21:41.299 --> 00:21:47.903
So at the beginning it helps people to access more terrain because they're just more capable pretty quickly.
00:21:47.903 --> 00:21:53.777
And then I guess another phenotype of people that work with quite a lot are what I would call the intermediate plateau.
00:21:54.049 --> 00:21:57.421
So the intermediate plateau are folks that have been riding for a little while.
00:21:57.421 --> 00:22:22.664
They've kind of been figuring it out on their own, they've been riding lots of different trails and that sort of thing, but then they they kind of reach this plateau and ability where they're not really getting better anymore and so they're riding the same trails the same way and with the same results and they they see the other people going faster or they see people doing other types of features they don't feel confident doing or and they don't know quite how to like bridge that gap of like how do I, how do I continue to improve?
00:22:22.664 --> 00:22:33.480
I've reached this plateau now and so those type of riders really benefit from, from lessons to help like connect those dots, to like help break through that plateau, to continue to improve.
00:22:33.980 --> 00:22:34.362
Very cool.
00:22:35.090 --> 00:22:41.185
Access more terrain, new features be maybe ride faster if they want be able to.
00:22:41.185 --> 00:22:45.058
Yeah, just feel like that they're more in control and all that sort of thing.
00:22:45.730 --> 00:22:55.398
You know, it's amazing that your wilderness education, background and experiences really comes through with what you're saying right there I think, and then because that's transferable, right.
00:22:55.470 --> 00:23:01.923
So, like you said, if it's snow skiing, if it's rock climbing, if it's I mean you name it, you fill in the blank.
00:23:01.923 --> 00:23:11.324
All those principles are kind of all the same, and so I could definitely see how and why you have so many positive reviews from some of your customers that are out there.
00:23:11.324 --> 00:23:13.458
In fact, one person I wrote this down.
00:23:13.829 --> 00:23:15.356
I thought this was really really good.
00:23:15.356 --> 00:23:24.464
They said, josh, make sure to understand your current skills, learning style and goals so you always get the instruction you need explained in a way that makes the most sense to you.
00:23:24.464 --> 00:23:27.711
I thought that was pretty profound when I read it.
00:23:27.711 --> 00:23:40.583
I mean, I read through many of them, but that one really kind of stuck out because it's like you're understanding the person, what it is they're trying to get to, what challenges them perhaps, where are they now, what's their current state, and you want them to move into a flow state, no matter what the stage is.
00:23:40.583 --> 00:23:51.839
Because you can be I'm thinking you can have flow state as a beginner, because I do For sure Coming down some of these trails, just hooping and hollering, just grin from ear to ear, but then, as you go through, those same things are evident as well.
00:23:52.101 --> 00:24:10.767
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that speaks well to the art of being a good coach in the mountain bike world is that the evolution of being a mountain bike coach is that when you first get started, you learn some curriculum, common curriculum, and you learn how to deliver a set script.
00:24:11.391 --> 00:24:46.382
So you learn how to deliver this curriculum and then as you get better and better at it like, let's say, that you'd work more private lessons with folks, where you work on one-on-one with a client and you can sort of then branch out from the general script and so then it becomes a lot more customizable, where you're trying to understand the background and the current state of that client and then trying to use the knowledge and the curriculum that you have to apply to that client so that they like reach their goals in the most efficient way possible.
00:24:46.461 --> 00:24:53.938
So then I think that's what really keeps me in the flow state of being a coach is that it's it's highly adaptable to each person.
00:24:53.938 --> 00:25:00.961
And if I was in the state of like um, of just delivering the same curriculum over and over again, then that would get kind of mundane and boring.
00:25:00.961 --> 00:25:11.353
But for me, the challenge of like working with each person individually and understanding you know what do they need right now, as their next step is is like a is something that just turns into a flow state.
00:25:11.353 --> 00:25:22.863
For me, that is a creative endeavor, requires connection with the client, understanding of, like you know, kind of mastery of all of the skills and then what terrain you have to work with and how to maximize all that stuff together.
00:25:22.863 --> 00:25:25.332
So that's what keeps me in it, I think, in the in the long run.
00:25:25.633 --> 00:25:29.000
How do you pick the perfect mountain bike coach for you?
00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:34.372
How do people, based on what they just heard and knowing that there's a difference, how do they go about trying to find the right one?
00:25:34.932 --> 00:25:42.712
Maybe just start with some basic professionalism questions of you know, do they have a business, commercial liability insurance?
00:25:42.712 --> 00:25:46.750
Do they have permission or permits to be able to teach in the places that they're teaching?
00:25:46.750 --> 00:26:00.877
You know there's it's a little bit of a wild west sometimes that people are, you know, exchanging services for money and don't even have a commercial operating permit and Pisgah National Forest, you know so or don't have commercial liability insurance, or you know those kinds of things.
00:26:00.877 --> 00:26:05.265
So just some of those basic, those kinds of basic questions are a good starting point.
00:26:05.265 --> 00:26:13.138
Beyond that, I think it's you can dive a little bit into background and experience of the instructor and don't be afraid to ask how long have you been doing this?
00:26:13.138 --> 00:26:25.766
How did you learn how, working with a company that had some kind of methodology or more experienced instructors in place that you could mentor and apprentice under?
00:26:26.150 --> 00:26:42.144
The best coaches that I've seen develop have come up through the ranks under kind of like an apprenticeship type of arrangement where they are seeking both outside professional development but then also exist in a place where they can learn from other more experienced coaches.
00:26:42.144 --> 00:26:44.907
Or did they start it themselves?
00:26:44.907 --> 00:26:49.603
And if they haven't been doing it for very long, if they're figuring it out on their own.
00:26:49.603 --> 00:26:54.657
They're essentially kind of like figuring out how to be a coach kind of trial and error with you as the guinea pig.
00:26:54.657 --> 00:26:57.752
So it may not be as efficient, maybe.
00:26:57.752 --> 00:27:09.523
Okay, it may not be as efficient or as high quality as someone who has come through some kind of a program of training where they are more, where they get more highly experienced apprenticeship or mentorship.
00:27:09.523 --> 00:27:22.282
There are certification programs out there, like the PMBIA is the main one and it's the kind of the worldwide certification body for mountain bike constructors, and so that's pretty universally accepted as the different levels.
00:27:22.282 --> 00:27:23.977
There's four different levels of certification.
