Coaching

Coach­ing is now avail­able at East Kent and is deliv­ered by James McClymont. Here James tells you a lit­tle about the coach­ing on offer and a bit about his love of BMX and how he is involved.

For as long as I can remem­ber I have always had a pas­sion for bikes and I can still vividly remem­ber the day when my par­ents bought my first “proper” bike…a Raleigh Budgie!!! Things then moved on and I had a Tom­a­hawk and a Chop­per. My Grifter came next and with that the need to jump and wheelie. Unfor­tu­nately, my Grifter like most british bikes of that era couldn’t cope with the abuse I was dish­ing out and kept on bend­ing and break­ing. Head­sets, forks, cot­ter pins and ped­als were always the first parts to fail.

For­tu­nately and unbe­known to me BMX was just about to make the leap over here from the USA.

My par­ents bought me my first BMX bike for Christ­mas. Even­tu­ally, tracks were being built up and down the coun­try to cater to this new cycling craze and I started to race. I pro­gressed from club rac­ing through to inter­na­tional level and I retired after reach­ing #2 plate SBMXA at Super­class (semi-pro / elite) level after­which I moved to Canada.

My 2-wheeled expe­ri­ence over the years has included being part of a BMX freestyle dis­play team and rid­ing for Pais­ley BMX shop, moun­tain bik­ing and motor­cy­cling (both on and off road).

My young son’s dis­cov­ery of BMX re-kindled my pas­sion in the sport and I began rac­ing again last year and fin­ished Club Cham­pion in Hers­den BMX Club’s Old School Class 2011.”

 Real­is­ing that I wanted to become more involved in the sport of BMX I reg­is­tered an inter­est with the British Cycling Fed­er­a­tion (BCF) about learn­ing to coach. From that ini­tial con­tact I am now a fully-fledged BCF Level 2  (generic) and Level 2 BMX (spe­cific) coach, fully insured, CRB checked and First Aid trained.

My coach­ing ses­sions at East Kent BMX Club cater to boys, girls, men and women of all ages and stan­dards. Whether you are look­ing to boost your con­fi­dence in rid­ing bikes or seek­ing an edge in your BMX rac­ing per­for­mance, I can help.

My ses­sions can be in a one-to-one or a group envi­ron­ment and are deliv­ered in an infor­ma­tive and friendly man­ner mak­ing sure that the rid­ers are hav­ing fun while improv­ing their bike skills and fit­ness levels.

While rac­ing BMX at such a high level I kept devel­op­ing my bike rid­ing skills by “freestyle” rid­ing and  jump­ing. Below are a few  pho­tos of some of the things that I got up to on my bikes.