Dakotah Norton | Exploiting Strengths and Minimizing Weaknesses 7

How do you continue to progress your riding abilities when you are one of the fastest mountain bikers in the world? Dakotah Norton weighs in on how he makes marginal gains in his riding abilities by exploiting his strengths, riding dirt bikes, and studying his competition. Thanks, Dak, for your transparency, and hopefully, this conversation offers ways for others to evolve and progress their riding abilities.

Listen to the full episode HERE 

Related:
Dakotah Norton
B Practice Podcast
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View replies to: Dakotah Norton | Exploiting Strengths and Minimizing Weaknesses

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supercuddy
1 year ago

Great stuff (as always) you guys are big time builders in USDH!  Got my 14yo on a DH bike and he is loving it. Bike nerd Question(you say you read all the comments).  I have AXS wireless on his (and my) enduro bikes because they are tough and take a hit.  Why is there no axs or T-type on DH bikes, even in pro pits?  I would think , especially the transmission tucked up and out of the way would be good?  Is it just not tough enough for DH or is the short cage the barrier? I would think especially T-type would be good for hammering gate starts. Thoughts? ...I mean my 7 speed GX DH works perfect (which may be the answer to my own question) 

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Jason_Schroeder
1 year ago

Thanks for diggin' what we are doing, and I'm stoked your son is loving riding DH!

I'm honestly not really sure why we haven't seen a 7-speed AXS drivetrain yet. There may be design limitations, or it could just be the lack of necessity since current DH derailleurs work petty well (like you pointed out). It does seem like the design and durability of Transmission derailleurs would be beneficial for the demands of downhill, and next March will be 10 YEARS since SRAM launched their XO1 7-speed drivetrain. So I wouldn't be surprised if an update is coming, but it's hard to say if it'll be electric or cable actuated.

For the time being, you could go the Kyle Strait route and put a short cage on an AXS derailleur. 

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StudBeefpile
1 year ago

This kinda ties in with Gwin acquiring the rock.

Im honestly surprised how well the youth are doing in this country despite how little of a national development program we have.  I know its hard as our country is massive and getting jr. to a race clear on the other side of the country isnt feasible for most people. But it really shows what youth development does.  Look at the current crop of fast french dudes that all came up through Vouilloz and co's direction.  

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hogfly
1 year ago

Edit: Oh! And that's what this is... they just pulled it from the podcast and made it a separate video.

 

I will also say that the B-Practice podcast after... maybe Snowshoe?? (might have been after US Open) has a great hour or so to start it off that would be fantastic for any aspiring racer or parent of an aspiring racer to listen to from Dak and the crew. 

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tstep
1 year ago

It's funny because as we were recording this we had joked about how this could be it's own episode, but Jason didn't have the time to edit it into it's own thing so he left it in the Snowshoe or Les Gets episode haha

however, having it stand alone seems to make more of an impact/carry more weight which is really cool to see

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hogfly
1 year ago

I talked with my son (who is the racer in the family.. enduro not DH as of now) about it after I listened to it and told him there was a lot of good advice and takeaways in the episode. I'm going to have him watch/listen to this, now, since I'm pretty sure he didn't listen to the podcast. 

 

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