Building a Backyard Bike Skills Course

After a string of lockdowns, and summer and fall of fires, I decided to build a backyard bike skills course just to mess around with. Something that you can just go out ride around and zone out, focusing on bike skills. It’s turning into a good way to de-stress too.

We don’t have a huge backyard, about 40ft by 60ft. But there is a nice six-foot cedar fence all around and some trees to work around. The yard is flat, maybe about 1.5 feet of elevation change. But for what I’m planning on building that is fine. I want more of a bike skills course. Big jumps and hucks are not going to happen in this yard.

So why bike skills?

I would say as mountain biking skills go, I’m average. But living in Colorado, there are a lot of technical skills that you need on the trails. There are odd rocks everywhere. Sure, there are some flow tracks. But even they seem to be interrupted by a sudden technical section.

Having a skills course keeps skills fresh and helps get them better. Plus, it’s a great way to zone out and take your mind off the world. And some days you just want to forget everything.

What skills

Most of the challenges on the course are low-speed skills: balance, bike movement, and bike handling. Just a short list of skills might include the following.

Trackstand. Also, a good base skill to have for later skills. Being able to stand on the bike, in a position ready to go, really comes in useful on anything technical.

Wheelies. At first, this might seem like a showoff move. But the wheelie is a good thing to get down for later bike skills. Like getting up and over obstacles. You don’t need to get to the point you can ride 100 yards, but that doesn’t hurt to impress your friends.

Slow speed cornering. This can be as simple as a slow roll around a tree or putting down markers in the yard to get around. On trails, there are a lot of times that things get tight. From switchbacks to rock gardens this skill can help.

That’s just a few. There are a lot more that I’ll cover later.

Yard challenges

First is the flatness, but that almost works as an advantage for a slow-speed skills course.

One other issue is the wood storage shed. I want to have a course behind it and next to the fence, but it is a little too narrow. At one point, I was thinking of moving it. Not impossible with engineering, but way the hell too much f’in work.

What I did do was cut the roofline back. Now I get an inch of clearance on each side of the bars. The corner makes great practice for slow-speed corning track stands. At some point, I want to build a platform roller with a drop off the end.

Build challenges

Upfront the biggest challenges are cost and expectations. I would love to build everything out in a few weeks, but building materials have gotten expensive since the pandemic started.

One of the things that I want to do is use as much previously used material as possible. Even that seems to be in short supply right now. But I have some wood leftover from when we moved into the house. We also have a few outlets for once used building supplies around here. Since the wood build-outs are going to be outside if the wood is already beaten up so be it.

One of the other challenges is keeping the skill level accessible. I might be at mid-level skills, but my partner is just starting to ride. So keeping any features at a comfortable level, but being able to advance them later is going to be a trick.

This is going to be a long work in progress. Even when I think that I’m there, I’ll find something else to add. So it goes.