Enduro for Adventure riders

Different opinions and stereotypes follow Enduro. Some say that it’s too tough, demanding and frightening. Some are joking about “that funny 100 kg weight” and “farting” one-cylinder sound, convincing me what proper position on the bike really is. I never argue.

Two dominant motivations bring people to us. First is passion for Enduro, peculiar to Hard Enduro riders, the other one is pursuit for knowledge specific to Adventure and road riders.

Hard riders know what they want and that’s precisely Enduro with all its horror and comedy. Second group actually looks not exactly for Enduro as much as for off road skills – basic and intermediate. Their goal is to gain at least minimum confidence for the occasions when life brings them to places with bad or no roads at all.

We think that up to some point, we can consider Enduro and off road riding as a same thing. After that certain point, Enduro and off road riding split up – Enduro becomes sport unto itself. Some may say sport with very strange techniques like riding vertical cliffs or sliding down the super steep hills next to the bike. However, that’s exactly the impression people get about Enduro from media.

These are Hard and Extreme Enduro, which stand apart from skills necessary for Adventure purposes. And that’s the reason why people get to our Riding School accidentally. Most likely, before finding us, they have already tried few different courses strictly focused on Adventure bikes.

Surely, those courses are very useful and every Adventure rider should attend them. If we’re talking about more ambitious trips covering few countries or even continents, those trainings and courses are obligatory. At least, you’ll get real picture of how skilled you are and what should be improved.

There are a lot of really good stuff on YT and those coaching vids are getting better and better. Well sorted out in logical order from easiest to advanced stuff, excellently recorded and edited. Some of them did a great job by emphasizing what’s important during the particular exercise by different graphics and animations. For example ADVMotoSkillz . I really like them. They go through all the important techniques. Or Jimmy Lewis off road School who is in my opinion, one of the most skilled and experienced coaches and riders. Of course nothing without Chris Birch, nice person, great rider and professional and his Say No To Slow.

Of course it’s always better to work with the coach “on the ground”, but at least those vids help you to start revising your riding habits and techniques.

From the bike purchase to the moment of realization that training is necessary, sometimes few years pass. In-between, great and expensive Adventure bikes are used mainly for road riding. Usually, rider understands his lack of skills as soon as he hits some gravel road or even something more challenging. And that’s good – sooner he realizes it, the sooner he starts improving his riding. Yes, it’s all about fun and challenge but let’s be honest and admit that it’s also about safety. Even if you looked like scared to death bambi on that forest dirt road squeezing the handlebar to turn blue, regretting the moment you went off road, it’s ok as long as you’re not injured and got home in one piece.

Let’s get it straight – those Adv bikes are just great travelling devices which surpass their touring brothers by almost all parameters even if used only on roads. So, if it’s intentionally purchased and used only on tarmac roads, I absolutely understand that. Still, they have a great off road capabilities which is just a shame not to use

Since we’ve established our little Enduro school in the 2018, more than 150 riders have attended it and about 400 more on Enduro tours. Some of them have stayed in Enduro and bought their own dirt bikes. But lot of them were and still are Adv riders who hugely expanded their riding geography thanks to our school. By the way, most of them are coming every year on few days training for new set of skills.

How did we came to an idea to start the school? Simply because we also had used to ride Adventure bikes before we switched to Enduro. And that had been for a quite long period with a huge trips all over the world. I was lucky to ride a motocross during all that Adventure time, so my riding skills were growing and getting better without my certain awareness of that. It might sound indelicate but the difference in riding techniques, between few of us motocross mates and the other our friends or occasional co-travelers, was getting more and more obvious over the time.

When we started with Sector Enduro, strictly as a Hard Enduro tours company, many Adventure riders were coming to ride with us. Quite often, their skill level wasn’t enough for even very lite Enduro tracks and we had to teach them off-road basics. Exercises were different from time to time, we’re trying to shorten the time on training ground in order to hit the mountains and show them all that beauty as soon as possible. No doubts few days on dirt bike in the mountains improve riding, even if the tracks are easy, but soon we realized that we had to create methodology. Fortunately, we have a lot of Adventure and off road/Enduro experience, bikes and amazing place to ride. And we established Orange Plum Adventures to share all this with you.