I share all of the comments by other readers. I arrived very enthusiastic having passed my permit. I had not been on a bike. I am wishing now that I had read the reviews before. I too spent 4 hours with 2 instructors, who are good riders, but who cannot teach. (Maybe they are fine to work with people who have been on a bike, but they cannot work with novices unless the novice has some kind of prior experience.) They run through the drills and make passing comments with no advice for improvement, no interaction with a student who may not fully be catching on immediately or may have misunderstood a technique, and no offer to assist or improve. 4 1/2 hours pass and I thought things were fine, just as another reviewer commented, and was told to start the course again. I found it outrageous to clear a weekend, to spend the time with no real direction and be told that I needed to start again. (For background, I am athletic, coordinated and well educated.) I did raise the issue to the site manager who arranged for me to work with other coaches...These guys are very good. They understood when a skill was not at the right level and they addressed it with discussion, advice and additional work. Unfortunately, I only had 40 minutes with them and there was no time to recover from the first day, so the solution is to start again....I am very disappointed. I am optimistic, but given the other reviewers comments that the second time was also unproductive, I am concerned.
Going forward, I will be certain to insist that I am in the group with capable coaches...and most likely will insist on working with the guys I worked with later on. There seems to be willingness to improve this experience, but given the reviews plus my experience thus far, I know that this BAMT has both good and questionable instructors...If you are a novice, make sure you tell the coach in the beginning that you expect them to tell you immediately if they don't think your skills are progressing as fast as others...and make a point at the each break to get a review....(If you are a novice, you will be horrified to hear you need improvement if no one has provided you feedback in 4 hours.) If you get negative feedback and you have had no assistance, you have a bad coach and make sure the site manager knows and see if you can change groups as fast as possible...or you will waste your time. However, because I have met good coaches at BAMT, I recommend to BAMT to read the reviews for Bike Smart....This seems to be a course which wants students to learn and pass...and the high praise suggests that they know how to run the course such that a group can efficiently get through all of the drills but still find time to give help to students who need a little one-on-one....(Generally, my experience is that most people do not want/need lots of individual assistance, but everyone can use a little extra now and again.)
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