Indoor skateparks with heaters, tiny spaces, max reps and a sports school “gymnasium” where you choose XC, DH, 4X, road… even slopestyle. Anton explains how he and Simon Johansson became the first slopestyle “guinea pigs,” with Tommy Johansson coaching and Martin Söderström now on staff.
Episode Sponsors:-
– WORX Tools → 15% off the full range with code THERIDECOMPANION: https://uk.worx.com
– Hiplok → Head on over to http://hiplok.com/trc to claim your exclusive offer and keep YOUR bikes YOURS.
– Pedros Tools → These are the best tools folks, no question. You can check out their range of bike specific torque tools, multitools and more at https://apex-dst.uk and use code theridecompanion for 15% off everything on site!
Get early access & ad-free episodes → https://www.patreon.com/theridecompanion
TRC x BPW Christmas Ride
https://www.bikeparkwales.com/about/event/bpw-x-the-ride-companion-christmas-ride
LIKE THIS EPISODE?
Hit subscribe, checkout the back catalogue and follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theridecompanion
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST & MORE
– Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/66evYlliy7rOpMgvABeBgw?si=5f805700d91445e3
– Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ride-companion/id1097966651
– All episodes, merch & more → https://theridecompanion.co.uk
LONG-TERM PARTNER CODES
Marin Bikes → https://www.marinbikes.com/gb
Focus Bikes → https://www.focus-bikes.com
Hiplok → https://hiplok.com/the-ride-companion
Magic Mind → 45% off: https://www.magicmind.com/companionjan
HUEL → 15% off with code RIDE: https://huel.com/
Troy Lee Designs → 10% off with code theridecompanion: https://saddleback.avln.me/c/OzduCWvjtcOr
AG1 → Free Vit D + 5 travel packs: https://athleticgreens.com/RIDECOMPANION
Compex → 20% off with code THERIDECOMPANION: https://www.compex.com/uk/
HKT Products → 10% off with code PODCAST
Contact Us → https://theridecompanion.co.uk/pages/contact
#theridecompanion #mtb #mountainbike
you, Martin, Max, like all of the kind of Scandi
slope style guys. I always remember looking at um basically you’re always in indoor skate
parks with like heaters on with hoodies on and you’re just you’re all like confined to that
space. So, it’s a really high level of riding and really high concentration. So, loads of amazing
riders all stuffed into like something almost the size of a tennis court, right? Is that pretty
much? Is this at um We’ll get into it in a bit, but this is at your school. Exactly. So, further
down the line, I went to that biking school as well. It’s a biking school. Yeah. Well, I guess
it’s a normal school, but with a sports program, and one of them programs had to like happened to
be biking. Yeah. And the first like the first year I attended was the first year they started that
program. So, really lucky in timing. Sweden dial day. I remember when I first heard about the It’s
called the gymnasium, right? Exactly. When I first heard about I was living in America. I go on about
this all the time. I’m not going to bore people, but it was uh I first heard about Yeah. Swedish
gymnasiums coming over like they basically study motocross and I’m like what? They they do like
motocross. Yeah. And then I guess is that the same for bikes then? So you kind of Yeah, pretty much.
So I guess as any like sports program school, you just do normal school, but then also they set
aside like a few hours a week for biking. Yeah. It’s like a couple of lessons of a week will just
be biking. Exactly. Like either biking or hitting the gym, learning about all the stuff around it.
And who teaches you? Good question. Yeah. You might know him. Tommy Johansson, downhill legend
from Sweden. There you go. So he this was your teacher. So you have like boss, but how cool is
that man? So he he’s still going like another guy I have to owe big time for my whole career I guess
cuz he was the one like getting this program on the road like cuz he used to do it in a different
school like in a real [ __ ] hole. Sorry. And he was trying to get me to go there. I was like I
can’t move to this place there. There’s no way. But then he set up the program in a different
city which was a bit more close to just like a decent city. Nice. I was like yeah this is the
dream. Please I’ll give it a go. Move move away from home. just move away like oh yeah away from
the parents and stuff and with some mates in our apartment like 16. Did you know you were good?
Did it seem like there was a future in it and did it seem serious when when you went to the school?
What age is that? Uh so I guess questions but it’ be 2010 I moved and uh so I’ll be 15 turning
16. Okay. And I definitely didn’t really know that you can make money, but luckily Martin was
already ahead of me and he started by then already making money and like Yes. I guess turn it into
a job, you know. So I guess it was on the cards, but I didn’t really realize. So you knew you’re
good though, right? I I knew I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that was enough. And I I guess
social media started to like pop a little bit so you kind of could see what where people were at.
And I was like, I guess I’m all right. Yeah. I got a couple of questions. You might I’m sure you
might not. I don’t know if you know. What sports make up a gymnasium? Like how does biking become
one? What? Very good question. Thank you. Valid. Uh validated. Yeah. I mean uh at the school I went
to they had crosscountry skiing, cross country biking, fourcross downhill, road biking, and
then for the first year they tried slope style. And you can choose. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was in
the same like class as all the other like biking disciplines, but I was the only slope guy and
Simon Johansson, right? So we were the first like like I guess what do you call it? Test rabbits
or whatever. It’s the year of guinea pigs. This is the year of STES. Yeah. Yeah. Simon brought the
STE for sure. So So would So excuse my ignorance. So different schools have different sports within
their gymnasium. Is that is that how it works? Uh so you had to travel to go to a biking one? No,
no, no. So, the same one would also have like ice hockey, football, and like swimming. Yeah.
All of it. You had a pretty crazy crazy alumni, didn’t you? Yeah, for sure. Who else was in your
school years? Paint a picture of like the school photo of the bike, the biking school photo. I
mean, unfortunately, a lot of people I went to school with kind of fizzled out of writing. I
think the only one people would know is Jenny. Jenny Rzitz. Heard of her? Yeah, you might. Some
people might have. So, our current world champ. That’s right. She just won world champs, didn’t
she? Yeah, true. That was super recent, wasn’t it? Yeah. And I guess Olympian gold medal as well
nine years ago. Yeah. Interesting class. Just in the class. Yeah. But yeah, I think yeah, it was
a really cool group of people just all kinds of discipline in one classroom, you know. I find it
so fascinating that there’s like that opportunity there. But what what does like a a week look like?
How much biking are you doing? How do you se how do you separate? So, do they go off and ride XC
or Yeah. Oh, yeah. totally. So, I guess Tommy Tom Johansson was Tom official on Instagram. The
man I guess he was second in the world downhill world. Yeah. The world’s 1994, I believe. When
I was born. Two dates, dude. When I was born, dude. Yeah. In Colorado, I think. Really?
Yeah. Swedish downhill legend. Oh, big time, man. He’s the best downer that’s ever come out of
Sweden, isn’t he? Mate, thinking about it. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. So, yeah, back to your question,
he he was the one like so obviously he knew loads of biking. He had all the like, you know, biking
control and what you need to and obviously he’s a super smart guy and he definitely been looking at
slope style and Martin and good friend of Martin and he’d been running a actually going back way
further. He’s been running a like camp a slope style camp actually. uh where I attended with
Martin like two or three years prior to going to school. So I was super young like learning
my first back flipped there when I was like 12 or 13. It was just a m just a lip and a m jump and
that was the like camp and we went out like cuz I remember he was super into like the physical thing
and like just what do you call it like optimized performance and stuff. Yeah. just like waking up
super early, do a morning walk up the mountain and go down, have some porridge and then just send
it on the mulch. And I remember thinking like, well, what are we doing here? I just want to ride
the mulch. Do we have to really do this? But like looking back now, it’s super nice. Like just a
great way to wake up and just like proper warm ups and stuff. Just it kind of doesn’t exist in the
UK. So it’s really cool to like how malleable you are and how like how much it means when you were
little. We talked about it on a recent episode. Like I can really imagine going to one of those
camps and stuff and it really meaning something. Oh, totally, dude. It’s like even now looking back
it’s so nice to look back at those memories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just opportunity as well which
again it’s a huge thing and it makes it feel like a real thing like it validates like like I think
one thing probably I has probably shaped how I think of riding is that it wasn’t it’s not like
an accepted discipline. If it comes into school it’s an accepted discipline. It’s a real sport.
Whereas over over here, it always felt like it was like a It’s a fringe sport. It’s not a cool. It
wasn’t even a cool one. So BMX at least was like had a cool image. True. Yeah. It’s always like
I do riding BMX. Yeah. No mountain bikes. And so so if you love it, you have to like plow on if
you’re not. Totally. You’re not going to get any verification from any sort of official. You’re
not going to get get it in schools. You’re not going to get cool camp setup. If you do get camp
set up, they’re going to be like weird ones. It’s not official. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s an
amazing thing to think about like and Yeah. But that’s the reason I think I fell in love with it
so deep cuz Yeah. going back to like childhood like doing all the team sports. But then once
I picked up the bike was like oh I can do this whenever I want and how much I want and no one’s
going to tell me how to do it and what to do. So I think that’s the part where I really like fell
in love with it to just oh no one’s going to tell me what to do. I just got to make it up and just
have fun with it. Do you know the other thing as well? You it kind of when you actually think about
it and you break it down and you listen to what you’ve you say about your um childhood, I guess
like you can kind of see it in the Scandinavian like slope style riders. Their that their their
approach is sort of more like it’s not like punk or like you’re a bunch you’re all dialed like
professional dialed clean like they take it seriously. You’re like training. You got like
Max for instance. Max is like so ded training way before people were talking about training,
you know? Like I noticed now it’s more like it’s a really serious sport. He’s getting serious.
Yeah. But back then for sure he was back then he was just like he was training like it paid
off, didn’t it? Oh, definitely dude. He has some serious longevity to his career, doesn’t it?
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, thanks for the compliment. And uh I think Yeah. like you’re saying like and
a lot of us just I think spend a lot of time in a skatepark BMX track this and that just gained
that bike control to start with before we went on to doing tricks. What you So you go to a a class.
Yep. Oh yeah. I guess I’d never really answered the question you were asking in the beginning.
So yeah, I can’t remember what a question was but like you’re saying like the school what’s it like?
Yeah. So just normal school and then maybe every other day we had two hours set off to do riding
or gym. Okay. Yeah. And what does that riding look like? Like as in are you getting coached? Are you
Cuz it’s you’re still learning like you’re trying to progress. So it’s someone walking you through
that almost. Well, I think that’s also the cool bit about it. So we had Tommy there, Toma. Yeah.
The coach. And he was basically setting up the the practice sessions. But then also since it’s just
such a freestyle freestyle sport, you just gota do what you want to do really. But then we had some
drills where you I guess just kind of sometimes but more more so like bike control related just
work on the BMX track doing this like fastest lap five laps in a road and for endurance and then
do a trick and then I guess it is like a lesson still. Yeah. Yeah. And then I guess everyone’s at
different progression stages. So you work on what you want to do and if you need some tips, I’ll try
to help out. So everyone’s steey in Scandinavia as well. So like is there like a ste lesson? Is there
like um do you get like imagine that like the guy with a goofy style gets so bullied at school?
Have you seen this James? Oh whack. You just get like bad style like bullied out of you. Maybe
maybe that was in the curriculum. Yeah, exactly. Can’t believe you know the word curriculum.
I don’t think I’ve ever used that but yeah somehow came to my mind. That’s good. Yeah. Wow.
Are you aware that it’s a unique thing if that may like you’ve grown up with it. It was a thing that
you get off got offered. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, like I’ve heard you guys or a lot of podcasts talk
about this when we mentioned the biking gymnasium and it’s like from that like I’ve definitely
noticed it’s really really not common thing. So yeah, super lucky to have that. I think growing
up here it was definitely not like you said it’s hard to even explain it because it’s not even
a thing that you’d consider that it’d be part of a lesson or you’d have any type of support
from anything other than your parents. Yeah, true. So to get a school support and government
support or however it works is just mindblowing to me. I wonder if there is anywhere else in the
world that does it. I’m I’m really not sure. Tom, would you have done it without it? I would have
probably kept going. Yeah. But but yeah, going back to the Vikings was super cool to see like
from what I mentioned just me and Simon starting there year one and now there’s so many kids there.
It’s so sick to see how it’s grow over the years. Right. I was going to ask you that. Yeah, I guess
like and now Martin is there like Yeah. So they have an actual slow style coach Martin coaching.
I mean like imagine watching him do stuff like all of you make stuff look really easy and nice like
all the techniques all perfect. Few reps. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of reps. You can see them
the repetitions but like imagine that as your teacher. So cool. It’s insane. Yeah, dude. How
frustrating kids how easy this old dude’s making it old. Old old dude’s making it look. Yeah, dude.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Hey, man. What an episode that was. You did amazing in it. And so did you. You
Sean like a star. You shawn like a moon. Can we also put something up here that you can click on
for the next episode? How about we put a subscribe up there in the middle? Yeah. Love that. We’re
going to put a video we think that our lovely companionship will love on your face. On my face.
Yeah. And on my You can see me now. Gone. And on my face. another video that we think people will
love. And thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Please hit like and subscribe.
You guys are the best. Peace and love.
1 Comment
Not quite the exact same but there’s BASE college in the Scottish Borders.