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Bikeskills, l'histoire d'une toute petite école de vélo devenue grande!

You deserve the best coaches, regardless of your prior experience or skill level.

Meet the founder, Ian Hughes

Bikeskills is driven by Ian Hughes, ex-coach for the National Olympic Mountain Bike Team. Ian detains the highest coaching certifications in Canada and has become a reference in technical coaching in Canada.

Our expertise is coach education, providing our clients with professional instructors that are working to the highest industry standard, capable of adapting to your needs.

Our mission

Create exceptional experiences, offering cycling programs that are safe, progressive and inclusive for all levels. Regardless of your skill level or your prior experience, you deserve the best!   We adapt the lesson to your needs, overcoming the challenges that cycling provides. We wish to inspire you, to give you the opportunity to excel and to reach your goals, in a safe and controlled environment.

All of our lessons are safe, accessible and fun, giving beginners, intermediates and advanced riders the opportunity to improve their technical bike skills.

Providing exceptional cycling experiences to all, from beginners to expert riders.

Rencontrez la présidente, chef des opérations, Mélanie

Life partner of Ian Hughes, mother of two adorable teenagers and former teacher by trade, Melanie took the plunge with Bikeskills in the spring of 2021. With mountain biking being a part of her life, teaching being one of her strengths and the human contact being so rewarding, everything aligned for the next step with Bikeskills.

Certified PMBIA 2, Melanie loves coaching women of all levels.

More women, more inclusive, more accessible

In April 2021, she set up the Bikemoms. It is a formula of four to six sessions of progression between girls. First in the spring to get the season off to a good start, in the summer to consolidate skills and in the fall for thematic clinics. The exclamations are always a moment of pleasure and kindness

Here are 5 good reasons, according to Mélanie, for both morale and self-esteem, to take mountain biking classes with us. …the girls.

1- Let yourself be guided
2- Self-esteem
3- Have role models
4- To create a network
5- Fun

Bikeskills, c'est...

Cycling is a teachable sport that can be accessible to all

The interest for cycling has never been so high, especially for the mountain bike discipline. More and more people get into the sport, dealers are making record sales, training facilities are growing everywhere and local clubs operate at full capacity. Everything seems to be perfect on paper, but many urgent matters need to be addressed.
The lack of technical knowledge from new riders can’t be compensated with the very few qualified technical coaches available, and the absence of safety standards framing beginners’ activities favors risky behavior in trails.
In the last few years, we’ve seen many of the sport’s newcomers heading into propers mountain bike trails with very limited preparation, which puts high pressure on mountain bike resorts and riders. The results are an increased number of accidents, sometimes resulting in substantial injuries. Those accidents darken the image of the sport, apart from the injuries themselves.

How can we make mountain bike a more accessible sport to anyone who wishes to try in a safe environment?

Mission

Make cycling more accessible, safer, progressive and fun.

Structure cycling activities, teach and coach, contribute to training and certification of future technical coaches, implement programs, join forces in trail building and bike parks construction. Bikeskills is a leading initiative for a positive and safe development of cycling within the Quebec province.

Vision

Give Access : Make cycling accessible to anyone, promote cycling near urban areas and get more people into an everyday outdoor lifestyle.

Educate: Increase the cyclist’s technical knowledge. Mastering the fundamentals of a cycling discipline is essential at every level.

Inspire: Make people appreciate their unique and exceptional outdoor experience. Transmitting passion for cycling travel.

Be Inclusive: Give the opportunity to discover a unique, accessible sport to young families and beginners of every age.

Values

All services offered help to put a more structured environment surrounding cycling:
  • Private or group lessons
  • Online courses – Tutorials
  • Coach training and certification
  • Consulting and program implementation

Making cycling accessible

We are specialized in teaching cycling’s technical abilities and offer structured services all around Quebec. All professionals present on the bikeskills.ca platform are trained and certified instructors. We all follow the same procedures in terms of riding progression and the same operational protocols when it comes to injury prevention and risk management.


Making coaching a professional job is very important to us. With Bikeskills, we offer coaching training, certification and also mentoring services for cycling instructors.


This structure allows coaches to offer a standard coaching service. Continuously training our instructors allows for better group coaching procedures. Coaching is a job and we provide professionals the opportunity they need to live from their passion.


Mountain bike’s popularity is rising. We focus on developing knowledge and abilities that are essential to make this sport safer. We elaborate strategies based on structure, instruction, progression and user safety.


With those initiatives, a training facility or a municipality can develop a peripheral service offering that implements programs adapted to the area’s specific needs.


Bikeskills offers consulting services to help implement mountain bike programs and structured coaching.


We must encourage the creation of new training facilities to make mountain bike accessible to all. Here are a few examples of services we provide:

  • Initiation programs (ini-bike)
  • Private and group lessons via Bikeskills
  • Bike School
  • Youth programs: camps, courses and club
Those measures aim to stimulate cycling accessibility in municipalities, provincial and federal parks as well as in renowned cycling centers