Industry Insider: MTB career insights with Sam Morris
From bike shops to professional guiding, not a job for the faint of heart.
A professional bike guide and instructor for 25 years, Sam Morris runs BikeVillage Holidays in and across the French and Italian Alps. From qualifying in Britain and then in France to training other guides all over Europe, this is his story.
In your own words, who are you and what do you do?
My name is Sam Morris and I’m a mountain bike instructor and guide. I live in a town called Moûtiers in the French Alps with my partner, three awesome kids, a cat, and a dog, called Rocket. We’re very close to well-known alpine resorts like Les Arcs, Méribel and La Thuile, just over the border in Italy. In my head, I spend all summer riding and all winter riding when possible and skiing when not.
For the sake of transparency, this involves the usual life mix of office-based admin, off-season work as a carpenter, too many house renovations, school runs, bad backs, and all that good stuff that never quite makes it to Instagram. We’re all just living our lives!
What is your job?
I run BikeVillage mountain bike holidays. The glory bit of my job is the bike guiding and instruction, but a huge slice of the work pie is also logistical and, I guess, kind of pastoral in a way.
Riders usually only get to come out for one hard-earned week a summer and my job is to make sure that this is the very best week of their entire year.
Cathedrals of flow.jpg, by Sam Morris
All of their stress should just fall away so they can focus purely on riding trails that blow their minds, eating great food, laughing with friends and generally feeling like the very best version of themselves. If I don’t nail this then I don’t sleep, that’s pretty much how it works. If I was any less invested then I don’t think I’d still be so passionate about it after all these years.
Behind the scenes, this involves a mix of marketing, office admin, accounts, arranging transfers, accommodation, lift passes, uplifts and all the quiet logistics that make a trip work - the kicking legs to the gliding swan, if you will. Then comes the time I actually get to spend with my clients, guiding and instructing on the bike. This is very much my life’s passion and I really can’t exaggerate how lucky I feel to call it my job. It is super varied too.
From skills coaching in the Les Arcs bike park to hiking 3000m summits on our AlpPacker alpine traverse trips - variety is the spice of life!
How did you get into what you do?
I stalked someone! Well, not quite but I badgered the owner of an MTB tour company until they relented and gave me a job running and guiding trips to Colorado and Utah. Persistence works folks, so long as you’re not creepy.
This was on the back of lots of voluntary guiding work and all the scant qualifications available at the time. There have been a lot more qualifications since then, by the way.
How long have you been working in the bike industry?
If you count bike shops as a kid, then since 1993. I started guiding professionally in 1998 2023 was my 25th anniversary in the job.
How have things changed since you started?
Well, bikes don’t suck anymore for a start! Seriously this is huge - we can ride further and harder than ever before and I see fewer accidents and mechanicals than I used to.
Skills coaching and teaching theory in biking have also blossomed in the last decade and are continuing to go in such a positive direction, I just love that side of things.
Is there anything you wish you could change about your role/job?
I wish there was a bit more time for physical recovery during the season, that I was a bit better at switching off from the more stressful elements of it and that it wasn’t so financially precarious at times. That’s a pretty short list though given how much fun it is.
What does the average week look like?
In summer? Well, I don’t want to put anyone off but…
- 5-7 AM: emails, invoices, book transfers etc.
- 7-9 AM: finish ride plans, last weather checks, meet riders, ride briefing, hook up trailers.
- 9-5 PM: The fun bit. Uplift in van then guiding and instruction in the mountains
- 5-5.30 PM: Share a beer, dunk in a mountain stream and generally feel the glow with everyone if it all went well.
- 5-7 PM: Retrieve vans, re-fuel, debrief, and initial plan for the next day’s ride.
- 7-9 PM: Return home, and try to maintain normal healthy relationships with those I love!
- 9-11 PM: Usually more emails, bike fixing, weather checks for the next day, checking how the riders are doing, generally fail to switch off.
- 11-5 AM: Perfect sleep pattern for insomniacs.
- 5 AM: start again, virtually every day for 16 weeks straight.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to do your job/what you do?
Probably too much advice! Here's a couple of thoughts:
Ask yourself why you want to do it and be really honest with yourself about the answer. If you just want to ride your bike in the mountains then great, me too, but you’ll be an awful instructor-guide and you won’t even like it. Go and work evenings in a bar, have all day to ride for yourself and live the life - it’ll be a blast.
If you want to ride your bike in the mountains (we all do!) and you love helping others, developing and enabling not just their bike skills but their whole way of looking at biking and being in nature, giving every ounce of your energy to helping engineer and curate great experiences for others then go for it, start getting the qualifications. It’s a long road but it’s worth it.
Also, develop a taste for ibuprofen! Some days you’ll wake up feeling shitty. Maybe you had a big crash the day before or maybe you’re ill. You’ve been riding every day, burning the candle at both ends, for months now. You’ll neck an ibuprofen and maybe a co-codamol too and you’ll go to work smiling, upbeat, and positive and never let on how hard it was to get up. Some days you have to earn your living after all!
What do you like most about what you do?
When I get to see people buzzing from the experience, totally engaged in the moment and just loving life, on a bike. It’s a privilege.
If you weren’t doing this, you would be?
Full-time carpenter, hopefully at the finer end of the cabinet-making and furniture design spectrum but quite probably still shivering my arse off on a chilly worksite as the first snows arrive like every other year! If you want to live in the mountains you kind of have to do the jobs that exist in the mountains.
What have been some of the highlights of your career?
Most of them involve fixing totally screwed bikes with sticks and duct tape!
Qualifying under the rigorous French training scheme introduced me to some lovely people at IMBA Europe and in 2015 I helped create the European MTB instructor-guide organisation. We created a common training standard for MTB instructor guides across Europe to help develop the profession and increase working standards internationally. We now have half of Europe on board and our work is helping drive up professional standards and opportunities for work across the continent. Just don’t mention Brexit.
In recent years, I’ve also drifted sideways into MTB tourism development work, which I love. It has taken me to some really fun places - Finnish Lapland is probably a favourite.
The industry is in a bit of a tough situation in terms of the cost of living. Do you see it recovering any time soon and, if so, what will brands need to do to stay relevant and afloat?
I don’t think the market ever really recovers as such because it never goes back to a previous point in time. It does keep evolving though. For a couple of years, it seems the approach to the cost of living crisis has been to target markets that aren’t really affected by the crisis, which is a bit depressingly unambitious.
I’m hoping brands will get more into investing in a sustainable future for mountain biking through trail advocacy and encouraging diversity. Let’s build trails, invest in public transport to get to them and take biking into schools for free so that down the line the people we meet out riding look more like everyone else in our lives.
What do you dislike most about the cycling industry?
Bikes cost about 5K but we basically use sellotape to keep our tyres airtight. C’mon engineers, get it sorted, or at least just copy Mavic! And don’t even get me started on replacing broken spokes…
In my own sphere, my biggest bugbear is poor-quality guiding. I hate it! When I travel I always try to connect and work with local guides but when I end up with someone who doesn’t respect the job and is happy just to ride up front and show me the way, like a crappy human GPS, it drives me mad. It drives down the reputation of all instructor-guides and harms the profession no-end. Get qualified and work harder people!
How do you keep things balanced when your hobby becomes your job?
I compartmentalise. When I’m at work I invest in it completely, so the last thing on my mind is my own riding. My bike is just a vector for the work I do.
Then, when I have time off I still really want to ride for myself because it’s so completely different to work. Ditching the huge guiding pack, not planning a damn thing and just pedalling out the door like my arse was on fire, there’s nothing like it.
