Crashing: Risk vs Reward

If you enjoy challenging trails, jump lines, and features, you're assuming a level of risk every time you ride, especially when you’re riding on the edge. But even when we’re careful, crashes can and do happen.
How have crashes and injuries affected your perspective on mountain biking?

[@hamman42]

Insightful points. Quick recovery to you both 🤘

[@jongusta]

Good listen Jason, thanks you and bro sharing some good insight into the topic. As a routine 51 year old rider, I always looks for ways to make the trail/feature/section easier or more fluent (smoother), if it means slowing things down some. Seem to be still progressing my riding some (at a slow, steady rate of course). My mental hangups from bad wrecks/injurues is when a bike part failure happens unexpectedly that suddenly sends oneself to the earth hard. Like when my rear, disc side hub fully (radially) cracked in half after landing a small feature to steep, fast DH section that sent me down hard with zero rear brake control as well. Those kind of things freak me out for a bit, until fully up and running again.

[@JasonVanHorn]

My goals have shifted as I've been aging as a rider. For a while, I wanted to still learn new tricks (I'd love to get a full Superman air before I'm dead for example) but at the moment I have my hands full just trying to get cleared to ride again and my focus is on long-term health.
Been spending a lot of time thinking about strategies for staying strong as long as I can. The gym is going to be a big part of that, as well as participating in other sports to compliment my riding fitness. I've been thinking a lot about my crashing skillset though - my jiu-jitsu breakfall training was a big part of what allowed me to progress when I started the sport. I'm also looking forward to getting back to basics once I can get back on the bike - manuals, rollbacks, and other low-consequence technical skills.