writings: ARTICLES
Bicycular Frontier by John Howard
It was one of those exquisite moments of cycling pleasure--state-of-the-art racing bikes, sew-up tires, and asphalt so smooth it turned the ride silken. Ian Jackson and I were headed back into Little Rock after a long hard ride, and I felt totally alive physically. Throughout the ride, Jackson had been doing an occasional show-and-tell with his BreathPlay technique, and his ideas were so refreshing, I felt totally alive mentally too.
"John," he said, "check this out. See if you can tell what I'm doing."
Jackson's cycling technique is phenomenally smooth, and as I narrowed my attention down all I could see was a good aero position. I wondered what I was supposed to be looking for.
Then it happened. With no apparent explosion of effort, Jackson accelerated explosively, suddenly pulling rapidly away from me. As I watched him motoring down the road, it looked almost surreal. Although his acceleration was in the sprinting-out-of-the-saddle range, his body seemed serenely relaxed, and his bike was rock steady. As far as I could tell, he was doing nothing at all. It was as if invisible afterburners had turned his bike into a two-wheeled rocket.
When he'd opened up about 100 meters, he shut off the afterburners, sat up, and looked back at me with a big grin on his face.
He let himself drop back and soon that grin was shoulder to shoulder.
"It's a power secret," he said. "Could you tell how I did that?"
"What blows my mind is that I didn't see any effort."
"There was a tremendous focus of effort," he said, "but there was no way of seeing it. Let me show you."
He got down in the aero position again, hands on the brake hoods, and forearms parallel to the top tube.
"Watch my arm and shoulder muscles closely."
Nothing changed in Jackson's aero position, but I saw his forearms and biceps bulging. His buttocks lifted up about a quarter inch off the saddle and once again it was as if those invisible afterburners had kicked in. He accelerated explosively again, with that same surreal smoothness. I marveled at how serenely relaxed his body appeared but I could now see that he was actually riding with all his weight on the pedals and none on the saddle.
When he'd opened another convincing gap, he sat up and looked back again with that big grin.
Once we were should-to-shoulder again, he explained his technique.
"I do this frequently, to build core strength," he said. "The idea is to take all the weight off the saddle but to keep the Lycra of the bike shorts in contact with the leather of the saddle. I'm using all the strength of the active BreathPlay outbreath to turn my torso into a rigid box. The only contact I have with the bike is with my hands holding the brake hoods and my feet inside the bike shoes. I appear to be sitting down, but there's no body weight on the saddle. It's as if the shoulder joints and hip joints are locked in space. The effort of turning the cranks generates a strong torquing force that tends to twist my torso. I resist that torso twist, holding my body strong and still; consequently, all that muscular power is focused through the pedals.
"It takes great core strength to do this, and it builds great core strength to play with it occasionally during a ride. Unless you wanted to hit someone with the demoralizing psychological shock of accelerating effortlessly away, you probably wouldn't want to do it in a race. It simply burns too much muscular energy. Playing with it during training rides is another matter, though. The strength and technical awareness it builds can help you win races. Give it a try. Use the BreathPlay active outbreath to turn the torso into a rigid structure."
It didn't take long to feel what he was talking about. To take the weight off the saddle while appearing to remain seated was extremely challenging. The immediate response was a wildly unstable wobbling of the bike. I had to work with great focus to lock the shoulder and hip joints in space, and I immediately saw that the bike itself was an extremely precise biofeedback device. Only when I was able to keep the bike steady was I building the strength, awareness, and control I wanted. It felt great to be doing secret training on the bicycular frontier. I recommend it, and the BreathPlay paradigm behind it.