Comfort, Relaxation, and Bike Handling Skills Are Interrelated If you try to adapt your position to the demands of a particular bicycle, you risk diminishing your riding performance and your development as a rider. Your bike should be modified to meet your current preference rather than you adapting to the current bike setup. It is important to understand the subtleties of choosing a riding position so you will not be dissuaded from your best choice by well-meaning friends, sales staff, or your reluctance to spend the money to modify your bike. Neglecting to modify your bike setup and to optimize your position will unwittingly sabotage your development as a cyclist or diminish the healthful benefits of riding.

While I was learning to ride a unicycle, I discovered that relaxation is the key to controlled movement. You steer a unicycle primarily with the hips. In the beginning it was quite obvious that fatigue and stress made my spine and hips tense and rigid so I had difficulty getting on and turning. To counteract this rigidity, I learned to take a moment before starting to ride to breathe diaphragmatically and swing my hips side-to-side to limber up my spine and hip joints. By reducing tension and increasing my flexibility, my unicycle riding skills developed quickly.

Transferring my unicycle experience to bike riding, I realized that tense riders have limited control because instead of moving freely and letting their bodies respond intuitively to their bikes, they are rigid and must think through each movement to guide their bikes. They end up steering primarily with their handlebars rather than by the fluid movement of their hips and shoulders.

Tension can result from either mental or physical causes. My unicycle experience was caused by my stressful life style: managing a small business, precarious financial condition, and the demands of single parenting. But tension can also result from enduring discomfort. The relationship of discomfort, tension, and control can be a troubling circle. Modifying the bike setup, understanding good riding technique, and reducing life style stresses will help break this vicious cycle. But just modifying your bike setup can make a substantial contribution to your bike handling skills and to building your confidence. Comfort, relaxation, and bike handling control are interdependent and form the foundation of cycling pleasure.

Contrast the discomfort-tension cycle below with the pleasure cycle of riding a bike that is set up for your personal comfort.