The Zone!

[manual63]

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/SM/00001.html">Good article</a>

I read this article and it is very good. The mind is a large part of riding and doing anything else for that matter. "Imagry" is a big one. How many times do you image what you are gonna do before you do it? Think it through many times and it will be much easier to concentrate when riding.

[GearDaddy]

To me, this is what any physical training or sport is all about. Attaining the "zone" is what keeps me in it. It's what keeps me coming back.

In cycling, I associate the zone mostly with a sort of fluidity of how my body is exerting, combined with a completely relaxed state of mind. In a race I usually find the zone at least 1/2 way through (i've always been a bad starter), where my breathing sort of "opens up" and my legs seem to just hover below that lactate threshold. I don't use a lot of "imagery" or "visualization" to anticipate what's coming, rather I just let it happen real time. In technical singletrack, the zone is that "flow" when you just seem to glide over obstacles.

The zone definitely has a different nature for different physical activities and different people. The article that you reference actually best describes the zone as I experienced playing competitive table tennis (yes - ping pong, really!). The physical training part is right on the money, as developing your game is akin to a martial arts discipline, i.e. learning how to generate power and speed with efficient motion while still being precise and having good "touch". And you need to be disciplined so that the proper technique becomes automatic. The mental training is right on too. Relaxation, positive thoughts (a.k.a. confidence), and most of all focus are critical. You eventually become familiar with a attaining the right "winning" frame of mind when the score is 15-15 vs. 18-17 vs. 20-20.

Probably the best physical activity that I've done, where imagery or visualization is predominant, is rock climbing. You often need to get yourself psyched up by visualizing the moves. Years later I still vividly remember particular body positions and moves on particular climbs that I've done. And I still find that visualizing a dynamic or powerful climbing move works to psyche me up, even when riding the bike.

[manual63]

Yeah, for mountain biking, imagry isn't as crucial, but it still works for technical stuff. I guess I get it from BMX (oh my god....I said BMX again) background. You usually know and can visualize what you are gonna do ahead of time because it's not that much in BMX. A race is only 45 seconds or so and if it's a trick or series of tricks, well, that's pretty easy to visualize too.

Now that I think about it, this is one of the hardest things for me to overcome in mountain biking. I tend to not know what's coming next and I am kind of trained on knowing what's next. Thus, I don't react as quickly as I should. I have slowly learned to just make quicker judgements and I keep my eyes looking forward, but it's hard after all these years of knowing what's coming well ahead of time. I know Leb pretty well now, but if I go riding in unfamiliar terrain, I mess up easily.