Posts Tagged ‘Bicycle Technique’

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Bicycle Riding, is published on this website in a PDF format. It goes into extraordinary detail on how to ride a bicycle without paying a physical price by using an efficient riding technique.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)

INHIBITION is one of the most powerful tools in the Alexander Technique. It gives the bicycle rider a tool to change any aspect of her riding technique and posture that doesn’t work with what works. Inhibition helps the bicycle rider identify what is interfering with the rider creating the most user friendly riding technique and posture possible, and then to be able to change what isn’t working.

INHIBITION ALLOWS THE BICYCLE RIDER TO LET GO OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING, AND TO REPLACE IT WITH WHAT DOES WORK IN RIDING.

Inhibition is what you do after you’ve identified what is not working in your cycling technique. Let me explain. By the time a bicycle rider has discovered, after years of riding, that there are aspects of the rider’s technique and posture that are interfering with the cyclist’s ability to do whatever she would like, these destructive habits are as central to the bicycle rider’s technique as the productive ones are.

So, how do you throw out the bath water, without throwing out the baby? You identify and list what is compromising your bicycle riding, and you also make a second list of what it is that works in your riding technique, and you only keep the good list.

There are the typical big postural problems – slumped or over-arched posture, obvious tension throughout the body, from hands to legs. Then there are the much more subtle problems, which may be a matter of degree. What I mean, is there may be postural and technique things that you do that are not obvious to anyone but an Alexander Technique teacher.

Ex: If right before the bicycle rider rides, she locks her neck, then this can be pretty invisible to most people. If right before the rider rides, she locks her hips, this can be almost undetectable. If the rider locks and narrows her shoulders as she rides, this can be pretty invisible. If she shortens her spine as she rides, this can put pressure on the nerves that originate at the spinal cord, and this can be hard to see.

So, what is the act of inhibition or inhibiting? If right before you do what you have always done when you ride a bike, just before you ride, you stop and choose to do something new, then you have just inhibited what isn’t serving you.

Ex: Just as the cyclist is about to ride, she notices she is locking a collapsed neck. The bicycle rider stops – doesn’t ride. She now chooses not to collapse her curved neck and lock her neck, and right after that new choice, she then rides.

What I have just described is inhibition or inhibiting a habit. It very subtle and very powerful, because for the first time, the bicycle rider has chosen not to initiate riding with an unconscious bad habit.

She has chosen to cycle without unconscious tension and compression of the neck/spine. Bringing this into the rider’s awareness is moving bicycle riding away from being something you fix, to being something where you are truly experiencing all of your subtle habits, good and bad, you have ridden a bike with. Now you have the tool, INHIBITION, that will allow you to perceive and choose which habits you want to keep or release.

THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE DOES TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS. IT TRULY RAISES YOUR AWARENESS OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOU RIDE A BICYCLE TO A LEVEL THAT SHOWS YOU HOW YOU COMPROMISE YOUR RIDING, AND IT GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO STOP DOING THIS.