November 01, 2006
In the first installment in this series on bike skills, last month, we looked at some static skills, where you mostly balanced in place. In practicing those movements, you will have learned to lift your bike airborne and also will have gained some control rocking the bike from wheel to wheel. Now it's time to use those new skills to do something a little more useful-- get up onto things.
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October 01, 2006
The first several parts of this series on functional bike maneuvers will be directed toward anyone looking to improve their technical riding and will not be discipline-specific. Later installments will present strategies for improving riding performance for those already skilled on a bicycle.
In this series we will be looking at functional skills drawn from primarily from mountain biking, bicycle trials, and BMX… Continue Reading
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March 01, 2006
Sprinting is a skill. It is beautiful, violent, functional, and potentially destructive if conducted in an unsafe manner. It can bring glory to an athlete or be a factor in the survival and success of a warrior on the battlefield. At its simplest, it is a means of getting the body from one point to another in the shortest possible time, yet it is also a very complex, specialized motor skill that… Continue Reading
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February 01, 2006
There are few subjects that match bicycles and bicycling for inspiring a broad range of interest, controversy, and passion. Physics, physiology, law, culture, sport, history, and engineering all come to play for the tribe of cyclists.
Invented in 1817 by Karl Drais Saverbronn, 46 years after the first car, the bicycle is a miracle of muscular and thermodynamic efficiency.
No means of locomotion, mechanical or animal, can match the thermodynamic… Continue Reading
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December 01, 2005
One of the major differences between swimming and land-based sports is that breathing in the water is a skill, and a fairly advanced one at that. In recent weeks, since opening a new Swim Studio in New Paltz, NY, I’ve spent many hours teaching in an Endless Pool, where proximity to my students has allowed me to observe the extent to which breathing comfort is essential to their progress and success. This… Continue Reading
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August 01, 2005
Amanda Beard, Jason Lezak, Aaron Peirsol, Lenny Krayzelburg. If you're remotely connected to the sport of swimming you recognize these as the names of Olympic champions. What you might not know is that in a swim training culture that usually has swimmers (who compete in events averaging two minutes) training like marathon runners, these athletes were trained in a manner that is pure CrossFit.
The mastermind behind… Continue Reading
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June 01, 2005
How to improve continuously, no matter how long you swim.
After 39 years of purposeful swimming (as opposed to merely "doing laps") and 33 years of coaching and teaching, I consider myself fortunate to have achieved a rare distinction: I think I've become one of the best swimmers on earth. While that claim probably sounds staggeringly presumptuous, my definition of best-- unlike one that applies to, say, Michael… Continue Reading
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In Classic, Sports Applications
June 01, 2005
Since January, I've been on thirty-nine flights. The madness started with a writing assignment to cover cat skiing in southern British Columbia: ten days. Three weeks later, I was called to hop a few planes to a Canadian mountain range called the Monashees for a backcountry skiing photo shoot for Mountain Hardwear with a few other athletes: nine days. Two weeks later, I left on a month-long assignment for… Continue Reading
