Why mountain biking makes you a better problem solver

After 25 years of being very happily hooked on the mountain bike life, I’ve been on the receiving end of these conversations more times than I can count. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about the flipside: the fact that most riders stay upright most of the time and that we don’t start riding the trails one day and ride Red Bull Hardline the next. We develop our skills progressively. This includes a heap of sophisticated strategies we use to actively mitigate risk.

While crashes certainly happen, they are not as common as many outsiders think. The strategies riders draw on to manage risk are incredibly effective.

Riding through the Mogo trails late last year, I met a guy who was exploring the trails by himself. Let’s call him Arnold. After a quick chat about our favourite types of trails and where we wanted to head next, Arnie and I teamed up and rode together. Partly for fun, and partly because riding with someone else is, in itself, a useful risk-mitigation factor should something go wrong. 

Arnie was fit enough to power his 170mm travel enduro bike up a climb faster than I could on my lighter, nimbler downcountry rig. On the descents, he was so skilful he was riding tight hairpin corners in the air on trails he’d never seen before, while I danced my way through the rocks, wheels on the ground. I wished I could hold Arnie’s wheel for longer to learn how to ride those same corners with his gravity-defying flow. 

As we chatted on the pedally sections, he told me about his downhill days from 25–30 years ago. One comment stuck with me: to race well, he learned that he had to be able to get to the finish line. He had the confidence and skills to ride huge features fast, but he’d inevitably crash and lose crucial time. He had to figure out how to ride them at speed while staying on the right edge of control – to stitch together each feature of a trail so he could hit the next one, and the next, without picking his bike and body off the ground halfway down.

Nowadays, riding is still a big part of Arnie’s life. And he’s built a career working in risk management. The same part of his personality that learned to solve the puzzle of a good downhill track has translated into a valuable skill set for solving complex problems in other contexts.

The skills we learn on the bike carry forward into our lives in all kinds of surprising and beneficial ways. Next time you’re trying to stitch a trail together – working out which line to take where and how to make it flow – take a minute to reflect on how something that’s such a common part of riding a mountain bike has influenced your approach to tackling other challenges. 

And next time someone tries to lecture you about risk, challenge them with what you’ve learned by working out how to actively mitigate risk rather than avoiding it altogether. Chances are high that you’ll have a more interesting conversation. Best case, maybe they’ll change their own mind about giving riding a go as well!

Learn more about using your mind to get more out of your time on the bike from Kath Bicknell at:
Web: intelligentaction.cc 
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