It’s hard to learn new skills as an adult. My learning curve feels steeper and full of holes while my expectations skyrocket outside the range of normal limits.
As a kid I rode a bike, mostly in my front yard, down the long driveway, through the horse arena and around the block at grandma’s. With my cousins we’d experiment, tying jumpropes to our bike posts, we’d pull eachother down the hill on skateboards and roller blades, often ending up with road rash. We’d go at this for hours on repeat without getting tired or low on energy. Riding solo I’d bike down the long driveway, cut left into the dirt to go down a corner into the arena and ride down piles of dirt making my own little “pump” track. They looked so big, but I’d ride through my hesitation with caution on the first round, followed by multiple rounds of confidence and joy on repeat until I was sated.
It never occurred to me that I was building muscle memory, bike body balance, motor planning and execution of braking, riding flow, downhill body position and a bunch of other skills. I was just 7 out riding my bike.
Fast forward 30 years. I’ve picked up mountain biking, with gear changes, sharper slopes, seat dropper timing, cornering switchbacks, finding ridable lines over obstacles, technical climbing and rocky decents all at a pace much faster than what I normally ride. I’m no longer just 7 and out riding my bike, I’m thinking quick and occasionally find a flow.
Frustration plagues me. “Why can’t I get this!?”, “This is so hard!”, “That line is impossible!”, “Ah, it’s the boogieman!”, “I can’t do that, it’s too hard!”, “Will I ever keep up!?!”. Then bad habits sneak in making it so much worse, while I watch my friends ride faster and seemingly better every ride and I’m just stuck in impossible land. “Maybe I need a new group” runs through my head all the time as though that would solve my issues, or I think “maybe this isn’t my sport and I should find something else”.
Today at the bike park I watched several small children collapse into tears, whining in their frustration. “It’s too hard, my gears are too slow or they’re too fast, it’s not working!”, and another little boy lamenting the hills “I don’t want to ride it, I want to ride on the street!” While he sobbed and sobbed. I felt like I’d finally found my group. Yes! I wanted to cry next to them and say “I know, me too!” and purge my frustration with them so freely. Watching some road cyclists attempt a bridge and pump track I saw their discomfort with an obstacle and their panic response to break instead of ride through. I saw a little kid throw his feet off his pedals in his panic as though it was equal to breaking. Seeing these physical signs of panic in others comforted me. I’m not the only one out there caught up in a panic, letting my eyes tell me lies instead of relying on my form and technique.
Yesterday I took a bike clinic with some friends. Riding through the parking lot with back to basic drills it was easy to sift out some bad habits I’ve formed and correct them with an instructor’s eyes on my form. Taking it to the trail, it only took a second for my worst habit to show up. “I don’t think I can do it.” Like a giant red stop sign in front of me, I stop before I try, putting a foot down and failing to commit. Rounding a switchback my eyes stare at the ground instead of where I’m going, getting stuck and locked up. It’s literally the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. And I can’t really explain why or where it came from, a total body freeze up. Each attempt getting harder as my emotions built up, the instructor gently stating “you’ve had three years of stopping yourself at every opportunity and only 30 minutes of trying, don’t let frustration get in the way!”
If only I was a child and could have released all my feelings at that moment causing the biggest scene of all time. It’s hard to learn new things as an adult. I expect a new thing to be easy, to get it after 3 tries, to be as good as those around me, to not struggle, to not have to work at something, to be natural. And yet my biggest problem is that I don’t believe I can, I just stop, freeze. I don’t try, I just accept failure. I don’t have to fix my form, just my brain.
There was another kid at the bike park this morning, riding the little pump track round and round as his dad watched. On his second lap he shouts out “I’m doing great!” with a giant smile on his face. It made me pause. I can relate to the kids with frustrated attitudes and meltdowns, but this kid’s joy and positivity struck me…I want to relate to that.
Learning a new skill as an adult is hard. I’ve got some work to do.
The Fish Eye 