Six Ways to Peel a Banana (Or A Rock Garden)

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Syd Schulz

Macky’s family is a big fan of the “six ways to peel a banana” game. Meaning, if you have a problem, you get together and brainstorm six courses of action. The six usually range from ludicrously impractical (hire a troupe of circus monkeys and have THEM peel the banana for you while you stand on your head and eat an ice cream sundae) to fatalistic (don’t bother peeling the banana, we’re all going to die anyway), but somewhere in the middle there is usually a solution that makes sense to everyone. And it’s a good reminder that you have a choice — you don’t have to peel the damn banana, anyway.

While I’m not a huge fan of this game for questions such as “what should we do today” (as everyone tends to bring their own six options and it devolves into “36 ways to make this more stressful than it needs to be” which is not nearly as useful), it is a great tool for big questions, or when you hit a crossroads in life, or when you’re sitting at the top of a nasty rock garden that you’re supposed to be racing tomorrow, going “wtf…”

The truth is, no matter how bad things are, no matter how big of a rough patch you are going through, you almost always have some options. Sometimes all the options are bad except for one less-bad one, which can make it feel like not having any options, but the truth it that those options are always there. You always have a choice. And sometimes just acknowledging all the options, with no judgement, is empowering. It’s a reminder that YOU are in control and that YOU are making the choices and that YOU have agency. And feeling like you are making a conscious choice is better than feeling like you are being forced into a path, even if the outcomes are the same.

And more often than not, you will realize there IS a better option, and thinking of six ways to get through a situation will help you from automatically reverting to the easiest options, which for me are often “go around the thing” or “sit down on the side of the trail and throw a hissy fit.”

So, here’s my six ways to peel a banana, based off a rock feature I really didn’t like at a race earlier this year:

1. Don’t do the race.

This is one of those that I often dismiss right off the bat, but the truth is it IS an option. Nobody is forcing me to race at gun point. Yes I have sponsors, but they don’t follow me to the start gate with a cattle prod and they wouldn’t cut my contracts for not doing one race. And even if they would, it would still be an option.

2. Commit to going around the section and practice the go-around to try to minimize the time lost.

Go-arounds are, like, the definition of having options. If there isn’t a go around, this option would be “commit to walking/running the section, and practice that.”

3. Go around the section now, but attempt it in the race.

Certainly an option, pppppprobably not a very good one but the point of this exercise is to be non-judgemental.

4. Throw a wobbler at the top of the section, chuck bike into bushes, scream and yell.

A surprisingly common choice among pro athletes.

5. Attempt the section, but do so half-assedly.

Thus insuring that you make it look extra difficult and get a boost of sympathy from your s/o. Added bonus of proving him/her wrong when they said “I’m sure you can do it.”

6. Get out of your head, take a few deep breaths and make a damn effort.

If it doesn’t work out, eat a snack and try again. If it still doesn’t work out, review options 1-5.

The reality is that when I spend the time to think through the options, when I consider what would be the most helpful and what makes the most sense, I almost always choose Options 2 or 6. I’ve never thought “hey, I think the best course of action right now is to roll around on the ground and scream at my bike.” The trouble comes when I feel trapped, when I feel like I “have to ride this thing,” when I feel like I don’t have any options at all.

So, the next time you’re standing at the top of a feature you don’t like, thinking “I either ride this or drop dead right now,” try peeling it six ways. I promise it helps.

(OH – and in case you wondering if there actually are six ways to peel a banana, according to this Youtube video, there are nine.)

Celebrate Your Small Wins

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Syd Schulz

Celebrate your small wins.

This is a pretty well-trodden subject in the inspiration/self-care blog world. “Set big goals, but celebrate the small wins, like getting out of bed every day and brushing your hair and not being the sort of person who clubs baby seals for fun.” Like most self-help tropes, this one makes me roll my eyes. While I understand the importance of self-care on a theoretical level (you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others), the movement’s online manifestation often comes off as a justification for spending $100 on hair product and drinking green juice instead of, like, getting shit done.

And to be honest, beneath the heavy layer of inspirational fluff on this blog, I am a pretty cynical person. I believe that some things, like getting out of bed every day and getting shitty race results and writing bad blog posts, don’t deserve to be celebrated. A big part of supposed self-care is that “as long as you’re doing your best, it’s okay” or “if all you can do on a certain day is drag yourself out of bed and do five minutes of yoga, then you have done your best.”

And look, I get it. Some days you just don’t have it. And I do believe that, at least in the context of bike racing, if you honestly give it everything you have, and you do your very best, and you’re still last, then who the f$ck cares? Celebrate that shit. But I also think that, much of the time, we aren’t really doing our best. We aren’t even close to tapping our potential. Instead, we’re using “well, I did my best” as a cop-out.

To really, truly, do the best that you can, to perform at the best of your abilities, to not be sabotaged by your mind, to not be distracted by thoughts of what you’re going to have for dinner, to be fully present — that is probably the hardest thing in the world. I can think of maybe one or two bike races where I have honestly done my best. And probably about 1000 shitty races I have explained away by saying some variation of “well, that was all I could do.”

The point of this is not to start an argument about what “doing your best” really means (that’s another post blog post entirely), but rather to demonstrate that, at the end of the day, I am really hard on myself. There is a dark side to knowing what you’re capable of — a razor-sharp awareness of when you’re not living up to that standard.

I started racing bikes with what were, one might argue, unreasonable expectations. My perspective was warped because most of my friends were professional racers and so when I achieved things that were 1/10th of what they were capable of, I didn’t celebrate these wins, I just took them as par for the course, if I noticed them at all. I can think of very few times over the past four years that I have celebrated a small win, or even a large one.

To be honest, it’s difficult for me to think of any wins at all.

Clearly, they’ve happened. In four years I’ve progressed from popping off a curb (with difficulty) to doing eight foot drops. I’ve gone from someone who was usually the slowest person at the bike park (and constantly watching for people to catch me from behind), to someone who is routinely held up by others. I’ve gone from sliding down the steepest trails at Angel Fire on my ass, to cleaning all of them on my trail bike.

And yet, despite all that, I can think of maybe three times I have stepped out of my “trying to be better” bubble and thought, wow, it’s really cool that I rode that. One of them was a few weeks ago in Angel Fire. It was a cool moment. I rode a section flawlessly that used to make cry. It was so perfect I couldn’t even find anything to kvetch about, which is a rarity. Usually, I feel like my accomplishments are more of a “day late dollar short” variety. I hit the drop in Glorieta that scared me the day AFTER the race. I rode a lot of sketchy things in Northstar but everyone else rode them better. I finally learned how to corner properly. I cleared the medium line at Valmont but my form was sketchy.

(Regarding that last one, I remember explaining to my skills coach Lee why it could be better and him saying “when you’re in a session with me, only I get to tell you when something is bad, and I’m telling you that was good, so stop thinking and do it again.” This is why coaches are great.)

Two weeks ago, Macky and I took some local 16-year-old rippers out for an informal clinic to help them hit drops safely. They’re good kids with good bike skills plus all the bravery that comes from being 16. It was cool to see them progress from pretty sketchy to perfectly controlled with just a little bit of guidance (a trajectory that arguably took me like three years). We ended the session at one of the larger drops in the area — a drop that they were extremely excited to hit and that I kind of dreaded because I had been eyeing it for over a year. Possibly you can see where this is going, but all three boys sailed off the drop with varying degrees of control and then whooped and hollered and high-fived each other and ran up to do it again, and again, and again. I hit the drop and…

Well, nothing.

No excitement, no whooping, not even a single thought given to the fact that last fall I hadn’t even thought to attempt this feature. Just a laundry list of everything that could be better… too slow, not enough pop, too rear-wheel heavy. I did it three more times and the list just got longer. I never hit it well — I felt tense and sketchy and off. I knew I could do better, I knew my fear and insecurity was making me ride it poorly and that frustrated me. At some point it dawned on my that I was missing the point — that I had finally hit this drop, finally accomplished this goal that I had written down in my goal notebook, and yet there was no joy. The moment I committed to the drop and safely landed on the ground, I revised the goal from “hitting the drop” to “hitting the drop perfectly,” gliding over the mental victory that was getting myself to commit to it in the first place. You’d think, given the extent to which my mental game has been holding me back, this would have been worth celebrating in its own right, even if I had landed straight on my face. And yet, my habits of critiquing and striving for perfection kicked in and well, all I can say is, I kind of didn’t notice that I had just achieved a goal.

I have yet to decide whether my perfectionism is what has made me a good athlete — or if it’s what has prevented me from being a great one. At times like this, I suspect it’s a little bit of both.

Here’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself — it’s okay to celebrate small wins, even if they are not perfect. It’s okay to celebrate accomplishing a goal, even if it doesn’t go down exactly like you envisioned it. It doesn’t make you less driven and it won’t make you less likely to be successful. It might even make you better. Celebrating a work in progress won’t make you less likely to achieve the finished product. Celebrating a step forward does not have to be the same as settling for mediocrity.

So, from here on out, I’m going to be celebrating my small wins. I’m going to celebrate doing the things that are hard for me, even if other people make these things look easy. I’m going to celebrate the shit out of doing my best — and when my best is out of reach, I’m going to celebrate the fact that my “bad day riding” is still light years ahead of my best from three years ago and that is reason enough to crack out the champagne.

Books for Athletes: The Power of Habit

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Syd Schulz

I’ve always wanted to post a monthly round-up of cool, inspiring things I find on the internet, a la Semi-Rad’s weekly round-up. Alas, when left to my own internet-surfing devices, I end up reading clickbait articles about cats that get stuck in weird places and watching hours of fail compilation videos. Luckily, my taste in books is a little* more high-minded, so I decided to start a column where I share what I’m reading OFF THE INTERNET (*gasp*), and how these books have helped me develop as an athlete.

*80% of what I read is detective mysteries, but I also read a lot of nonfiction and self-improvement stuff, and that’s what I’ll be sharing here. Feel free to email me for my totally not highbrow mystery suggestions.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

Some of the books I find the most inspiring athletically have nothing to do with sports at all, but rather tackle how the mind works more generally. I have been carrying around about 15 pounds of sports psychology textbooks (to two continents now agh) and have yet to finish any of them, but I devoured The Power of Habit in a single sitting. Admittedly, it was a long sitting — a seven hour trans-Atlantic flight to be precise — but the point is that I found this book incredibly inspiring.

Duhigg delves deep into how habits work and how basically everything we do is a compilation of learned patterns. He covers addiction, weight loss, homicidal sleep-walkers and how companies use the science of habit to manipulate purchases. According to Duhigg, every single habit is made up of three phases: cue, routine and reward. In other words, there’s a trigger that sets off a learned behavior (the habit), which then results in an expected outcome (the reward).

The key to changing a “bad” habit is to change the routine — if you’re like me, you probably thought the key to changing a habit had more to do with, say, willpower, or avoiding the trigger (what Duhigg would call the cue). This book really made me think about habit formation in an entirely different way. You can’t always avoid the cues, but you can change how you respond to them. And sometimes, as The Power of Habit really explores, the cues and rewards are not as obvious as we think. Duhigg, for example, struggles with a habit of eating a cookie every afternoon — he thinks this behavior occurs because he’s hungry, but substituting a healthy snack doesn’t change his desire to eat a cookie. What does? Getting up from his desk and chatting with a friend. Only by tracking the behavior does he realize he wasn’t hungry at all — just bored and in need of social contact. I found this fascinating.

A few reasons this book is worth a read if you want to improve your athletic game:

1. Duhigg gives you a road map for changing your habits by seeking out the cues and rewards. Maybe you’re trying to figure out why you have such a hard time motivating getting to the gym — or why you always drink a beer instead of a recovery drink after a ride (ahem). Understanding habits is a first step towards changing them.

2. This book discusses inflection points — i.e. times when things go wrong and you have a choice of how to deal with them. One of the most helpful anecdotes for me featured a group of hip replacement patients. Half of which were tasked with writing out hour-by-hour, day-by-day plans of how they would deal with their recovery, including what they would do when they encountered inflection points, ex: “when I’ve been sitting for an hour and start to get stiff, I will get up and move.” The group that did this recovered way way WAY faster than the group that didn’t. So anticipating issues before they happen is the key to dealing with them the way you want to, and The Power of Habit offers some helpful suggestions on how exactly to do that.

3.The central thesis of this book is that habits can be changed. But only (ONLY!!!) if you believe and acknowledge that they can be changed. In other words, you can get fitter, faster, healthier, smarter — but first, you have to believe that that change is possible.

Leave me a comment or shoot me an email if you’ve read this book (or if you do!). I’d love to hear what you thought of it, or if you feel it’s helped become a better athlete or achieve your goals more generally.

How I Learned How to Learn

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Syd Schulz

This is Part I of a little mini series on “learning to learn.” Part II will feature some pro tips on learning from professional skills coach Lee Likes Bikes, and Part III will give you a blow by blow of how I learned how to wheelie in a week. Sound fun? Cool, let’s get started.

So, first off — I consider learning itself to be a skill. Why?

Because I used to be bad at it, and now I’m not. I think we often confuse the actual process of learning with acquiring a skill. Just because someone learned something quickly doesn’t necessarily mean they are good at learning — it might just mean they already know how to do something similar, and therefore were able to pick up the new skill quickly. When you’re able to learn something completely foreign — through a repeatable process of seeking expert advice, practice and patience (PATIENCE PATIENCE). Then, and only then, do you understand how to learn.

In the past, while I would occasionally pick up a MTB skill quickly, my learning process was a certified disaster. If I didn’t pick something up in the first session, I immediately assumed I would never figure it out. I was hampered by a series of limitations (I don’t hit drops, I suck at riding wet roots, I don’t know how to bunny hop), and I would say things like “I don’t know how to bunny hop so I can’t do x,y,z” like that was a fixed state of things, and then I would pout. Okay, maybe not exactly, but you get the point.

I’ve since developed the following process for improving my ability to learn new skills, and that’s what I want to share with you today. The best part is this works for bike skills, but it always works for pretty much everything else. Win win.

Step One: Start where you are, not where you think you should be.

This is a big one for me. For the first two years I raced mountain bikes I was hampered by this feeling that I was playing constant catch up to girls who were way far ahead of me in every way. (Not going to lie, I still feel like this occasionally). This meant that if I was going to go out and practice my jumping skills, it would always be in reference to the massive drop that so-and-so hit and posted a picture of on Instagram. (Social media can be evil in this regard). And with that reference, everything was a failure. There was literally no way to succeed. To truly learn something, you have to accept your starting point, even if it is miles away from your end goal. Having a lofty goal is great, but not if it’s driving you nuts, and not if it’s based on what someone else is doing.

If you can’t hit drops, that’s cool. Start with popping off a curb. Learn the proper form and get some expert advice (more on coaching in Part II). When you hit a one foot drop, crack open a bottle of champagne. Celebrate that shit. Forget everyone else — just compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

Step Two: Embrace a growth mindset and ditch your limits.

I’ve written about growth mindsets in depth before, as have many other smarter people. The point is — all those “I can’t” statements are unhelpful AF. If you believe you can change, you can. If you believe you can improve, you can. Serious physical or health limitations aside, our biggest limiting factor is almost always our mind. Given enough time, enough patience, enough direction — you can do the things you see as impossible.

Step Three: Practice. Practice. Practice. Patience. Patience. Patience.

We’ve all heard of the 10,000 rule, and we’ve all heard a million renditions of “practice makes perfect.” And yet, a lot of us seem to feel like this doesn’t apply to us. If you’re like me, your internal narrative goes something like “it’s not that I’m not willing to put in the practice, it’s just that I don’t get it, I’m not making any progress, I’m just making the same mistake over and over again.” But the truth is that sometimes improvement is hard to see, and sometimes you have a do something wrong for days on end before it clicks and your body and mind start working together. If you want to learn something, do it everyday. It doesn’t have to be for hours on end — I find that 15 to 30 minutes of working on a new skill is ideal, as I don’t get too tired and frustrated — but it does have to be everyday. Be honest, how many times in your life have you practiced the same skill every day for a week, a month? If the answer is never, you aren’t tapping your potential to learn.

Step Four: Get to know your learning process.

I find that I go through a pretty similar cycle every time I try to learn a new skill. The first few sessions are great and I start to see improvement as I pick off the easy stuff, and begin to understand the theory of the skill. Then, once I understand the theory, I expect myself to immediately be able to execute it. After all, I can see myself doing it in my head, I understand what I’m supposed to be doing, so why is it so hard? Why aren’t I doing it? This phase is the hardest and it can go on for days, weeks, months. And it is frustrating. I usually hit a point where I get angry and want to give up. And then, just when I’ve relegated myself to never being able to do it, something clicks. Now that I’ve gone through this a few times, I’ve been able to recognize the signs, and while I still get frustrated, I embrace it as part of the process — and I know I have to push through a lot of rough practice sessions to get where I’m trying to go.

Step Five: Seek expert advice and be open to it.

This is probably the most important one on here, but it’s not achievable until you’ve embraced Steps One – Four. For example, if you refuse to accept your starting point, you probably won’t like the advice you get because your coach will be telling you to practice the pumptrack while you want to be hitting 30ft doubles. And likewise, if you have a lot of self-imposed limits, you will drive your coach up the wall with “I can’t” statements. And if you don’t practice, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

I’ll be going WAY deeper on the idea of seeking and accepting advice in Part II of this series, which will be all about skills coaching, why you should do it, and how to maximize the benefit you get from it. I’ll be bringing in some expert commentary from Lee Likes Bikes, so if you have any questions you want me to ask him, pipe up in the comments!

And make sure you check out Part II and Part III of this learning series.