The Lazy Rider and the Split Step

There was a time when bikes were a way for me to get to fun that was happening somewhere else as much they were the focus of the fun-having. In my teens, I rode trails, sure, but I was more likely to be spending my 2-4 hours or more of daily physical activity skiing, playing soccer, running around after friends, or, between the ages of 13 and 18, playing tennis. I got pretty serious about that. Two recent events started me thinking about those years of chasing the fuzzy yellow ball around a hard, painted surface. In the first, I was playing a pretty casual game of pickleball and found myself split-stepping before every shot. Briefly put, I was applying a highly-ingrained footwork technique into the most casual of all racket sport games* without even thinking about it. In the second instance, I was at a media camp where I was decidedly the slowest rider present. Usually, this would spark in me at least a small crisis of identity, but in this case every other rider there was either a former or current World Cup DH or EDR racer, so it didn’t feel quite so damning. What those events have to do with each other is going to take me a little while longer to recount.
*Pickleball feels very casual to tennis players. This isn’t elitism. It’s fact.

My family played ALL the sports. My grandfather was a sporting legend. My father is 75 and still skis with a grace and power that is enviable. My mum was good at track, picked up tennis and skiing in her adult years, ran half marathons well into her 60s, took up golf when her knees shut that down, and promptly made two holes-in-one (that's two more than my dad, a lifelong golfer). My sister inherited my grandfather’s ability to pick up any sport and rise to effortless dominance. Instantly. My brother is four years younger than me but we were so competitive with each other that I spent most of my teenage years wrestling him into submission holds to try and overpower the reality that he was probably more athletic than me. He’s an inch taller than me now, but if you check hundreds of family photos you’d never know it, thanks to my finely tuned, tennis honed footwork. I would pop up on my toes for a split second every time the camera shutter clicked, then back down before anyone noticed. Yes, we were/are a competitive family. And little brothers need to be reminded of their station. So do big brothers.

Early in my teens, a light bulb went off and tennis became a thing for me. It wasn’t long before I was into lessons, then more serious lessons, then a tournament here and there, and then summer tennis academy - 5 hours a day running around smashing a fuzzy yellow ball over and over again under the summer sun. I played so much back then that I would go through a pair of shoes every 3 weeks. I was a toe-dragger when I served, and they didn’t make shoes that held up to that kind of abuse. They knew me by name at Rackets & Runners. I would bring in my torched shoes with their layers of Shoe Goo on the toes, barely covering those frayed cross-sections of leather, polyurethane and fabric. And they would replace them, because they knew I played more in a week than most people played in a year and my mom was smart enough to send me in there alone after a few times so they wouldn’t look at her and try to judge whether she was willing to spring for $100 tennis shoes every three weeks. I guess this is a lot like bike shops that unofficially support groms who ride for more hours a day than they sleep and can’t afford to rebuild a wheel every week. Bless the bike shops. And bless Rackets & Runners, which is still there, by the way, and still a really, really good independent sports shop.

Sibling rivalry and worn out shoes brings us roundaboutly to the subject of footwork. In tennis, like in most sports, you first learn the important thing (hitting the ball), and then you learn how to do the important thing under more difficult circumstances (hit it while on the run to a good spot on the court against an opponent that tracks it down and hits it back harder). As you face better opponents, the ball starts to come back at you a lot faster, meaning you have less time after your last shot to recover your position and prepare for the next one. At 15, that next shot will already be on its way back to you less than one second after you just finished hitting it, because your opponent is fitter than a 5-year-old buck. Your only hope of reacting to that ball’s direction and trajectory within a tenth of a second of the moment of impact relies on your ability to convert reflex and potential energy into kinetic energy that will re-position you to a precise location that will allow you to smash that whizzing yellow ball back at your opponent. Preferably to a spot on the court they do not currently occupy. And that process cannot happen in high level tennis without impeccable footwork, beginning with the Split Step.

Back then they called it the split hop but it’s the same thing, and it’s not unique to tennis. Athletes use it in any sport where explosive changes of direction are required to play at a high level: basketball, baseball, football, rugby, soccer, all racket sports…all of them and more. But it’s probably most obvious to the layperson watching tennis because every good player uses a split step before every single shot, except when serving. Watch a tennis match and you can’t miss it. Maybe more impressively, check out a few seconds of Roger Federer doing it in its most subtle form in this warmup against Djokovic. The split step is easy to spot even if it’s subtle, because he’s not in full flight. Also, don’t miss the little dance steps in between split step and impact, then recovery and another split step – more of the same important footwork, in sequence, by one of the best ever. It's kinetic poetry.

Here’s how it works: After you’ve hit your shot, your eyes move from the ball you just pummelled to your opponent and they won’t leave until it’s time to focus on the shot coming back at you. Before that, you use other footwork techniques like drop steps and crossovers and a shitload of hustle to recover your position back to the middle of the court, assuming you even have time for that. No matter where you are when your opponent rears back to hit their shot, you will interrupt your current momentum and direction and make a subtle hop. As your opponent makes contact, you had better already be on your way back down. By the time you land on the balls of your feet, knees coiled and ready to propel you, your brain has decoded the direction, trajectory, speed, and spin type (whether it’s back or topspin, and how much side spin) of the shot, and from the moment you touch down, you have only enough time to MOVE! to the spot you need to be to intercept the ball and send it back again.

There are other pieces of footwork and technique at play, but it all starts with a properly executed split step. Junior tennis players are drilled on this until they perfect its execution on every single shot without a second thought, but if you google ‘tennis split step’ you’ll uncover a litany of posts from people complaining about their inability to get it right. Once you learn the timing, it’s a natural and beautiful thing. Until then, it’s absolutely hilarious to watch someone getting it wrong.

The reason I was thinking about tennis and split steps (and tennis academy out at UBC, and my bike ride there and back most days because I, too, was fit as a 5-year-old buck) is because of the second thing: the media camp I recently attended in Bellingham. We were riding a yet-to-be-released bike and I was there with just one other media editor, the bike company’s brand manager, one of their well-known sponsored riders, and an employee who also races and is, as far as I know, almost as fast as the well-known sponsored rider. An unusually small contingent for a media camp, but all the better that way. Except that it became very apparent, very early into our first run, that I was very definitely the slow guy at this camp.

Now, to be totally transparent, I’m never the fast guy. I’m usually the somewhere in the middle guy, speed-wise. Passably comfortable in the steeps guy. Ok on the drops guy. Definitely not the jumper guy. I am comfortable with my station regarding all of these things. Hubris made sure of that when I was younger, but now age and maturity (or a lack of Fs to give) does all the heavy lifting. Add the fact that every one of these other riders had at one time or were currently pursuing a career in racing at the highest level, and it would be absurd for me to expect otherwise. What struck me, though, was not the glaringly obvious difference in speed and talent between me and them, but the fact that just like Roger Federer can make split steps in a warmup look as natural as taking a breath, these two-wheeled talents were casually, reflexively doing things that I could only pull off all at once if I was focused, having a singularly good day, and maybe just a bit lucky. I had moments over that couple of days where I rode well, but more often than not I spent time alternating between enjoying the shit out of riding a great new bike on great trails, and wondering how the hell these other riders could be so much faster while expending (seemingly) so much less effort?

With time to reflect, it’s fairly obvious. Just like there is an inherent intensity in my racket sports footwork, even during the most casual of games, drilled into me by those thousands of hours of tennis camp, these mountain bike racers have spent similar amounts of time and intense concentration honing their talent. They possess a database of reflex and trained skills, and an intensity that a non-racer like me cannot summon without deliberate thought and effort. And even then, not to the same extent. To expect otherwise would be silly. Calling myself a lazy rider is not really fair, but the net result is the same. A casual tennis player that doesn't split step isn't necessarily lazy, but they aren't going to chase fast moving balls down at a very high standard, either. In either case, it’s both a massive disadvantage and a good thing to keep in mind. Because one of the unique things about mountain biking is the delicate dance of skill, confidence, and intimidation that can conspire to keep some riders from enjoying themselves on a ride where they’re welcomed but still self-conscious about being slow or less capable. It may even be severe enough to keep them from joining that ride at all. I’ve been on both sides of that line many, many times. This occurs to some degree in all sports, but mountain bikers seem to be extra susceptible, and I haven’t been able to put a finger – yet – on why that is.

Years and years of riding with others that are faster and more skilled than me has helped me learn that a) it all goes better if I just try to enjoy the ride within my own level of comfort; b) if I’m able to relax, I may be able to learn something from the faster/better riders I’m riding with; c) by channeling a bit of empathy I can hopefully be better at helping someone else feel more comfortable or have more fun when I’m one of the faster or more skilled riders in the group.

It has taken years of riding to get more comfortable with this fact, but it doesn’t mean I’m immune. There are times when I would kill to have just a fraction of that grace and speed. In many ways, though, I have gained a new level of appreciation for why and how some riders are better in ways I won’t approach, unless I go back to training like a 15-year-old in a summer academy. Because there are no shortcuts. The skill that looks so effortless has been honed over a lifetime, whether we’re talking about a sequence of rooty off-camber turns on Galbraith or a clean split step. I can take some solace at least, as the riders gap me down the jump line, that I can probably still own them on a pickleball court.