Hunched Shoulders

"...he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; the vulture the very creature he creates."   

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

 I'm no expert, but I think I probably have horrible posture. For example, it has always been a struggle to relax my shoulders as I ride a bike. 

    I first noticed at 17 that my default cycling position was (and still is) to keep my arms straight and hunch my shoulders. Horrible for your shoulders; not great for your arms. Instead of absorbing bumps, you take all the shock straight up into your bones and joints. Now, back then, I remember being told that proper cycling form involved staying narrow (and therefore "aero.") Your knees should stay relatively close to the top tube as you pedal. When you approach a long downhill, get your head down, your hands in the center of the handlebars, and your butt up in the air to make yourself aerodynamic. (the frontal area part of this equation is true. Maybe not so much the towering nether regions). And on and on. So maybe that somehow encouraged this bad form way back then. Or maybe I just misunderstood what they were telling me.

    But I know myself and my anxieties well enough to know I would've ended up in that position either way. I try to picture cement blocks tied to my elbows with strings to get them down. It works for a few seconds. I move my hands to different positions, searching for a place that will naturally cause my shoulders to fall. (Lately, I've learned that putting your brake levers higher on a flat bar does in fact encourage more relaxed arms!)  You would think that switching from a road bike to a mountain bike would've made a major difference in this regard, but although the hand placement was radically different, my shoulders somehow found their way to the same spot. Wider handlebars also discourage this straight-armed hunch---but they have problems of their own when they get too wide.

    Call it masochism, call it type-2 fun. What is it that makes some of us love to punish ourselves?  When there's a comfortable hotel, why do some people choose to sleep on the ground in a tent? And others feel even using that tent is "soft." What is so wrong with being comfortable?

      Years ago now, one of my friends was on a bike ride with me and asked, out of breath and innocently enough, "Why do you always choose the UPHILL trail?" I'll bet her forgot about saying it later that day, but it has popped into my mind and even conversations with a therapist many times over the years. Why DO I always choose what's hard? 

    Part of it is a belief that people today are way too soft and pampered. If we want to be stronger, a good default answer to this recurring question is to choose the harder way. Part of it is just my place on the glass half full/empty scale: I will always choose to hear the bad news first, do the hard thing first, in order to enjoy the good news/easy thing all the more. It's just that I sometimes forget the second part of this equation and just do the hard thing again.

    The American Heritage Dictionary—following some odd definitions involving sexual neuroses—gives this definition for masochism: 

"A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences." 

    Maybe it's the last part of this sentence that sheds the most light. Do we do these things because deep down inside we feel we deserve punishment for something?  Or is it a lack of self belief that drives us to prove ourselves with these tests/quests over and over again? Why else would we subject ourselves to unpleasant experiences on purpose?

    And most disturbingly, does this play into why I find it easy to accept the Christian gospel? Especially in its more strict Calvinist form? (The popular TULIP summary of Calvin's theology begins with "Total Depravity.") Does a belief that humanity has fallen into sin and must be redeemed EXPLAIN my masochism or FLOW FROM it? It's a disturbing question to say the least. I would hope the answer is the former (though I have reason to strongly suspect some other explanations that I won't get into here for my tendency toward self-flagellation).

    But we've traveled far enough down that rabbit hole, and if you'd like to proceed farther, I've shared a link and you can explore as much about John Calvin as you like (the psychology is easy to find in any search engine). Let's return to bike positioning. 

    This is always a bit of a moving target. Adjusting one thing affects how you relate to all the other things. Move the saddle back and you'll affect how your legs move the pedals. Lengthen the stem or lower the handlebars and you'll be able to stretch out more- but put more weight on your hands. Which is good if you pop the front wheel in the air every time you climb a hill. But generally harder on elbows and shoulders the rest of the time. It's the same with adjusting the tilt of the saddle. You can aim the front down, and you'll arguably be more comfortable climbing steep hills (you won't have the nose of the saddle in your crotch), but at all other times, your weight will constantly be forcing your body to creep forward onto your hands. Of course the answer is moderation, but that's not always as simple as it sounds.

 

    But to return to the problem I originally spoke of—the hunching of the shoulders—it's amazing that I'm still wrestling with this. Perhaps it's because every frame interacts with contact points (grips, pedals, seat) differently, but you'd think after nearly 40 years, I'd have this down to something of a science by now. And in some ways, I do. I know my ideal measurement from cranks to the top of the saddle, or from the center of the stem cap to the back of my saddle. But biomechanically, I'm still woefully far away. Maybe I've discovered this position multiple times, but my body keeps changing and therefore the "perfect" position changes too.

    Or maybe life is just a long practice of resisting our self-destructive tendencies, and those of us who hunch our shoulders must simply continue each ride to remind ourselves to relax and keep our elbows and shoulders low—and carry that lesson into the rest of our lives.