If God wanted us to ride bicycles, babies would be born with crash helmets on their craniums and flashing red lights on their buttocks. Although, on the whole, we cyclists are fitter than non-cyclists, we must be careful of the impact of the bicycle frame on the human frame. Beset with back pains, I was advised to drop the drop handlebars years ago, on the grounds that the bent-over posture they imposed did my spine no favours. Being a commuting, not a racing cyclist, I could live with the extra wind resistance. That helped, but occasional twinges persisted.
A recent study published by the British Medical Journal showed that the Alexander Technique can ease back pain. It was time to consult Barry Collins, who gets around by bike and has been teaching AT for the past 25 years. “Severe spinal injury at zero mph,” warns a poster at his practice, illustrated by a drawing of an unhealthily slumped skeleton slouched in front of a computer; similar maltreatment of vertebrae can be seen in cyclists.
Collins agrees about dropping the drops but warns that the bike might still be pulling me too far forward and down. Straight handlebars should be fitted in the sit-up-and-beg position, he says, on a stem that raises them up without extending them forward.
His room in north London is unusual in that it contains a bicycle fixed to a stand, but it is on his table that I begin my lesson. He positions me on my back with my knees up and my head slightly raised by a few slim books. “This is the template for your position on a bicycle,” he declares. That is, if I was rotated through 90 degrees to a sitting position, I would be in the correct cycling mode. My back and neck would be straighter – “Longer is stronger” – as opposed to being bowed like the letter C.
“Most people in the saddle collapse their spine,” he says. “Collapsing the back produces in turn a collapse in the front, which restricts rib movement and breathing.” Placed carefully in a chair, I am both upright and relaxed, “another template for being in the saddle”.
Next comes something as unexpected as a white van politely slowing down to make way for a cyclist. It is about the toes. “If you tense your toes, the ankles stiffen, the knees stiffen, you push yourself up out of the saddle and you have to grab hard on the handlebars to pull yourself down, curving and collapsing your back as a result.” The lower part of the spine, generally known as “lumbar 4/5”, bends forward as it takes the strain.
“Push down with the heels.” Not the front of the foot, which is my usual practice. By now I am on Collins’ bike, tall in the saddle. “Open the backs of the knees on the power stroke. This takes the load off your knee joint.”
My elbows are usually bent as I heave at the handlebars but this is another bad habit to be eradicated: your arms should be like your handlebars, dead straight.
“It is the legs that really must do the work,” Collins says. “Use only the heels of your hands and then just let the fingers lie passively as if resting on fragile eggs.” Also, do not heave at the pedals in too high a gear: “Allow the legs to spin freely and so avoid tightening and constricting the upper body.” Then there is the pelvis: do not wiggle it from side to side but think of it as fixed to the spine. It’s the legs that go up and down, pivoting at the hip joints.
“Effortless effort” is what Collins is after. It is pretty Zen (the sound of one handlebar clapping, perhaps). “Let go of old muscle habits and relearn new ones,” he says. As I pedal home, fellow-cyclists may not be aware that my toes are relaxed, my heels are down, my arms are straight and my back is more like a capital I than a C. But I am.
· Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, stat.org.uk
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