Mary Wanless demonstrates a proprioception exercise: hold one arm 45 degrees up, the other 45 degrees down with your eyes closed, then return both to shoulder height. Most people's arms won't be level. Riders especially lack an innate sense of true vertical.
Okay, so here's my next favorite exercise. And for this, you get to put your arms out in front of you like this at shoulder height, and you're going to raise one arm through 45 degrees. So that's going to take it halfway up to the ceiling. And the other arm's going down through 45 degrees. So if I turn this way, one's halfway up to the ceiling, one's halfway down to the floor. And close your eyes. So you're just sitting here, eyes closed, one arm halfway up to the ceiling, one arm halfway down to the floor. And just stay there for a moment and just breathe and listen to what I'm going to say here. But don't do it yet. So in a few moments, but not yet, you're going to keep your eyes closed and then you're going to bring your arms back to shoulder height. But not yet. Okay? So eyes closed, bring your arms back to shoulder height. And behold, I imagine your arms like mine are not level. I have done this exercise I don't know how many times. It doesn't matter which arm I put up and which arm I put down. And it is totally normal that doing this for only a minute or two is enough to distort your sense of level. If your arms did come out level, don't get excited. The chances are they were like this and you went whoa so quickly you didn't even know you did it. Because the brain likes to be right, none of us like to be wrong. So. So coming out like this is perfectly normal. And what that means is that your body as you're perceiving it is not matching your body as it actually is. Yeah, this is true for many riders. So I see people who think vertical is here and I see people who think vertical is here, and actually an awful lot of people ride around me on a first lesson like this going, I had this terrible problem with leaning forward. And I've. You go, oh, yeah, that's interesting. And then of course, given that we're in the days here of instant feedback with iPhones and iPads, I can take a photograph and go, so what do you think about you leaning forward? And they go, oh, I'm not leaning forward, am I? And I do actually think it's one of the worst design faults of the human body that we don't have a built in spirit level.
