PLAY IS A BIOLOGICAL NECESSITY, LIKE SLEEP AND DREAMS
downhills, the steeper the better. Mountain biking is a wonderfully varied sport. All kinds of fun and play are valid and our bikes reflect that. They are the instruments for our play, and how and what we enjoy riding influences the bikes we ride.
When it comes to choosing a bike, fun appears near the top of the list of things riders want and brands are well aware of this.
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday may still be a thing, but for the rest of the week it’s fun that sells bikes. It follows, then, that fun and play have become an essential part of the cycling industry’s marketing lexicon.
Back in the 2000s, freeride was marketed as the antithesis to racing – a branch of mountain biking dedicated to play that didn’t take itself seriously. As a sport, we loved it – freeride epitomised a carefree attitude to riding bikes that we could all relate to. Freeride slowly got absorbed into the mainstream and its spirit lives on today with almost every brand making reference to play in their marketing material. Swiss brand SCOR uses the tag line Play The Mountains, Rocky Mountain have its Powerplay range and Stanton Bikes talks extensively about the importance of play in the design of its bikes. But are fun and play concepts that can be engineered into a bike?
PLAYFUL BY DESIGN
As fun means different things to different people, arguably not, but if you’ve ever ridden a bike that feels just right, chances are you and the designer share similar views on what fun is. While a fun bike is tough to define, a playful bike is something that’s a bit easier to reach a common consensus on. Bikes that are easy to move around on the trail and provide plenty of feedback to the rider are generally considered to be playful, and for many riders that also equates to fun. By manipulating the holy trinity of materials, geometry and suspension kinematics, frame designers are able to dial in characteristics that imply fun.
Dan Stanton from Stanton Bikes has spent a lot of time thinking about what constitutes a playful and fun bike. He explains that often 29ers will have low bottom bracket heights for stability, but this makes them harder to lean over, and slower in turns. By raising
the bottom bracket, the bike feels more alert and eager to change direction. Coupled with progressive suspension kinematics and manipulation of tube profiles, Dan is able to build a frame that accentuates that feeling of a bike that’s alive. Why does any of that matter? According to Stanton, a playful bike is a joyful bike and one that also helps with riding progression – quite simply the more you enjoy riding and the more comfortable you are on it, the more you’ll ride it and the harder you’ll push yourself. Play equals progression.
While some bikes might feel more playful than others, it’s doubtful that any of us are having more fun entirely because of the bike we’re riding – the material that really makes riding fun is grey and in your head.
E-bikes have helped redefine and rekindle play for some riders. Electric assistance has allowed them to carry on having fun on two wheels when they might have had to stop due to age or illness. For others, they have opened up a whole new way of playing that isn’t reliant on strength, experience, ability or time. Some will maintain e-bikes are cheating, but if you’re riding one and having fun then who is being cheated? Mountain bikes are there to make us smile and technological advances should exist to keep those smiles growing.
THE FLOW FACTOR
More important than what we play on, is where we play. The woods have always been the preferred playground for mountain bikers – out of view we can mess about without interference or judgement. Playing down the woods is still a hugely popular and important part of the riding scene, but the increasing popularity of bike parks proves that we love nothing more than having our own custombuilt playground. Designed with fun as the first, second and third requirement, bike park riding is in some respects the most pure form of mountain biking.
Again, there can be a feeling of guilt for getting an uplift and not earning your turns, but it doesn’t take long for that to be forgotten once you start riding. The more gnarly tracks at bike parks might get the most media attention, but the tracks that are best loved are the flow trails. Perfect singletrack is hard to find but we all know what it feels like, and the new style of flow trails aim to replicate that feeling. Smooth, with floaty jumps that have little penalty for failure, and big berms that let you carry your speed, they are designed to flatter all skill levels. These are feel-good trails whose only requirement is that you stay off the brakes and trust the trail builders. Flow doesn’t just apply to the name of the trails, though.
The feeling of flow is actually one of the signs that you’re playing. Flow is a mental state in which you’re fully immersed in what you’re doing. It’s characterised by a feeling of energised focus, total involvement and effortless competence in the process.
That feeling of almost flying down the trail and your movements happening almost automatically – that’s peak play. It’s an incredible feeling that experienced riders can access at will and less experienced riders are constantly searching for. The less you think and the more you play, the easier it is to achieve.
Flow might be a heightened state of play but it’s very much a spectrum, and the opposite of play isn’t work, as you might expect, but depression. If you’ve ever had a prolonged period off the bike and found your mood dipping, you’ll know that’s certainly the case. Playing on our bikes makes us happy and healthy. Play can be transformative. So it seems odd that despite knowing how vital it is to our wellbeing and how we feel when we don’t get enough of it, we’ve collectively decided to diminish the importance of play.
Playing on our bikes can seem frivolous, a luxury, a distraction from more pressing concerns, but it turns out it’s actually a lot more important than that. The science is clear: play is a biological necessity, like sleep and dreams, so there’s no reason to feel guilty for buying the latest fandango component or for going out on your bike for no other reason than to mess around and have fun in the woods. So there you have it. Skids really aren’t just for kids, so just get out and play.