How College is making me a better cyclist (Part 1 - Leisure)

My family, relatives, and close friends usually ask me how college is going and I always reply with the same thing: "it's going good!," followed by the year I'm in and reminding them that my major is kinesiology, then getting the inevitable "what is that?" and explaining that it's "like" physical therapy when in reality it is only slightly related to the actual field. 

For the record, kinesiology is the study of human movement, mostly in terms of exercise, and what influences human movement--like psychology, physiology, society, technology, and uhh more. As you can see, kinesiology does not focus on one aspect of exercise or human movement. Instead, it allows those who are majoring in it to broadly explore the different areas of human movement in terms of some of the influences I described earlier.

With that said, the area I'm focusing on is exercise physiology but recently I've been very interested in the topic of sports psychology. On the other hand, those with a burning passion for physical therapy are likely to be focusing on motor development and neuromuscular stuff as well as things having to do with rehabilitation.

SF State has thousands of students so registering for classes is a little untraditional. The main thing is, I haven't been able to get my classes on time. But I've been taking a lot of "filler classes" to increase my total number of units to bump up to an earlier registration time to get ahead of thousands of thousands of students. As a result, I've taken many classes that were very well unrelated to Kinesiology, but what I didn't know was that some of these classes, especially the ones I took last semester, would shape me into a better cyclist!

When I'm riding or when I'm at a race, I see people I haven't talked to in a while. A few weeks ago I saw my old coach and also the ex-president of the same cycling club, as well as the ex-owner of one of my local bike shops. Of course, all of them asked how college was and the following is what I would've told them if I could put it into a really short story, but I can't. 

Random Classes and their connection to cycling

There are three classes I took that I think truly changed how I think about myself and what I'm doing in this world especially when it comes to getting on the saddle--and everything else before that. These classes were all "filler classes" which were classes that don't have any contribution to my major or undergraduate degree but is still credited toward my total college units.

These three classes were:

1. Recreation, Parks, and Tourism (RPT) Leisure Lifestyle Development class

2. Filipino American Identities class

3. Peak Performance class

These three classes all had psychological roots, meaning the material of the class was based on the topic of psychology. So, the main take-away I got from the classes was an improved psychological state as well as an improved awareness of my own wellness/well being. These are aspects that are definitely crucial to building a successful athlete, regardless of the sport.

Now I'll go over how each class made me mentally stronger and what it has to do with making me a better cyclist. This part is going to be long, so I'm going to divide it into separate blogs and write about it when I have time. 

I'll start with the RPT class.

Recreations, Parks, Tourism + Cycling

My RPT class focused on leisure. The class's purpose was to explore what people do for leisure and how the heck it affects our daily lives in society. Unless you're a pro (and even if you are), most cyclists would say that cycling is a huge part of their leisure lifestyle--the life outside of work, school, and other stuff we are forced to do to stay alive and functioning in this world. 

After taking this class it made me revalue how important cycling was to me. I mean...I know it makes me happy and keeps me a good mood, but taking this class made me understand the importance of those consequences. And while it made me understand its importance, the class really made me realize that leisure and cycling is primarily beneficial to the self, and any external benefits coming from leisure are a result of the benefits to the self. Wow was that confusing? Let me break it down...

So leisure is beneficial primarily to the self...which really means that leisure helps develop personal well being or how someone values their existence and actions and pretty much their own self. So if cycling is a huge part of my leisure lifestyle, some of the benefits I get for my well being includes making me happy (because of the endorphins) and giving me a good mood (because I just burned 2000 calories in 3.5 hours, oh yeah!). So as a result of those benefits, I'd probably be in a good mood and have a positive conversation with someone, possibly make a friend or two. Or while being very happy, I'd have other positive feelings like generosity or something that makes me a nice human being. 

The point is that by increasing your well being, you appreciate the rest of the world. You'll start appreciating your job, you'll start appreciating school, and even your chores at home. By improving individual wellness, you will start thinking "hey this isn't so bad after all" because at the end of the day you have this enjoyable passion, an indescribable aspect in your life called leisure to back up whatever purpose you have to stay alive and do the things we are forced to do. 

This class helped me realize the positive effects cycling has on my life. In terms of training, it gives me a reason to stay positive and on track! There's also the reinforced motivation from doing well, like getting personal records and BURNING LOTS OF CALORIES HAHAHAHA. 

But really, this class made me realize how important cycling, training, and racing are to me and made me discover why it is such a big part of me and most of all it made me realize how good it is that I'm doing this for myself and for my own well being! 

So...it made me a better a cyclist by further connecting the value of my passion to myself which fuels my motivation to train continually and consistently. Did it help in breaking a new personal record at San Bruno? Definitely! 

Next time, I'll rant about how my Filipino American identities class made me a better cyclist!

--DB

“Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.” 
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis Of Culture