Like any good amateur athlete, I spent a long stretch of my life taking myself too seriously. My sport was mountain-bike racing, and what I lacked in physical gifts I made up for in the gift of free time. Basically, my competitive edge was that I didn\u2019t have kids. I could ride my bike six or seven days a week. I could splurge an entire weekend on a race. I could do gym work and intervals and hard group rides all to get fitter and faster. So I did.<\/p>\n
But two summers ago, my priorities were suddenly realigned when a man driving a van struck and nearly killed<\/a> my then partner while he was riding his road bike. Sitting bedside with a loved one in the ICU has the effect of changing your perspective. Suddenly all that time spent trying to become a better amateur bike racer seemed meaningless. In the months that followed, I supported my partner and rode my bike when I could, which was sporadically. As I watched friends pull away from me on climbs, it struck me how difficult it had been to build all that fitness and how easy it had been to lose. In the future, I told myself, I would put my time toward things that were less fragile. Things that endured.<\/p>\n I\u2019d ridden with a lot of people in the previous decade. The riders I always admired most were never the fastest to the top or the first to the bottom. Rather, they were the ones who handled their bikes like they were dancing: a little tail whip over that bucket-handle root, a floaty hop over that dip in the trail. When I was a snowboarder, we called this steez, a portmanteau that describes an elusive blend of style and ease, and on both snow and dirt I loved to follow athletes who had it. In mountain biking, some of these riders were total sleepers, middle-aged guys with a beer belly who\u2019d show up for the group ride and suffer up the climb. But then they\u2019d transform on the descent, still as light and quick on their feet as foxes. The body remembers.<\/p>\n In my second life as a mountain biker, I decided, I would no longer pursue the fleeting qualities of speed and strength. Instead\u2014using the parlance of the youths who are now elder millennials\u2014I would seek only to be steezy. With a straight face, I told friends that fitness comes and goes, but style is forever.<\/p>\n I started learning little tricks, like how to pull the rear brake at high speeds to skid my back tire in sandy corners. I practiced bunny hopping over small obstacles. I spent nearly two months exclusively riding jump trails. Almost no one saw any of it, which was fine. I was a grown woman learning the same tricks as my friends\u2019 preteen sons. But when I succeeded, joy coursed through my veins. Style was a paradox, in that it looked cool\u00a0but wasn\u2019t about showing off. Moving with style just felt good.<\/p>\n \u201cI can clearly see somebody skiing with style,\u201d legendary freestyler Glen Plake<\/a> tells me when I call him one afternoon. \u201cIt sticks out like a sore thumb.\u201d Most recognizable by his one-foot mohawk and his role in classic ski films like Blizzard of Aahhhs<\/a><\/em>, Plake built a nontraditional career in front of the camera instead of on the racecourse, demonstrating equal prowess hotdogging down mogul fields<\/a> and skiing freaky-steep big mountains. He is both icon and iconoclast, one of the most expressive athletes in one of the most stylish sports. But he says skiing isn\u2019t the creative endeavor it used to be. \u201cI think we\u2019ve lost a lot of style,\u201d he says. \u201cEverybody looks like robots.\u201d<\/p>\n Plake, now 57, attributes our homogeneity to a few factors, including our modern-day powder mania\u2014\u201cNobody wants to ski moguls or groomers anymore\u201d\u2014and our stiflingly too-cool attitude: \u201cIf you do daffies or spread eagles or some ballet trick, it\u2019s like, he-he ha-ha, that\u2019s funny old school. What makes it any less of a style move than some rail trick?\u201d Finally, there\u2019s the gear: \u201cEveryone\u2019s skiing these big wide skis. You don\u2019t really have to plant your poles or move up or down. You\u00a0kind of sit there and lean and bank.\u201d Back in the day, he recalls, he and his friends would occasionally ski on superlong 225-centimeter skis, just for the challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cIs difficulty some element of style too, then?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n \u201cI think so, yeah,\u201d he says. \u201cFunny little style tricks take time to learn.\u201d In other words, style has to be earned. That\u2019s really what we appreciate when we see a beautiful skier coming down the mountain under the lift line, right? The fluidity and ease that belie years of practice. Even in the Instagram era, you can\u2019t fake style.<\/p>\n But with enough work, Plake says, anyone can learn to be stylish. And it\u2019s worth pursuing as the ultimate form of self-expression. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to say<\/em> something,\u201d he tells me. \u201cSkiing is a great opportunity to say something. Sport in general is a great opportunity to say something.\u201d<\/p>\n I found myself wondering whether every sport offers the opportunity to express style. For example, do runners\u2014poor bastards\u2014experience the same unfettered joy I felt floating off a tabletop jump?<\/p>\n Um, yes, says ultrarunner Dylan Bowman<\/a>. It\u2019s just more subtle, and it\u2019s more about economy of motion. \u201cThere is definitely a sense of joy and play in\u00a0trying to turn your brain off and move through challenging, technical terrain with a sense of style and efficiency,\u201d he says. Road cycling has a version of this, too, embodied by the French term souplesse<\/em>, which describes a rider\u2019s smooth, beautiful, and high-cadence pedal stroke.<\/p>\n Still, the concept of style is probably more important in some sports than others. \u201cTo generalize, if you ask 20 rock climbers, \u2018What\u2019s your goal?\u2019 they\u2019d say, \u2018Get better\u2019\u2014as in climb a higher number,\u201d says International Federation of Mountain Guides\u2013certified Danny Uhlmann<\/a>,\u00a0who leads both rock and snow expeditions out of his home base in Chamonix, France. \u201cIf you ask that question to any skier, most would say, \u2018Improve my style.\u2019 There\u2019s no greater compliment to be paid as a skier than \u2018You looked good doing that.\u2019 People will say, \u2018You looked good climbing that,\u2019 but if you don\u2019t get to the top, who cares?\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s worth thinking about not just what we do but how we do it. Maybe prioritizing style could even make us happier people.<\/p>\n In fact, there\u2019s a scientific explanation for why my little steez quests feel so good. \u201cWorking on style will inadvertently produce a tremendous amount of flow,\u201d says Steven Kotler, head of the Flow Research Collective<\/a> and bestselling author of books like The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance<\/a><\/em>. You know flow: it\u2019s the mental state that underpins peak performance and is characterized by complete immersion, effortless concentration, and a sense of timelessness. Flow is triggered by a number of preconditions, Kotler says, several of which occur when we\u2019re trying to be more stylish.<\/p>\n The most important is the challenge-to-skills balance. In order to enter a flow state, you have to be challenged just<\/em> beyond your skill level. Kotler, who surfs, mountain bikes, and skis, says that working on style elicits the sweet spot \u201cbecause you\u2019re just trying to get a little more graceful, a little smoother, a little more creative than last time.\u201d<\/p>\n I tell Kotler that in my twenties, when I was deep into snowboarding, I used to say that chasing flow is the secret to life. But this was before I understood the science behind it. I only knew that sometimes when I was surfing between trees, my mind went quiet and it felt like I had tapped into something profound. Now I know there are powerful neurobiological reasons for this.<\/p>\n \u201cThe five to six neurochemicals released during flow are the five most potent feel-good drugs the brain can produce,\u201d says Kotler. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the most overarching conclusions in psychology. You want more meaning, purpose, overall life satisfaction, happiness, and well-being in your life? You need more flow in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n When Glen Plake was younger, he got in a fair amount of trouble and even served a few months of jail time. Not everyone was amused by his antics. In a 2000 profile for Ski<\/em><\/a>, Steve Casimiro wrote: \u201cDismissed by many in the sport as washed-up or irrelevant, Plake should have disappeared years ago.\u201d His detractors, as Casimiro put it, thought of him as \u201ca braying bad boy long on hype and short on substance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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