The “training effect”

Generally, the more we keep on doing something, the better we become at it. That's not just limited to working skills, but also to sports, even the ones we practice just for fun. In recent days, I've been mountain biking a lot and for the first time in six seasons of regular practice,

I'm making measurable progress. Not so much in my climbing abilities, which remain average and still feel “hard” on my legs, but mostly on my faculty to ride faster when I find myself in fairly flat or descending sections of the trails. I'm simply acquiring greater confidence, read the terrain better, react faster and become much less apprehensive.

All these factors come in at an age when I clearly thought I might see my overall performance declining steadily. While this has undeniably happened with my road running performance, this doesn't seem to be the case yet in sports where skills play an important role and honing them seems to be an endless pursuit with infinite potential. I'm thinking of two of them, skiing and biking. In other words, when muscular mass, flexibility and fast response begin to erode, better skills can be used to prop-up and, sometimes, more than compensate for that decline in brute force. So there's still plenty of hope; when one component goes away, another can still be brought in to make up for more than just the difference!