Lee McCormack is a mountain bike skills instructor and coach, and he’s the author of nearly a dozen books, including the NICA Skills Training Manual. He’s written extensively on bike fitting and fitness training, and just last year he launched his own bike brand, Mistress Cycles.
- How have mountain biking techniques changed over the years?
- What’s the difference between a good mountain bike racer, and a good mountain bike coach?
- Is pedal cadence important for mountain biking? How do you know if your cadence is too fast or too slow? How can you improve your cadence?
- Why are you such a fan of pump tracks. Why?
- How do Moto Cranx work on a pump track?
- Do you think mountain bikers tend to be overconfident, or underconfident in their skills?
- Do you think it’s possible to be faster in your 40s or 50s than in your 20s by maintaining fitness and progressing your skills?
- How did Mistress Cycles come about? What is it about “modern” mountain bike geometry that you find frustrating?
- You’ve come out with some innovative products over the years, like the RipRow trainer and Moto Cranx. In addition to the bikes from Mistress Cycles, do you have any other projects in the works?
You can keep up with the latest from Lee McCormack on Instagram @leelikesbikes, where you’ll find links to all of the projects we talked about today.
An automated transcript of our edited conversation is provided below. Click here for an unedited video of our conversation, where Lee illustrates many of the concepts discussed. Or, scroll down to see the video (note: may contain language some readers find offensive.)
This podcast episode is sponsored by Backslope Tools.
Backslope Tools designs and produces innovative lockable, stackable, and field-repairable tools for trail building, landscaping, and gardening. With 20 years of trailbuilding experience, Backslope is putting the right tools for the job into builders’ hands, from individuals to full-on trail crews. Order online at backslopetools.com and save 15% on your order with code SingletracksPod.
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Automated transcript
Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Lee McCormack. Lee is a mountain bike skills instructor and coach, and he’s the author of nearly a dozen books, including the nyka skills training manual. He’s written extensively on bike fitting and fitness training, and just last year, he launched his own bike brand, Mistress cycles, thanks for joining me. Lee,
Unknown Speaker 0:24
You’re welcome, man, it’s good to see you Jeff.
Jeff Barber 0:28
Awesome. So the book that you co-authored with pro racer Brian Lopes is now in its third edition, and I actually have a copy of that book. I have the first edition, which I would love to get you to sign at some point.
Unknown Speaker 0:44
I carry Sharpies. I have Sharpies.
Jeff Barber 0:48
You’re a celebrity! So how have mountain biking techniques changed over the years since that book was first published?
Lee McCormack 0:55
Yeah, so that’s a good question. I want to ask you more detail, like, what you’re looking to know, like, riding style, how people look at technique, like, what’s the question you’re asking?
Jeff Barber 1:06
Yeah. I mean, a lot of stuff obviously has changed with bikes and trails, and I’m curious if the way that we ride is different, and therefore we need to learn skills in a different way.
Lee McCormack 1:18
That’s the question, right there. Yeah, we ride differently now, exactly. And I started this, I got my first mountain bike, was a 1988 Nishiki Pueblo, 300 bucks on that thing, and my parents said it was a waste of money. I was like, No, I’m going to be a mountain biker. And they’re like, so back then, you know, it was, it was, it was a lot like gravel riding is today. To be honest, a lot of the riding we did was a lot of dirt roads. I came up in Southern California, you know, back then, there were no there weren’t official mountain bike trails that just didn’t exist. So there’s a lot of dirt roads, and there were some hiking trails, right? And and so the dirt roads, I remember those days very well. We would have an avisette, you know, little speedometer computer on our bar, and we would just try to hit 50 miles an hour with with with rim brakes, with S, H, I, T tires. But we were young, and we didn’t get, oh, and 150 millimeter negative stems. And that’s what we were doing, you know. And then, if it was single track, at least it the guys I wrote, well, I wrote with Brian Lopes, so he was pretty good biking back then, yeah, and, but, but, you know, single track, I mean, he was great, but for the most part, it was just like, how can we get down this, like, like the stuff you see in Laguna Canyon, like that gnarly downhill, like we were riding that on rigid bikes, like with 150 millimeter stems and seats up our butts, way back. And as I recall, it was like the overall feel was more like, we’re in the mountains, we’re on bikes. We’re going to do this adventure and and, and hilarity will ensue, right and back. And hilarity ensued often with bike break. Bikes breaking like, you know, you had spokes attached to your like frame. It just was a thing back then. Anyway. So I think that more now more, of course, the bikes have changed. Cultures, change social media has happened and and riding trails are built more around an experience. And I’d say this at their best, at their best, like the pump track stuff I designed, what good trail building does is it invokes flow states. And this is kind of the deepest and best use of that. You know, you can talk about it being extreme and hitting big jumps and that stuff’s great, trust me, no one loves that more than me. But the real I feel like the greatest purpose of that is to achieve flow, to give people the peace that they lack in their lives. That’s what this is really for. So to answer your question, that requires highest high speed cornering, that requires really knowing how to pump, uh, jumping and air time and and dropping are all a much more bigger part of writing. I would say that now I’m getting excited. Here it comes. So like back then in the old days, I’d say riding was probably more two dimensional, back for side to side. Now, rotting is more vertical. And so you know, you see how I’m moving my body. This is my teaching style. It’s, it’s, it’s to learn how to to work with your bike personally, like the person, bike connection is really important now, and bike fit work and mobility work and psychology work, and then that fits to the trail. And so to answer your question, yeah, like, like, if you’re going to be riding faster on bigger shapes, you need different skills than when you were riding less fast on flatter ground. I think that makes sense.
Jeff Barber 4:48
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, what you’re saying too. I’m curious. A lot of riders would say bikes are better now, trails are purpose built, and so in a lot of ways, maybe. The biking has gotten easier, but at the same time you’re you’re seeing all these like new skill I mean, more people are taking skills classes than ever before. I would imagine there’s, feels like there’s a lot more to learn, despite the trails and bikes making it easier. Is that fair to say?
Lee McCormack 5:20
That’s a great question, dude. Okay, I’m gonna answer this in two ways. Let’s just say, all right. The the things that are effective for person to learn and to really master are very elegant and they’re very simple. They’re simple. They’re a lot simpler than that book you have sitting there. I sitting there, right a lot. And the next technique book will be more like the dow of mountain bike and do the whole thing, the whole right? The one I’m working right now is the new the new fit book, dial two. So it’s all real elegant and simple and it’s and it’s more about being a person and an athlete than a cyclist. So, so, how do I say this shoot, this is, this is where it gets hard to take 40 years of passion and squeeze it through this, you know, this medium, it’s hard. I have a hard time with it, the the the the simple truths are always simple. They’re the same truths that would apply to any sport you do, skiing, any, anything you do, right? And so I would say that there’s more of a hunger now than there used to be, to to to to to gain some sort of skill. And, you know, and when I started, when I started, when I did the first book, that book you know, Ned over and had the popular book at the time, but it wasn’t a technique book. It was a different sort of a book. And I’m the first person, the first person, to ever take my polymath, nerd career, my two previous careers, informational graphics and software design, and apply them to this, right? So my goal, really, back then, was, I’m going to write the book. I’m going to write the definitive book. And that happened. It’s happened, you know, three times without one already. And then after I finished it, I was like, you know, every real sport has a curriculum, like, like, I’ve got kids, you know, and I you know, you could see your kids go through the steps of soccer. So I’m like, well, mountain biking should have this. And I think I’m the guy to put something out there, yeah. And I started that process, and since then, as you said, there’s been enormous proliferation of coaching. So there’s more demand for coaching. It’s in your face more. I would say that I’m making commentary now on the current state of mountain bike coaching. I would say that most of the people who are doing it are hobbyists. They’re hobbyists. It’s very, very, very, very hard to make a living at that. It’s expensive on the body, trust me, yeah, and and so most are hobbyists. Most have no training, or they took, like, a weekend, or like, a little bit of a certification. Okay, they know what they know. That’s all they know. In some ways it’s, it’s, it’s that education is wildly incomplete, and in other ways it’s wildly too detailed and too persnickety. What I see, and I’ve actually had to fall I’ve unfollowed all of everybody. I just I did. I had to for my own sanity, because I couldn’t watch it anymore you know.
Jeff Barber 8:41
You’re trying to coach the coaches, it sounds like.
Lee McCormack 8:44
Yeah, and I’m completely cool with coaching coaches who want to be coached. I’m completely 100% awesomely. I need I’m going to pass this along. I’m going to be gone at some point here. You know, I’m completely cool with pushing this through to the next generation of people who will take this, these ideas I’ve kind of started and take them further, because it’s a process, like a scientific process, but, but what I’ve seen so far is, for the most part, that’s not what they want, that’s that’s not what they want. They’re not open to feedback from someone who actually, like knows the work, who’s been doing it? Who’s done it over 11,000 times? Dude, 11,000 students. So we’re getting into commentary here, right? So it’s like, I love the fact, I love the fact that mountain bikers care more and more about their skill, because it keeps them safe, it keeps them riding, it keeps them progressing and learning yourself. I mean, I mean honestly, at a deep level, like learning yourself, learning your nervous system, creating coherence in yourself, you know, like dealing with fears and ego and all the stuff that we all deal with, that’s the job. And some people, you do it with a fly rod. Some people, they do it riding coat or. Playing music, we maybe use mountain bikes. So I’m completely support and stoked on anyone who’s who’s on the path. And I’ll suggest that if you’re scrolling the YouTube and the Insta and you’re watching free content, just be careful. I won’t name names, but just be careful with what you’re consuming. I didn’t want to bring any of that up, but it comes in.
Jeff Barber 10:27
So yeah, I mean, that that leads into my next question, which was going to be sort of about what makes a good coach. I mean, right? You know, obviously there’s, there’s going to be a difference between someone who’s a good mountain bike racer and someone who is a good coach. Do you need to have both? I mean, there’s plenty of examples of people who are really good at one but not the other. But yeah, do you need to have both of those? I mean, could somebody who’s like, a great you know, let’s say a college professor come in and they don’t know a lot about mountain biking, but, like, could they be a good coach? Or do you need to have both of those pieces?
Lee McCormack 11:03
That’s a really gorgeous question. I’ll start with the easy answer, you know, to to be a high level writer. The people who are making the shreddeds, the people who have won races, guys like Brian, right, guys like that, that is, is is a state of no mind. That is pure instinct. That’s that’s how you perform at that level. You by definition, for most people, for 99.9999% people, when you’re in that state, you’re not recording consciously what you’re doing. And so those people make awful teachers. They do because they don’t know what they’re doing. And I’ve seen, dude, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve talked to a lot of I’ve talked to a lot of people about how they do what they do. You know, like, famous world champion people, they don’t know. They have no idea. Yeah, like, this is what I’ve seen. Okay, this is, again, this is direct experience. And if you’re listening to this and you’re like, you’ve been in the sport a few years, welcome, welcome, welcome. But I want you to understand, I’m giving you a favor by sharing my time with you. I’ve been for 40 years. I’ve been doing it for a living for 22 years. There’s a difference I’m going to cry here, between a man who commits his career and personal life body to this thing, and I have my reasons for doing that, happy to share him. There’s a difference between someone with a genius IQ dedicating his life force to figuring out the sport that we love over the course of decades and hobbyists. So I will everything I say I offer it’s hard earned Bros and sisters and bros. Okay, I want you to know the difference between someone with experience and someone with opinions. Okay, yeah, I just want to say that, because it doesn’t get said.
Jeff Barber 13:04
It makes sense that that the book that you wrote, you know, the mastering mountain bike skills with Brian Lopes. I mean, you have both sides there, right? You have that professional racer who, you know, is able to access that sort of flow state and can perform, and then you’re able to work together and kind of interpret that and make it so it is, like, useful to other people in sort of a coaching way.
Lee McCormack 13:29
Yeah, that would be a really good model, if you could work, if you could find an elite athlete who you can work with, like that. That’s amazing, right? That’s amazing, right? So, but it’s very, very rare. Like, like, I’ve not, I’ve not met one yet. Okay, so the teacher types, okay, let’s see if I can make bring this in. You have your athletes, which is, let’s just say, a body thing. Make it simple. You have your teacher types, right? Your college professors, um, the kind of people, the nerds who you know, right, what’s called us, brain people, your body people, and your brain people, body brain, for the most part, the people who want to teach, from a standpoint of teaching, like they want to teach, and That’s what they do, are generally mostly brain people, mostly brain people. You can get some decent teaching. Okay, here we go. Ready. Jeff, here we are ready. We have teaching, and then we have coaching. Teaching is the conveyance of ideas from my head into yours. Okay, a book used to be the way to do it, and they’re still pretty good. Video is probably better because it has motion me standing in front, like, doing a nica training. I used to, like, train like 80 people at once, and I’d be like, on the stage. That’s a performance. Is coaching, yeah, teaching. So, so the construction, the construction of the curriculum, is brain. That’s the nerd stuff, you know, and, and the conveyance of it is, is, is often an intellectual act. Does this make sense? Yeah, yeah, the teaching part. So, okay, everybody, where should your weight be? On your feet? Great, check, right? Coaching is different. Coaching is a whole other deal.
Coaching, the kind of coaching I do, and that people pay, the money that I deserve to receive, is an energetic, more emotional connection that also feeds through intellect and body and allows you to feel the person. Allows them to feel you, allows you to communicate really effectively, verbally, kinesthetically and energetically. That’s coaching, that’s coaching. And so check this out. You can have an athlete who can show you what to do with your body. There’s plenty of them out there. They’re not that hard to find. And you give an intellect who can tell you what to do with your body and explain it to you. Yeah, right, a coach. A great coach. And these are rare people, freaking rare people, has access to both of those states. Can, can can be teaching you and go, hang on. This took me years to develop disability. So you go, Okay, hang on, Jeff. Click, athlete mode, execute. Click, Coach mode, come back, which is eight. And now for me, it’s seamless. But in the beginning, that transition was so awkward that I had to wear armor when I talked, because I crashed a lot. I had to learn. It’s tough to do both. It took me a, you know, decades.
Okay, so check it out, then a great coach has access to both of those and ties them through this emotional, energetic channel. And that’s the complete coach. And just think about how many human beings you know, who are integrated in all three areas. It’s probably a small number, yeah, not a lot. How many of those people are just way into mountain biking? Smaller number. How many of those people have the time and interest to be a mountain bike coach, right? How many of those people aren’t already busy making a shit ton of money doing something else, right? That they that pays like, a quarter million or more a year. Does that make sense?
Jeff Barber 17:46
So, yeah, more than being a mountain bike coach for sure.
Lee McCormack 17:51
Yeah, exactly. So, it gets really, really rare. And so when you, when you go, and I think, as I do this more, I I’m trying. You know, I’m a human being, dude, I’m a human being with an ego and part of this whole persona right there. Let’s just be honest, bro, that guy right there, he’s not me anymore. Was like, I’m a broken little boy. I don’t feel like an athlete. I don’t belong I’m a nerd. I’ve never had a group, and I started mountain biking, and I got in shape, and it was fun, and I had instant friends, and I had instant community, and I had an identity, and I had something to do. Yeah, right. Hey, Lee, where are you? I’m a mountain biker, right? Like, those days were great, and so, um, but, but I’m transitioning out of that. I hope this is coming across. I’m going into a flow state. I don’t know, even know what I’m saying. This is how I am when I’m coaching. Seriously, yeah, I tell my students, hey, what I have for you today goes way beyond logic. It just does the logics there. Will whiteboard as much as you want, but I will go out and if I forget what I’m talking about, just bring me back, literally, and I’m going to ask you again, so what answer my what question Am I answering?
Jeff Barber 19:05
Yeah. I mean, that was a great, great explanation of the difference between a teacher and a coach and an athlete. I want to shift gears now and talk about some specific skills. You know, I’ve read your book, and obviously you have a lot of different skills to share. One of the ones that I’m curious about is pedal cadence, which actually, you know, as far as I’m concerned, it seems like it’s a thing that road bikers focus on a lot, but as mountain bikers, we don’t talk about it all the time. So I’m curious, is pedal cadence important for mountain biking, and how do you know if your cadence is too fast or too slow?
Lee McCormack 19:47
That’s an interesting question. Yeah, you got me thinking about this too. It’s great. So let’s just say this. Okay, let me ask you the question, What is What does important mean? Like, what do you mean? Like, what was the question really?
Jeff Barber 20:02
I think important in terms of your endurance and being able to finish a ride strong, I know, for me, if you’re in the wrong gear… I think gears are hard for people, honestly, I mean, to start at the very beginning, like, if you’re brand new to the sport, I know, when I taught my kids to ride, that was the thing that tripped them up big time, right? I mean, that’s why you start a kid on a single speed bike and just knowing, like, what is this sustainable kind of cadence? What kind of cadence should I have for climbing and peddling. Because as I get older, too I feel like my cadence is just too slow. But I don’t know if that’s something I can change, if it’s you know, if it is naturally, you can kind of just figure out the right cadence for yourself or or is there a way to know like you’re too fast, you’re too slow.
Lee McCormack 21:00
Thank you for that. Okay, so we’re talking about, I believe Mirroring is so funny. What I heard you ask me, Why won’t I do the dishes? Okay, yeah, so is you asking about, yeah, power and endurance over you know, really, how it relates to cadence. And so this is, this is great stuff. So, so in general, in general, I think this is pretty solid, a higher cadence. So let’s just say the same amount of power is being made. Let’s say you climb it 200 watts, something like that, right? That’s probably about right, when you’re cruising. Um, is that right?
Jeff Barber 21:37
I don’t know. I’m a mountain biker. And, you know, I feel like watts and measuring power, that’s like a road biker thing. I know people do it for mountain biking, but I don’t.
Lee McCormack 21:46
You know what I’m telling you this, the people who need metrics the most are the people who don’t have any connection to their own freaking joy. And if you enjoy your riding and you have joy, sister, brother, everybody, that’s the metric. Okay? That’s the metric. Yeah. Now, if it’s a Wednesday and you had a day at work and you want to feel good about something, you want to sit on your trainer, like I have right there, and hit some watts, and that makes you feel good. Do it. Do it, because not every day is amazing. Just get a little victory. Okay, okay, end of speech right there. There’s a clip for your Instagram right there, leaving you crazy, but it’s true. Okay, so, all right, this is true. All right. So given the same amount of actual power output and speed and all that garbage, when you spin a a higher cadence, a lighter gear, yeah, faster, the faster that puts less stress on your muscular system and more stress on your cardiovascular system.
Jeff Barber 22:49
Okay, okay, you’re trading them off. It’s a trade.
Lee McCormack 22:52
And then your nervous system. There’s more going on with your nervous system because it has to maintain just more juice, like, more and more speed. That might be some reason sometimes, like when you’re just been stressed, or you’re tired, and it’s not physical, always it’s emotional, like something’s on you. You tend to be kind of plotting when you ride. Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that. That’s your nervous system. It’s been, it’s been been muted so so like, light cadence, easy on the muscles, hard on the heart. Make it simple, okay, for a long, long day, because remember, your cardiovascular system, theoretically, if it’s developed and fed, can go on pretty much forever, right? Okay, pretty much, right. Yeah, your muscles are will fatigue locally, right? So, so like, if you’re going to go to Leadville or something, you’re probably most of the time going to be it pretty light cadence, okay, okay, now you know what I’m going to say. Now the harder gear puts less emphasis on the cardiovascular system and more on your just raw strength. Okay, of course, I’m going to tell you to expand your power band. Yeah, out here. So for you know, I was a motocross guy, so power bands the part of the RPM range where the motorcycle actually makes the power okay, okay, so let’s say you, you’re just a new rider, or you’re not paying attention. You probably settle in, I don’t know, 5060, RPM, something like that. That’s kind of where people tend to go. And if I’m not paying attention and I’m tired, that’s where I go. Okay? And so this is cool, right? Like you definitely it’s a good idea as a cyclist to push that faster, to to maybe so make it so that when you sit down, the default a little quicker, right? And the way you do that, we can, we can talk about that, but there are ways to do that at the same time. You also want to train the other direction and train clean people. Powerful low cadence peddling, and so why is that more important on our mountain bike than on a road bike well there’s more terrain variation.
Jeff Barber 25:07
That’s what I’m thinking. I mean you’re going to have more pedal strikes or you know, I mean there’s pedal timing comes into play, that’s not a thing in road biking you know.
Lee McCormack 25:16
I’m creating traction there’s a lot going on, we can go on we could do two hours on technical climbing, so there’s more going on. So I’ll just say that you want to ideally, like, maybe, like, nudge your default cadence up a little bit and but expand your power band, because there are moments in mountain biking when you need the really quick flap, like, and I’ve measured on my trainer with flat pedals, 200 rpm that’s pretty quick whoa you know, and then maybe also be able to grind down at 30 expand and that way that gives you more leeway right? Oh, and also I want to say this, I’ll say this we’re all built, differently Right? Like, you appear to be just from from your here up to be more an endurance build that you’re looking at, yep, I’m not an endurance bill you know, and so for example like if you and I were on a ride together you might be hanging out at 89 year pm doing like, this especially like at hour four when we all get tired, right? Yeah, what I will do at that point of the ride is I’ll lean into just my brute strength, and I’ll go to a significantly harder gear, and I have a whole peddling style around that where I’ll well, scooch back on my saddle and pedal that way. So so I know that I can lean into my my physical strength when my cardio is not there.
Jeff Barber 26:43
Yeah, that’s that’s good and I’m sure it’s not an easy explanation but it could it be as simple, as if I wanted to increase my cadence to go a little bit faster as just trying to remind myself to do that or, or is it, yeah, is it more involved than that?
Lee McCormack 27:06
We can make it. My brother, you’re talking to the king nerd. We can make as involved as you want. Man, I got all peddling techniques that, by the way, have proven time and time and dime again, for civilians 20 to 30% increases at power just from technique, just straight. There you go everybody Lee likes bikes, dot com.
Jeff Barber 27:33
I’m probably not near that 80 to 90 RPMs by any means. So, yeah, if I can just do it, get used to it, or what?
Lee McCormack 27:47
Yeah, and just do it. And, and if you’re the kind of person, okay, if you’re the kind of person who’s worrying about this sort of thing, right, you’re probably the kind of person who’s rotting with your brain more than your body, that’s okay. We’re all different. We’re all there. By the way. What I didn’t finish was this with coaching. If you want to go bro with a pro and see someone rip crazy, go take a class with a pro racer. Do it. If that’s what you want, it’s amazing. Oh, my God you’ll see. Bring your camera if you want to nerd out and be told stuff and like, Get get some information. Go see some nerd, teacher, guy, woman or them, if you want to be coached. That’s different. Okay, that’s right. So, so I’d say, as your coach I’m just taking the thing on, knowing your personality. I’d say this, I’d read people for a living. I’d say, go out and ride and and set a timer for a minute, and you’re going to count RPM okay, you’re just on some climb when you’d be bored, when you’d be thinking about your stock portfolio don’t think about that. Right now, right? Just, just, just, just go, Okay, I’m going to count to 80 for a minute and that’s my goal and and and go, just do it whatever your technique is is fine, and and you’ll know, you asked how you know it’s too fast if you start bouncing and it gets gets crazy. So so so so go for 80 smooth 90 smooth and just do it for like a minute of time when you have time and and what that’ll do is it’ll wake up your nervous system and and what’s cool about this is like like let’s just say that you love to climb at 60 great I tend to, I tend to, yeah, well, if you get smooth at 90, bro, you’re gonna be really smooth at 60, aren’t? You so that’s why I train like, when I’m training pedaling, I push, I push. I push both ways. I push to strength, hard gears, like I can climb hills out of the saddle in the biggest gear I have on any bike, right? You know, that’s just how I’m built. And of course, I just tore my hamstring off. So yay, you know, yay, Lee. You’re so strong you tore your hamstrings off, good, you know? But then at the same time, you know, sit on the trainer or wherever you’re at and spin fast and expand. It and and in my world, in my world for mountain bike skills, riding like the way I teach these days, like you can only master one or two things, right? You’re not going to get the laundry list that everybody tells you to do, preload this. Forget all that. Get good at pedaling. Get good at pumping. Those are all the mechanical skills you need. That’s it. Peddling it, no anti rope, that’s everything. And then learn how to control your core and your hips and have a good day and feel good about yourself. And that’s it. Yeah, so it’s like the books are going to get shorter and shorter.
Jeff Barber 30:39
Well, I’m glad you mentioned pumping as, like, the other big one, because obviously, from what I’ve seen, you’re a big fun fan of pump tracks. Why is that because, because pumping is so important in terms of a skill?
Lee McCormack 30:53
In the beginning it was because, like, I was, I was just trying to be this downhill win a national guy, you know, and I wasn’t doing it and, and, and we were in Boulder, and Steve Wentz, a brilliant trail builder today, professional trail builder. He saw a video, it was McCann, and he was on some weird track in a BMX bike. And it was like, weird. And so Steve led the build of what I consider to be the first pump track, known pump track, modern pump Interesting, yeah, at the fixed bike shop in Boulder, Colorado. And okay, we built it and started riding it. And it was clear we didn’t know how to build it. We didn’t even know how to ride it.
Jeff Barber 31:32
What year was that?
Lee McCormack 31:35
I want to say about 18 years ago or so, something Okay, which is crazy to consider, because, from my perspective, the sport of pump tracking is less than two decades old. It’s already a world champion event, right? Yeah, by the way, I’m racing the World Championships qualifier next weekend. Oh, cool on my motor. You ready, Mike, I’m as ready as a 56 year old man who tore his hands off seven months can be but, oh, I’m ready, you know, I am. So okay, so we started it. It was just like, all about learning how to ride better, you know? And then, and then I just found I loved it, and I found it really challenging and interesting. And so I’m a huge fan of pump tracks. As a matter of fact, yesterday I put in a monstrous pump track workout, huge, oh, cool. And, and, of course, I’m like this crazy guru guy half the time, but the other time, I’m this crazy freaking nerd. And I can tell you that my workout contained 1650 pumps. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s 33 pumps a lap, and I did five sets of 10, so and so I enjoy it. First of all, it makes me happy. It’s a great work. Gives you a super hot body and all that. But like, from a mountain bike standpoint, Jeff, I’m just imprinting, imprinting the pattern. It’s always the same row, anti row, elliptical pattern. This is why every BMXer you’ve ever met is a better mountain biker than you. We’ve all experienced it. You get some BMX dork. They’re not, you know, and they get on your mountain bike, they’re like, What are these? And they just do stuff you can’t even conceive of. It’s because this is all they do.
Think about this. Jeff, if you grow up learning to pedal as fast and hard as you can, and a solid BMX is worth 1500 2000 watts, then pumping as fast as you can, you’re going to be a good mountain bike, aren’t you?
Jeff Barber 33:36
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Lee McCormack 33:39
So I’m all about the pump tracks. Yes, I love it, the skills, the community, the Democratic nature. We’re out the other day. I was out the other day yesterday, and kids come after school. They got scooters, they got bikes, they got skateboards, they got roller skates. Sometimes, because they’re like, a whole thing with quads are coming back now. And I, dude, I socially. I think pump tracks are amazing.
Jeff Barber 34:02
Yeah, they’re cool. And, you know, I wanted to talk about too, you developed a product called Moto Cranx that replaces your pedals with basically two inline pegs, and then you put your pedals on that. What does it feel like to ride with both of your feet centered beside the bottom bracket. It seems like that would be weird, because his bikers were used to having, you know, one foot forward and one foot back.
Lee McCormack 34:26
Yeah, it’s weird for I’ve have, I’ve had a few dozen people on it and and it’s weird for a moment you’re like, in most people, it’s usually at a pump track, the first lap there’ll be like, I feel like my other foot’s forward, because you’re so used to being like this, yeah, that being like this feels like that. But then what they that they feel like halfway through the lap is like, you’re just powerful. It’s you the what led to the development of this thing? Right? What? Led to me just even doing this, because, you know, I work with people. I work with people and and, and from, you know, a mountain bike, cranks tend to be way too long for riders. They do, right? Yeah, if your average height, I mean a 170 crank, if you, if you go with like Leonard Zins multipliers, which I use. There’s no reason not to. He and our friends, I respect the guy. I use his multipliers very openly. Um, that if you’re under five, eight or so, they’re all too long for you. So, so there’s a real biomechanical issue with trying to do an athletic pursuit with your feet like this.
Jeff Barber 35:36
Yeah, that’s pretty far apart.
Lee McCormack 35:39
It’s really, really hard on you. It’s really hard on your hamstrings. It’s really hard on your low back, all you bros out there, you know, on long downhills, how that back quad burns? You know, how that other side, your low back starts to burn. Has your wife noticed, or your partner noticed that the muscles on your lower back are more developed on one side than on the other side, it’s because you’re chronically crooked. It takes an enormous amount of mobility, like, like, hypermobile, freak mobility, like me, Yolanda, Neff, Brian Lopes, all these elite riders, yeah, I put myself on that list that just happened, right?
Jeff Barber 36:21
Yeah. Why not?
Lee McCormack 36:23
Prove otherwise. Yeah, prove otherwise. Um, you see them riding in this, these beautiful square hips, their knees lined up in the low hinge. Try it. It’s hard, man. You have to be really flexible. So I started noticing right as I came back from the shoulders, and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to mountain bike at all anymore, and I thought it was done with coaching, and I say goodbye to it, but I came back again and I started noticing I’m like, Okay, people just have a hard time balancing. Man. They have a really hard time being here and with your body crooked like that. Your system knows something’s wrong, and the signals get retarded. They get like when you know you can hurt yourself. If you push as hard as you can, your body won’t do it. And I started really noticing and keying into this energy, especially shorter riders, generally women, like a five foot two women. Let me say something quickly, the fact that certain companies sell like bikes that are $10,000 or so, marketed to women who are five foot two and have the same handle bar and same cranks as the extra large marketed to a guy who’s six foot five, I find not maybe Perfect, yeah, it doesn’t make sense. Okay, I’m just going to say that so, so I’m watching everybody struggle anyway. I get excited. I promised I would, and I was realizing, I was like, you know, I can’t teach these people how to ride because they can’t even stand on the bike effectively, right? And I started thinking, you know, what needs to happen here? I used to do motocross, like that was amazing. Like, Motocross is awesome. You’re like, boom. So I started thinking, like, Wait a second. And I started thinking about it. And then when I came back, I raced masters worlds in May as a whole Phoenix, unfurling life journey thing. And for that bike, I was running 155 cranks versus my classic 170s and I noticed I was like, when I ride the 150 fives, my hips feel normal, but whenever I ride a 170 I gotta do a bunch of stretching and weird after I ride. And I started realizing, like, wait a second, it’s obvious that the longer crank is harder for people to ride right, right, and, and now I’m starting to feel some weirdness in my body. So I hired a designer, actually the engineer, who did the really good read bikes, Steve and and we came up with a prototype, and I ordered it, and it’s out, it’s out, and so it’s being built. And then I’m driving to work. I’m going to go coach, right? He’s freaking beautiful day in Boulder. Man, you know, I’m just, and I was, like, being all intuitive that day, you know? Man, in my body, and gonna, because when you come to see me, man, you, you get all of it. Man, like, it’s a, it’s a thing. I care. Yeah, I care. Yeah, you’ll see God if you want to and and then my little voice says, you know, Lee, this has been an amazing few years. You know, like you got out of a bad situation, you found love, you got your shoulders replaced. You got arms again. You did this big race. Your coaching is like at this new level. And I was like, Yeah, time for another test phase. I bet I literally was riding, driving to work, and I had that thought, and I wasn’t afraid. I was like, All right, it’s been cool, and I understand that life is waves, just like dirt jumps. That’s one reason I love palm tracks. It teaches us. What we need to know about living. It’s always heavy, light up, down, right, happy, sad. And a week later, my hamstrings tore off my my hip. A week later, ouch. I was laying there, and I was like, okay, there it is.
Check this out. Jeff, to the Moto cranks. Guess what? Was already in production, zero millimeter cranks, yeah, and I couldn’t walk. I lost dude. I’ve always had legs, even when I didn’t have my shoulders, I had legs. That was like my identity as a cycle, right? But in my legs, that’s how I do everything, right? And I lost it, and that was tough, and that was the hardest one I’ve been through that was hard, if you want to talk about it, but then, you know what’s freaking awesome, the motor cranks arrived. I couldn’t hinge so my hamstring was so jacked up, right? I was able to ride without hinging Jeff. I was able to go to the pump track and start my PT and train, and we’re and not be depressed anymore because I didn’t have any cranks, bro. I mean, it was the most just for me as a guy, as a human being, as a spirit, whatever you call this stuff. I was like, Oh my God. Like, I’m out here and it feels so good, and I’m getting strong. I’m getting my training in. I’m that obsessive part of me still aware of my lactate threshold and all that garbage, and it feels good and and I hand it to people, and everybody’s like, Oh my god, it’s so easy. It’s so fun. And dude, think about being in the gym, like, when your feet are next to each other, you can squat or deadlift 3x which you can do here, yeah. And so, so that’s the story about why it came away, and it came along and and it’s just, there’s a real difference, man, psychologically, okay, okay, in addition to all the strain on your hamstrings, okay, not linear. Lee, why did, why did I tear my hamstrings off my body? How did that happen? It’s not common. Yeah, two reasons. One, I have a soft tissue condition that makes me very mobile and very delicate. It does it also gives me a lot of interoception, and that’s part of how I feel everything and explain it. That’s like my superpower, gift and my curse. So my soft tissues, fundamentally soft. That’s why my shoulders wore out the way they did. And dude, this is the downside I’m looking at my friends out there of being a full time mountain bike coach over a great period of time, spending an enormous amount of time in a deep pinch on cranks that were too long for me biomechanically. Oh, yeah, years and years and years, full time job and so, like, when I was doing other stuff, it would have been heart disease. When I was, like, if I was stayed in the, you know, DotCom, I would have been depressed in and anxiety and heart disease. If you’re going to be a professional mountain bike coach, it might be your body wearing out, right? Yeah, so. But I’m on the motor cranks right now, and I just built the first motor cranks bike specifically for it, and I’m having so much fun, and they’re fast, and I feel like, if you if you’re a pump track racer, get on it before the UCI bans it.
Jeff Barber 43:21
Yeah, yeah, it looks really cool, for sure, and yeah, sounds sounds like a really different thing. I’m I’m interested to hear what other folks think about it, as well as they’re able to test that. So general question for you here, do you think mountain bikers tend to be overconfident or underconfident in their skills, or is it a mix? I feel like I have friends you know that are either one. But is there one that you find is more common as a coach and as an instructor?
Lee McCormack 43:50
The people who come to me are less confident. The people who are overconfident…
Jeff Barber 43:56
They don’t go to skills classes. I guess they already know everything.
Lee McCormack 44:00
You know. It’s funny, those guys some I get a few of them. I you know what’s funny, I raised my prices to the point where they don’t show up anymore, but I used to get guys showing up just to, just to show off, just to show me how cool they were.
That’s like me pulling a lightsaber on Yoda. It just don’t, don’t do just, yeah, you know it doesn’t go the way you think it’s gonna go, but, but the people I see are under confident. The people I see are generally overthinking. They’re disconnected from their bodies. They are frustrated because they’re just going on the internet’s not working for them. Of course, it isn’t. None of those systems are thought through. None of them are Yeah, and, and none of them have feedback. Because, look, look at it, man. Like if I tell you, if you take a level one class from me, and I teach you how to hinge and how to be low, and you go home, you think you’re low, you’re not low. You. Not, I mean, I mean me too, like I was actually out. It was so great. I was coaching a bunch of coaches in Park City last, last season. And we’re doing some trail stuff, like heavy duty rock garden type stuff. And I will be honest and tell you, like, I’m still pretty, you know, dealing with this stuff, right? I was shoulder and, you know, and I rode clean. I rode clean. It made the point. But one of the guys like, Hey, you weren’t low. It’s like, he shows me the video, dude. I thought I was like, down here, man. And I was like, See, I mean, so I get excited. Most people are not confident enough and and so they’re hyper in their heads. And this is, this is my bread and butter, okay, like, if you are an intellectual person, and I have this line, you know, in reality, it’s all ideally, everything’s mixy, and you can use the full self, but most of us, or one of the other, most of us, if you have succeeded in life using intellect, grades, career, whatever you know your metrics are, then that just becomes a hammer. And everything’s in now, right? And so and so. You come into the sport with intellect, and when you see coaches out there like talking about step 1-234-567-8910, all the complication. It looks a lot like the way I started 20 years ago as an information architect nerd, but I’m here to tell you that’s not how people learn sports, man, it’s not how you learn a sport. And I know there are a lot of us out there, I’m say us, right? Who, who understand? You’ve seen the videos. You can write an essay. You just can’t do it. And also, when you’re doing it, there’s a lot of judgment and tension, and you’re assessing yourself, and it’s not that fun. And so then, what do you do? You buy a new bike, or you buy some sick, new front tire, right? Yeah. So, so a lot of my students, the best students, come to me at a point in their life when the tools that they’ve been using aren’t working anymore. Okay, as a writer, they’re just like, they’re as fit as they can be. They’re skinny, they’ve spent the money on the bikes. They’re still getting their if you’re a racer, you’re still getting kicked on the downhills by guys who look like me, who literally, when I race cross country, I have sleeves of Oreos on my top tube. And you’re like, you know, they, they don’t like that, so they come to see me, right? And then also it, when you talk to those people, that’s the experience in their whole life. Like at work, they’ve hit a ceiling. At home, they’ve hit a ceiling, and the on the bike, they’ve hit a ceiling. You, if you come to me for biking, you’re going to learn how to ride a bike. It’s the simplest thing in the world. Everybody who doesn’t understand it yet makes it complicated. It’s simple. We can make a change like this, but what’s going to happen, whether you consciously know it or not, is the systems in you that make you a great rider. This the parts of you that enjoy playing around that take pride, go, oh, Jeff, good one, bro, right? You got to talk to yourself. You gotta, you gotta narrate your stuff like you’re freaking Rob Warner, you know, right? How
Jeff Barber 48:37
The Rob Warner in your head.
Lee McCormack 48:39
You gotta have Rob Warner in your head, right? I think that’s a great way to put it. And often when I’m writing, I will narrate myself, or I’ll narrate a student of mine, right? So it’s like, this is so exciting and hard to get out of my mouth, so I’m going to try it, right? It’s like, enjoying you’ve heard it all, enjoy the process, all that stuff, right? That’s true. And the way you do it is you just look for tiny little wins, man, tiny, microscopic wins. You didn’t hit your brakes, there, good. You didn’t look at the tree, whatever it is, right? And, and, and so that’s those systems in you that that that know how to learn that appreciate the learning, that enjoy the learning, that map that to greater confidence, and then just inherently want to go out in the world and show it. Yeah, those are the systems you need when you’re developing some new crazy product at work, right? Those are the systems you freaking need when you take your family on some crazy vacation, those are the systems I’m sorry to say, you need when you gotta go to Ikea for a full day and buy a bunch.
Jeff Barber 49:51
That’s endurance, right? I mean, it sounds like what you’re saying is that the ideal thing is to be honest with yourself and maybe. Add in some humility there. But, you know, tell yourself when you’re doing a good job or when you You did the right thing, but also recognizing, oh, you know, I messed up there. I can do it better next time. Is that kind of, kind of the model, if you can perfect that, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to stay in the middle there, not go overconfident or underconfident.
Lee McCormack 50:21
Gorgeous. Thank you, Jeff, it’s both, and I don’t believe in middle anymore. I’ve tried Middle. Middle doesn’t work, yeah, and I’ll give you as much detail as you want, but I learned this lesson as I was preparing for Worlds last May. Middle doesn’t work. I would say this, and and, and I try really hard in my classes, if it’s, if it’s a two hour class or like a lifelong engagement, whatever we whatever we get into, we have rules of how we talk to ourselves and how we talk about ourselves, right? And, and we’re honest and, and we, we, we don’t talk good or bad. It’s It’s powerful. It’s been done before, but this is our mountain bike version of this. We don’t say, I do my best to not say bad, good. I do my best to say, Jeff, the way you loaded your big toe. Do you feel that? Feel like to have a bike like connected? That’s what we’re looking for. So I try to, I try to say, all right, like this is my current experience and how I ride, like I’m doing it right now. I got a big race, and I have a fresh hamstring, and I got a brand new style bike, like I’m training right now. Have a week to learn a whole new style of bike and figure out what my hamstring can do, right? So I’m deeply training and I’m paying attention, so the way I do it now is I go, all right, Lee, well, you know, you got endurance and you’re smooth. Like, no one’s going to argue that. Like, I’m like, the king of endurance pump track, but this is one lap time and the and the age group is 17 plus elite. Okay, you’ve seen these freaking young pros, Holy God, like they grew up on punktracks. It’s incredible. So there’s a delta between them and where I perceive myself to be, let’s say just makes sense. Okay? I’m going to do my best to close it in a week. Yeah. So instead of good, bad. I say input, output this time when I’m in the corner, like I was doing this yesterday, I’m gonna come from the middle of the corner and I’m gonna hop out to the exit. That’s the goal. And I’m gonna do that by giving a little more pull at this port part, right? So you run an experiment, and I’m going to map how that feels, and I’ll say that worked. That goes in the system. We’re going to keep doing that. I try something else. No, that didn’t work. That goes away. Or I can notice, man, I’m getting tired, and I wasn’t low enough that time. Does that make sense? So it’s, there’s no judgment here. We, we, we’re just sort of adjusting.
Jeff Barber 53:05
Just keep what works and all the other stuff, just ignore it?
Lee McCormack 53:09
Or just say, Okay, well, like, or like, I’ve said to people before, I’m like, Listen, man, if you want to wash out in the corner, like, if that’s what you want, like, that’s what you want for some reason, like, like, maybe you’re doing a reel, I don’t know. Just go into the corner and lock your arms and lean back and it’ll happen right now, if you don’t want that, don’t do that, right? And so I want to see if I can get this to one reason people don’t practice skills, a the word practice or drill. I hate the word drill. I invented the freaking mountain bike drill. Sorry, it’s of limited use. Yeah, okay, it is. It’s of limited use. It keeps you stuck here. Games, we play games. We play games. Yeah, more fun, way more fun. And the science is clear on this, brother, the science is clear on this. If you’re here, you don’t learn fast, and you probably will never learn here, so it’s all game. And I’ll tell you, if all you people who really want to like, let’s say you have a goal of getting better at corn, and you’ve been doing the drills. Hey, don’t like, just seriously, like, if it’s free on the internet, it’s worth free. Also watch the person carefully. Do they look stiff? Does the coach look stiff? Most do if they’re demonstrating a technique.
Look at how the person is riding. If that person’s riding the way that you want to ride mimic them.
Jeff Barber 54:54
There you go. Well, mountain biking, I think is kind of rare in that it’s a lifelong sport for a lot of people. And one of the questions that that somebody asked me recently, who’s not a mountain biker? They were asking, you know, if, if I’m as fast now as I was in my 30s, and I’m in my 40s now, and I was kind of surprised by my answer. I actually said, I think I’m faster now than I was in my 20s. And, you know, obviously he was shocked, and I kind of was too. I was like, Wait, is that? Is that actually true? So I’m curious about your take. I mean, is it, is it possible for us to be faster in our 40s than our 20s, at least in terms of, like, skills and bike handling. I mean, I probably am not. I don’t have the same level of endurance. Maybe the endurance is the same, but I do feel like I’m faster now through skills like, is that? Is that a normal thing? Do you think it can be?
Lee McCormack 55:55
If you keep hammering at the way you used to, pedal, pedal, pedal, then you’re going to get really good at that. And you’re going to get and if you allow yourself to be stiff in corners, you’re going to master stiffness in corners. You’re going to, you know this, you’re going to master whatever it is you do. And you absolutely one of the best things I think about this whole pursuit of internal mastery skills, starting, you know, like, what do you do with your hands and feet when you ride? But more importantly, what do you do with your awareness when you ride? Like, yeah, that’s infinitely scalable, dude. There is no limit to how coherent you can make your system in terms of how you ride your bicycle. I’ve been, I think, as deep as anyone on this, I really do. And I was out yesterday. I mean, how many labs have I done on pump tracks? 100,000 I don’t know. And I found another layer a lot. I found another layer yesterday, another layer. New bike of mine. So it’s like you you can, you can scale that forever. And by the way, that’s where the real fun happens, right? Okay, so, so, so, back to your you. You started with the word faster, but I like how you qualify. Yes, faster can happen. Yes. As we get older, we still have tons of endurance available. We know how to manage ourselves. You can get better with your peddling technique. You can get better with your diet. You can get smarter with not training so much. Yes, not training so much. Most of us do too much. And I’ve got these people. I’ve got these I got this, like new product line, the platinum shredder program, where I do your daily training, and I we text every day, and most of the time I tell you to rest, don’t I?
Jeff Barber 57:43
Sweet, another rest day.
Lee McCormack 57:45
No, you need them so, so you can absolutely scale, especially in your skills, and, most importantly, in your joy. And I have, I like metrics too. So okay, when I was 35 that was like my year, you know, and I just quit, like the DotCom. And that’s the year I raced the entire national series, and I was Capital One national champion for downhead. Yeah, wow. And I took an eighth and worlds one, one mistake that doesn’t drive me crazy. Pretty funny, right? And I, you know, and I was going pretty good, I’d say. And what’s interesting in hindsight, is I had the physical capacity to be in the lead Pro. I didn’t have a self belief. That’s how I was. So that’s my path. That’s my path. Okay, so, so we have a really rocky, badass trail. They’re like, where everybody rides like, that’s like, the place you ride your enduro bike. And I had the kom on that back then, yay, Lee. Okay, so I started training on that and I got away from riding that trail because my shoulders hurt so much. It was just white hot pain, and I would only I stopped riding it, you know, I just hurt, and it became miserable to me. But I knew right before we went to worlds, I’m like, You got to get out there and ride that trail, bro, it’s just, I took my mistress out there. We did a big cross country ride. It was a Sunday. The top loop, I just ripped. I mean, it was profound. I don’t know what the hell happened. And it was incredible. And then, and then, for the main rocky part, it was a busy Sunday, you know? And I was just like, well, we can’t really hit it. My training buddy was there. He’d been on my wheel the whole process, since I decided to do the race, and I get going, and I just feel good, Jeff, I just, I was like, making these waves. I was, I was a porpoise man, and I was just making waves. A lot of people know me. A lot of people are students. Hey, Jeff, hey man, good job. Get low, bro, you know. And I was like, taking the time and Jeff, I was like, I was ready, like, when I went to worlds, my goals were a, to prepare myself physically the best I could, and B, prepare myself emotionally and spiritually, to release the outcome happy no matter what. And I just felt like that run was perfect. And I was happy, and I felt like I had accomplished everything I’d ever wanted. And I happen to have it on Strava and dude, at 55 with artificial shoulders, less than a year post op, I PR’d it.
Jeff Barber 1:00:15
Oh, wow, yeah. See, that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it’s 20 years later, right?
Lee McCormack 1:00:20
Yeah. And a couple of years ago, I would have said, that’s insane. Oh my god. But now I understand, now understand, we try too hard, we worry about the wrong we do. I’m saying we as a collective. I know the bros do because I’m a bro. I can speak to that psyche the best and and we try too hard, US Brainiac nerds, if your GPA was a four, I’m talking to you, right. You’re trying too hard, and your mind is beautiful. And I tell my students, I go, your mind bought you that bike and lets you take Wednesdays off and pay for the most expensive, amazing mountain bike coach in the world. That’s the end of your brain for the day, right? And dude, when you can access the rest of you, and this is not woo, woo. I know it sounds Woo, woo, and I’m wearing a freaking pink Hawaiian shirt.
Jeff Barber 1:01:17
It’s not. I don’t think so. I think as bikers, we get that. I mean, we talk about flow state totally. I feel like we understand it as well or better than people who don’t bike. Right? Most of us have experienced it, whether it was like by accident, or we’re able to like, access it regularly. I think we’ve all experienced it a bit, and so we know it’s there.
Lee McCormack 1:01:41
We know that that’s why you’re spending the money and the time. I mean, mountain bike is expensive, dangerous and time consuming. I suggest that you get everything you can out of it, including flow. Damn right, bro. And by the way, so So like the body people, the natural athletes, will call them. I hate the term, but that’s the term, okay, these people intuitively know how to go into flow. These people might generally not don’t have a conscious awareness of how mountain biking works. They don’t need it, because they have access to their body system, and they have the ability to go into that state and enjoy it. Okay? It’s taken me decades to learn how to even go there. So, so like and like in like. So if I say I’m like, get good grades and I’m analytical and I have a high IQ, okay, I know there are people in mountain biking who hate me just because I’m smart and they feel judged by that. No, no, no, no, we’re all made the way. We’re made, man, we all have our thing. My thing in mountain biking was clearly to start out as the king nerd and establish ideas about how technically we can ride, how technically we can fit bikes, how technically we can work on our fitness and our mobility and our mindset and ultimately, the spiritual aspect of riding. This is where I am in my riding now, and so when it which end up with is this polymath, weirdo bro, am me who’s been through all of these stages so far, and who, who can help you, wherever, whichever stage you’re in, this makes sense, and now I understand from the first day, From the first level one from the first day we meet, that everything we do, we have to wash it through the joyride philosophy, and which is, I guess we’re gonna run out of time real quick. But this is a good place to like. I want to say what the joyride philosophy is, if I may ready sure one, if you see something good, say something, be specific, that was good. Jeff is cool, but better would be Jeff. The way you loaded your foot, man, I saw your bike hook up. Good one. Okay, they get harder as we go. Yeah. 1b when you do something good, compliment yourself, okay? Like, like you’re Rob Warner on a vendor, right? Two, accept the compliment. You know, accept it.
Jeff Barber 1:04:35
Yeah, false humility.
Lee McCormack 1:04:38
And then the last one is no self deprecation. Don’t talk yourself, okay? And that goes to just being your own favorite riding person, partner, you know, first, like, you know, if you just imagine some person talking to you the way you talk to yourself, don’t you know you want to be someone you want to ride with. So that’s the so i. To do with it. And we start with that, and then we get into as much technical details we need. But Jeff, there’s not a lot necessary. And, and, and I believe firmly, man, more and more, like absolutely, I love metrics. I’m work. You know, you want to pedal a certain wattage, yeah? Do it? Enjoy it. You want to hit a new jump. Please enjoy it. You want to go win a race. Oh man, whatever it is that you’re doing, go ride with your kids, do whatever it is, be there, be there, be there, be there, be there. And my hope for everybody is to is to connect it with yourself and really enjoy it for what it is. Because these are all phases, and right now you might be hardcore into racing, and I honor that man. I honor that but there will come a time when you’re not, and I don’t want you to come out of that phase with nothing left, right. So, so, so begin the other parts of it, so you can stay in this appreciation.
Jeff Barber 1:05:58
Yeah, yeah, that’s great advice, I mean, and it sounds it’s simple on the surface, but for sure, it takes a lot of work, I think, for a lot of us. And yeah, good advice. So I want to ask you briefly about mistress cycles, which is a bike brand that you recently launched in reading about it, I read that part of the the impetus was that you were frustrated with modern mountain bike geometry so briefly, like, what specifically was frustrating you about, about the way bikes are designed.
Lee McCormack 1:06:32
The most specific thing is bikes this, this whole longer thing is just out of whack. And, like, two bikes are too long. It’s typically, it’s frame reach and bikes are just too long. And I’ve got some charts on the site. A size small. 2023 Nomad, Santa Cruz Nomad is longer, longer than the size extra large 2013 nomad.
Jeff Barber 1:07:00
Wow.
Lee McCormack 1:07:04
And in a very practical way, it’s making it really, really difficult for people to ride their bikes safely and with fun and and if you’re anything, you know, I’m statistically exactly the median height. I’m about five foot eight and a half. Okay, there are a lot of brands I can’t ride at all in any size. They’re too long and, and that’s the simplest way to put it, and the same and that,
Jeff Barber 1:07:28
What does that do? I mean, when a bike is too long, like, again, briefly, like, what? How do people experience them? What did you feel?
Lee McCormack 1:07:35
You feel like you’re on the bike and the bike’s taking you for a ride. Hey, B if you’re trying to make shapes and do the new kind of riding where you’re dropping and jumping and doing stuff, think about it. There’s a lever between your hands and your feet. That’s that’s how you control your bike. That’s my whole riding philosophy. If that lever is too long for your body, you don’t have as much range of motion, right? You just don’t, and you can’t, like, do the steep thing. You can’t lose into a steep landing. You can’t lean for that switchback. It’s just not available. And also that that pushes the work to the smaller muscles, so you’re going to tend to have pain through here, right? Yeah, and so, and so I just, I wrote the first dial book and and it’s a good book. The second one is better. And the main criticism was, Well, dude, like, great, but no one makes the bikes. So I just, and I have other ideas that we can talk about as much as you want, but, like, and I was like, you know, it’s time to stop complaining. I’m just going to make some I just, I just want to solve the problem. And so now it’s awesome, because we can fit anybody to the millimeter perfectly. It feels great. You get any color you want. We make them one at a time. You know, there’s no freaking warehouse full of last year’s bikes in Asia that’s about to get tariffed. None of that’s happened. Okay, yeah, this is just like old school. I love mountain biking. I love mountain bikers. I want you to have a tool that works for you. Jeff, that’s all it is. And you know what? By the way, I don’t care what you put on the down tube. I don’t care it doesn’t you can say Lee is awesome. It. Can say, I love my wife. I don’t care. I’m not here to build a brand. I’m here to, I’m here to, like, lead a movement of using the mountain bike as our way of accessing our joy, man.
Jeff Barber 1:09:24
Yeah, power through shred.
Finally, I want to ask you. I mean, obviously, you’ve, you’ve written a number of books, you’ve got these products, like the Moto cranks and the RIP row trainer, which we didn’t even talk about and now your bike brand. What other projects do you have in the works that is after, after you’re done with the the pump track worlds thing, what’s what’s next?
Lee McCormack 1:09:50
That’s only 20 seconds of my life, and then I’ll be watching the pros get after the first round. Well, um Yeah, you know, I, I’m experimenting right now with pump bikes. Yeah. I built my first ever bike that’s never going to be pedaled ever. And it’s amazing. The geometry, it’s very motocrossy. So we’re exploring that, supporting that thing I’m writing dialed, to the second version of that. And the first version of dialed was only about downhill handling. That’s all it was. It was just like just but this is more complete. It talks about the entire bike for any kind of rider. It’s both more complete and more simple and more flexible, which I think is good as a designer. And then there’ll be the Dow bike. But then I’m excited to tell you this. This is like the dream of the nerd. Okay, I’m on phone call away. It’s going to happen this week from final confirmation, but it’s going to happen in fall. I am going to serve as professor of mountain biking at Colorado Mountain College. Whoa, that’s our do a pilot. Yes, we are starting a pilot, and you will be able to go to Colorado Mountain College, and as part of your associate’s degree for like out working in the outdoors and doing that, you can learn how to be a mountain bike coach.
Jeff Barber 1:11:15
Wow.
Lee McCormack 1:11:18
Very official, yeah. And and so next time you see me, it’ll say, Professor shred.
Jeff Barber 1:11:25
Professor shred.
Lee McCormack 1:11:26
It tickles my funny bone that, you know, mountain biking has come to the point where someone’s considering college classes in it. And I think it’s, yeah, it’s pretty fun that I get to do it, you know, like, like, this is this. Is it like, this is like that, this whole lifetime of devotion and joy and pain and everything, here’s where it leads.
Jeff Barber 1:11:48
You know, yeah, that’s awesome. Well, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you. Lee. Your Enthusiasm is just amazing and infectious. And yeah, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show and chat with us. Very welcome. Well, you can keep up with the latest from Lee McCormack on Instagram at Lee likes bikes, where you’ll find links to all the projects we talked about here today. That’s all we’ve got this time. We’ll talk to you again next time.
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