Look Pro: Souplesse
Souplesse. Only the French would have such a word; one you can sink your teeth into, chew on. It begs to be spoken over a plate of assorted cheeses and a bottle of vin rouge. Its exact definition is unimportant; such things conjure up an image in our minds that is cheapened by words. Souplesse is the ideal, sought by all and obtained only by The Few.
Souplesse is the perfect storm of Looking Pro; harmony between grace and power, casual and deliberate. It speaks of the entire organism, the perfectly manicured machine together with the perfectly refined position and technique of its rider. It is the combination of Magnificent Stroke, gentle sway of the shoulders and head, the rhythmic breath, and of knees, elbows, and chest converging on the V-Locus.
Jacques Anquetil is man of whom we have spoken surprisingly little in these archives. Perhaps it is because he is a man who inspires us in death as little as he did his fans in life. A calculating man, he pursued Cycling not for the love and passion of it, but for the business of it; for him, the bicycle provided a path from peasantry to aristocracy. That was all.
Be that as it may, he was a gifted cyclist whose fluidity on the bike exemplified Souplesse:
- A Magnificent Stroke is more than pushing or pulling on the pedals. The stroke flows from the core and hips, driving the pedals round and belying the effort to do so.
- Feet sweep the pedals around in perfect revolutions, one leg cannot be distinguished from the other – they work as one to counter and balance the forces to drive the machine ever faster forward.
- The legs can not do their work without the arms, the lungs, the chest, the heart, the mind. Each unit functions independently to do its work, yet feeds seamlessly into the other. In a phrase: Fluidly Harmonic Articulation.
- Move to the V-Locus; the body is folded such that legs, arms, and chest overlap but do not intersect. Knees tucked in, shoulders hunched, wrists rolled inwards, elbows angled such that the knees only just slip inside them with each revolution of the cranks.
- Face calm, eyes cooly focussed up the road; a grimace is energy that is better spent on turning the pedals.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3uWs5ULAZE[/youtube]
Jacques was also known to partake in a little menage-a-trois arrangement with his wife and his wife’s daughter from her prior marriage. Oui! Oui!
Smooth both on and off the bike.
@minion
Hey Minion. I found your fucking home video, you perv.
(via @Scaler911)
@scaler911
HA!!!! I didn’t think you had the woolies to post that!
@MarcL
As evidence: I can’t imagine why Bugno raced in the USA years ago in the Tour Dupont/Trump but he did. My friend and LBS owner knew of one of the riders on the Saturn team asked him about Gianni and was told. “It’s like he was riding on rails” Said with reverence and awe.
@frank
Just like in a dream,
Fluid Gliding Thrust,
the Revolutions equating to Time and Distance,
Exertion released from the force of Gravity,
Energy as a Classic Symbol,
Pain as an Icon
Pure fucking poetry. Jørgen Leth’s words are so well considered and crafted at the best of times, you could manage without the film, but but this is sublime. Surely this was lifted from the ancient texts.
@D-Man
Man alive !!! Just reading about Jaques on Wikipedia :-0 unbelievable.
In a nutshell he can’t knock up his wife, so he gets his (non-biological) step daughter in as a surrogate. Once she bears his sprog she moves out (falls out with her mother, Jaques’ wife). The step son plus wife Dominique move in and he then starts shagging her too !!!
After being asked to take a piss test after wininng the 1961 LBL says to the man charged to collect his urine “If you can collect it from the soapy water there, go ahead. I’m a human being, not a fountain.” Two days later the Belgian cycling federation disqualified Anquetil and fined him. Anquetil responded by calling urine tests “a threat to individual liberty” and engaged a lawyer. The case was never heard, the Belgians backed down and Anquetil became the winner. I bet Bertie was wishing he’s been born half a century ago.
I’m not sure if you call that panache but he had some nuts on him that’s for sure.
A Magnificent Stroke is more than pushing or pulling on the pedals. The stroke flows from the core and hips, driving the pedals round and belying the effort to do so.
Since being a kid, I’ve tried to master this pedal stroke;
(Page from Winning mag ~198*’s)
(Great read on the right hand side!)
Phase 3 in Hinault’s style wrecks my ankles!
Now I’m trying to avoid square pedaling!
Hinault’s style as shown above, it looks so elegant! (to me)
Drfinitional mishmash aside, I’m interested in people’s thoughts on developing souplesse. I don’t believe its mythologically confined to those who ride the croix de fer at the end of a daily 6hr ride. It can be developed in less miles w effort- what helps?
@James
If I may give you the time-honored recipe handed down to me by the ancient ones…
1. Ride a fixie.
2. Ride on rollers.
3. No riding Sur la Plaque in the off-season.
I know I’m going to get heat for that last one, especially. LeMond specifically wrote against that tradition in his book, but then again, he didn’t exactly have the best stroke, did he?
@Calmante
This.
One last pedantic thrust at this before I give it up:
To develop a magnificent pedal stroke one needs to be able to spin the gears at high rpm for long periods of time (learn on easy gears then slowly translate to harder), as Anquetil was famous for. To do this it helps to do some stretching and/or be generally flexible, as well as having a strong core. If you are supple of leg and stable in the saddle you will be in good condition to be able to work on, smooth out and refine your pedalling style, and you will probably be able to touch your toes too.
Souplesse is simply the physical condition that allows you to pedal with a magnificent stroke, not the name of the magnificent stroke itself.
It might seem a subtle distinction, but to me it’s like saying ‘en danseuese’ is the same as climbing out of the saddle, and we all know that’s not true. To me the exact definition of the word is important, otherwise it loses the meaning that is does have!
The description Frank gives in the article is a poetic and vivid description of a Magnificent Stroke that could have been a great bit of writing if the context of the word it was built around wasn’t wrong…
@Oli
Yup, that’s pretty much what I got from it here:
Be that as it may, he was a gifted cyclist whose fluidity on the bike exemplified Souplesse:
A Magnificent Stroke is more than pushing or pulling on the pedals. The stroke flows from the core and hips, driving the pedals round and belying the effort to do so.
Feet sweep the pedals around in perfect revolutions, one leg cannot be distinguished from the other – they work as one to counter and balance the forces to drive the machine ever faster forward.
The legs can not do their work without the arms, the lungs, the chest, the heart, the mind. Each unit functions independently to do its work, yet feeds seamlessly into the other. In a phrase: Fluidly Harmonic Articulation.
Move to the V-Locus; the body is folded such that legs, arms, and chest overlap but do not intersect. Knees tucked in, shoulders hunched, wrists rolled inwards, elbows angled such that the knees only just slip inside them with each revolution of the cranks.
Face calm, eyes cooly focussed up the road; a grimace is energy that is better spent on turning the pedals.
I’m reading fast cadence, core strength, Anquetil, magnificent stroke is more that just legs moving fluidly, etc. With all due respect Oli, and I mean it, I’m not sure what you’re reading other an into something.
@Louutah
Just finished S,L &HT. Your description was the least of it. JA regularly stayed up until 3am before races eating, drinking and playing cards, and was at times, close to being an alcoholic judging by the amount of whisky he was said to consume.
This is the kind of article and discussion that makes me love this site.
Since this is the hot discussion right now I’m going to put this here. Android app for the Flanders Classics. Mostly in some gutteral language that Frank would understand but the maps showing hills and cobbles is pretty cool.
https://market.android.com/details?id=be.appstrakt.flandersclassics
@frank Given the more recent appearance of the word Contra in English speaking lands, (if the Reagan era is recent) and the borrowing of it for a beloved video game, I read that phrase more as a “war on time”. Lovely phrase for a grueling task.
@frank
OMG! At work, listened and then had to immediately mute. Tears coming out of my eyes I’m laughing so hard!!!!!
@Oli
What’s funny about your latest rant here is that in this analogy, what I’m doing is describing what “en danseuese” means and you’re coming back and saying “it just means climbing out of the saddle” (over and over and over and over again).
@sthilzy
That’s fantastic stuff! Man, I miss Winning…
@mouse
Omniscience is a gift… and a burden.
@James
It’s not confined. If you were ever a runner (esp a distance runner), you get “runners high” sometimes. You’re relaxed, smooth, fast, effortless.
I get this cycling and I think it’s a stretch to say any of us, Pro or otherwise, are always “Souplesse”, rather it’s a state that’s achieved when everything is in perfect balance. Some have it more often than others, and some may never think they have it, but do.
@Gerard, @napolinige
Fantastic word!
@scaler911
There are lots of things you can do to help out; as mentioned, rollers, fixies, trainers will help, but really just anything that forces you to ride for sustained periods that emphasizes flaws in your stroke and other unneeded motions that your body might be making.
But mostly, just ride your bike lots and lots and lots.
@Ron
I’m not sure, but I think Jacques may have been one of those dudes who never hit the road without a comb in his pocket. Classy bastards, to those guys were.
@frank
Might be time for that photo of (Coppi I think) from that book I gave you.
@Oli
This ties in with some of the stuff my sensei has had me doing, particularly the 2 x 20 intervals on the rollers which has the emphasis on a constant output for the duration of the effort. 20 minutes at a fixed cadence over 100rpm. Constant speed, constant cadence, constant power. No variation, no gear changes. Same gear for the second effort five to seven minutes later. It doesn’t matter what gear you turn when you start the process but each time it becomes easy in that gear you pick the next smallest cog the next time round. If you can’t do it on that cog you go back to the bigger one.
I’ve been doing this once a week if I can for the last few months and while I wouldn’t say that I have a magnificent stroke it is much better than when I started. It goes awry when I’m properly buggered like today when I extended my ride home from a 2 up 40 session with him but didn’t really consider the consequences of the route that I was taking. The last 26km was into a headwind that stopped my in my tracks. Apart from the damage that it did to my legs, I was also struggling to maintain a stable core. Time to break out the Swiss ball and do some work there before the keepers tour.
@scaler911
No. No, no, no.
@scaler911
Absolutely, when I ran at school there were days when I would glide over the surface and the pain would drop away (for me, not the other bastards). On days like that you felt invincible and didn’t mind losing because you know the guy who’d won was properly good.
It’s a good day on the bike when the pain drops away and you suddenly realise you’re further down the route than you should be and your feeling loose. It’s just too tempting to think this is easy and up the pace when you should just maintain it and let yourself drop back into that trance.
@Calmante
What the fuck do you mean “no, no, no,”? The more you train and learn to spin, feel one with your bike, the more relaxed you become. Balanced. Focused, Effortless. What’s your sage advice on this ye who seems to know more than anyone else around here?
@scaler911
Runner’s High is a personal inward feeling. I’ve spoken to many a runner who claimed runner’s high but that looked like a twisting sea lion all through a race. At no point did their gait become smooth and rhythmic. This is more of a visual elegance. You can feel like an effort is…effortless, but that’s only because you are in a good mental and physical state, not because you are acting with beautiful efficiency.
@Calmante
Are you Eddy???
@razmaspaz
Mmm. Ya. But there are sometimes as I’ve had, and as @Chris was talking about where in addition to that inward feeling, it’s expressed by the fluidity of your movement. Wether running or riding. And to be sure some just don’t have that fluidity most of the time. Look at Steve Prefontaine running. Not Sebastian Coe pretty by a long shot.
@razmaspaz
Many might have claimed it but running is no different to cycling and most other sports at the top there are those who do display an apparent effortless ease just as there are those who seem to excel despite having all the grace of a baby giraffe. Haile Gebrselassie had it, Ovett had it, Coe less so.
Best stop with this running talk, though, we’ll get in trouble.
Souplesse isn’t a feeling. You can’t be “souplesse.” If you go riding with a french coach, he may pull up beside you and say, “plus souplesse.” You know what he means? Put it in a lighter gear.
I don’t know how it took on this mythical meaning ’round these parts, but it probably has to do with there not being a direct translation of the word. The idea of the Magnificent Stroke and V Locus is good, and having souplesse can be a part of that, but it seriously just means spinning a gear quickly and smoothly. Nothing more.
It’s like taking another element of the V Locus, let’s say loose shoulders, taking the Portuguese translation, “ombros soltos,” and using it to describe something more abstract. Anquetil is Ombros Soltos. We should all ascribe to reach that runner’s high, that state of mind, we are Ombros Soltos. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m not trying to be difficult, but @Oli is completely right on this.
@scaler911
You know, we never stop learning, and I still have much to learn both as a man and as a rider.
However, regardless of my ability to not be a douche or a jackass, which I apparently need to work on quite a bit if the past few weeks have been any indication, I’m not the worst person in the world to take advice from. Especially about cycling.
@calmante: Language is fluid, dynamic, evolving. Definitions and meanings change. For example; “keep your elbows off the table” we all equate to being slovenly and rude (as my mum taught me).
However the origin of that phrase had nothing to do with manners. When sailors of old ate while at sea, they’d use their elbows to keep their plates from sliding around.
Pirates would be in port looking to add members (unwilling) to their crew, and would start looking in pubs for “new staff”. Guys eating with their elbows on the table were obviously seasoned sailors and would be the first to get Shanghaied. Thus the wives and mothers would tell their men “keep your elbows off the table”.
See where I’m going with this? Take the douchery down a notch or 10 and we can learn from each other. I’ve got over 20 years in the sport and like trading stories, thoughts and ideas. But no one likes being talked down to except in jest, which yours isn’t.
Rant over.
Calmante and Oli, you may or may not be right about what Souplesse should be but you are most decidedly wrong in suggesting that the ‘broader’ definition Frank and others are using is something he has made up or which has suddenly appeared here.
I have often heard souplesse used to describe something beyond physical condition or lightness.
Here is Bicycling magazine in an article about Armstrong:
“This brawling ride was the antithesis of what I thought epitomized the ideal of the sport””the smooth, effortless-looking mastery of the bike called souplesse. ”
Or Red Kite Prayer blog from July 2011:
“Literally: suppleness, softness, flexibility, adaptability, fluidity. On the bike: smoothness, a one-ness with the machine… Souplesse contains within it humility, strength and patience… Souplesse connotes style, but it also hints at a deep-lying efficiency, an elimination of non-essential movement… [souplesse] comes from within the athlete.”
You no doubt think that’s a load of bollocks, but it’s shared by quite a few people, which then leads to the question of whether enough people deciding on a definition makes it the de facto definition.
Personally as one who winces at the commonplace misuse of words like enormity, I have some sympathy, but I suggest you are pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
@Oli
exactly. pedaling on a road bike feels so wonderfully smooth, simple and efficient after a long fixie ride or rollers session. there’s a group that does a 80km fixie ride every week on the local bike trails. wonderful training.
I once had a girlfriend whose souplesse was outweighed only by the enormity of her bottom.
@Calmari
Are you a Hendrix fan? You like the song Manic Depression? I honestly think I understand where you are trying to come from and when you settle down and stop swinging you can actually be pretty reasonable.
Some advice: to @Scaler911’s point, if you want people to take you seriously, I suggest you start by building your credibility in the community. In most walks of life, people typically try to do that from two angles – by (a) walking into a room and cramming their ideas down people’s throats or by (b) being sociable and offering advice where people are looking for it.
There are lots of good examples of people around here doing this properly, not least your revered @Oli who might act like a prick sometimes, but has done his part to establish his credibility.
More recently, @TommyTubolare comes to mind as one who has done so using method (b) in the last few months and does so without ever being a prick. (But then again, I believe Tommy is Dutch and that explains why his execution was flawless.)
@ChrisO
Beautiful.
@heinous
It amazes me when cubby people are super flexible. Like Jack Black, that’s one limber, spry dude.
@ChrisO
Interesting you should mention Armstrong, who is probably the best example of souplesse (ever?) and I cant even stand to look at him on a bicycle. I mean, the guy looks like someone took a barrel-chested monkey, beat him with an ugly stick, and duct-taped him to a racing bicycle.
I’m married to a grammarian. Enormity is one of her pet peeves, as well.
@frank
Well, that makes one of us. I still don’t know quite what to make of you! I can’t help but like someone who goes through all this effort to put together a site and community like this one, though. The passion is obvious, and is why I’ve been sticking around. As much as it seems that I disagree with the stuff that’s posted on here, the reality is that I’m just not compelled to post on the stuff I agree with, which is the majority.
In a recent Family Guy epsiode, there was a skit with a Baptist and a Seventh Day Adventist where they were discussing their shared beliefs and agreeing harmoniously… Until they get to the one thing they disagree on; what day to go to church, Saturday or Sunday. It blows their minds! So much truth in that.
Having said that, a big fuck you to everyone who disagrees with me. Your mother.
@frank
@frank
Can’t help but notice that sheep has an AMERICAN accent. What you guys train your sheep to do is nothing to do with me
Goats have accents
I forgot my lunch today. Does that make me souplesse?
!
Lexicon entry: calmante; Self-agrandizing tool with a wealth of information akin to your Grandparents Encyclopedia Britannica collection. Circa 1966. Two volumes missing.
Good morning, everybody…I’m feeling very suppleness today, just ask my wife (boom boom)!
@scaler911
…and then you go and say something like that. At the very least, I haven’t resorted to the name calling.
@mcsqueak
No Souplesse for you!!