Slacklining: Religiosity | Laminated Pamphlets | Crisp Concentration | Perennial Philosophy | Love

8-28-06

Many thanks are due, to the esteemed curator of the Vulture's Peak Center for Freestyle Rodeo Slackline Research for providing a venue to extol the virtues and merits of the practice of slacklining. Particularly, I appreciate the religious zeal that our curator brings to the community; I shall proselytize right alongside him.

Slacklining throws open doors of strength, balance, and concentration that reward any athlete, of any stripe, with plateau upon plateau of improvement. It is only a matter of time before the physical training community catches on - there will be lines hanging in every public school gym across the country. Until a government-sanctioned laminated slackline pamphlet is handed out, I can only entice the uninitiated with my personal experience.

I’ve ridden a slackline for six or so years now, and I continually notice how slacklining feeds everything else I do with my body. Obviously, rock climbing benefits so much from the slackline’s demand for your focus and for balance born from body tension and rhythm. More surprisingly, I find that cycling (road riding) takes as much from the line: both the slackline and the bicycle demand a lightness and agility while balanced on a dynamic system, both orient you down a fall line, and both pursuits are practiced best when you concentrate so crisply and clearly on something that you disappear. For skiing however, the slackline adept find themselves stronger and certainly better balanced, but more importantly far less prone to injury. Particularly the quadriceps enjoy a vastly increased ability to pull out of situations that put knee cartilage in jeopardy; all the small-twitch strengthening in the muscles above the knee gives you a greater opportunity for recovery.

All movements and all sports are analogous, but it seems to me, that slacklining is like the perennial philosophy that connects the world’s religions. The skills taught by the slackline echo through every movement from the extreme (dirt bikes) to the mundane (salt shakers). I’ll admit that as a practiced slackliner, it is a bit like being in love, when everything you see and do reminds you of her: with every physical exertion and each gesture, I’m reminded of the line.

M.C.W.