What Riding Teaches Us About Control, Agency and Returning to Ourselves
There’s a moment, somewhere between the first turn of the pedals and the first breath of cold air, when the mind unclenches. It happens without permission, without warning, a loosening, a lowering of shoulders, an unburdening that is earned rather than granted. It’s the quiet that arrives at 25mph.
For a long time we talked about cycling as transport. Then exercise. Then sustainability. Somewhere along the way we forgot the truth that every rider knows, even if they’ve never said it out loud: The road is not an escape. It is alignment and alignment has never been more necessary.
The Modern Mind Wasn’t Designed for the Modern Day
The human brain evolved to handle danger in short bursts, not notifications every 14 seconds. Not inboxes like avalanche chutes. Not commutes that steal 38 days a year from the average Londoner and 84 days from workers driving in Greater Manchester.
The World Health Organization reports that:
- Anxiety affects 1 in 4 adults under 35
- Urban workers lose up to 13% of cognitive capacity during periods of chronic stress
- Cortisol (the stress hormone) can remain elevated for up to 6 hours after a congested commute
We’ve built cities that move fast while forcing the people inside them to stay slow and somewhere in that contradiction, the idea of living got replaced by the idea of coping.
It’s poetic to say riding helps the mind. It’s scientific to prove why.
A 2022 meta-analysis in Translational Sports Medicine shows that aerobic outdoor motion is the most reliable non-pharmaceutical intervention for mood regulation, outperforming mindfulness, medication and even cognitive therapy in certain cases of situational anxiety.
Just 20 minutes of riding:
- Reduces cortisol by up to 28%
- Increases serotonin and dopamine simultaneously (rare combination for mood)
- Triggers neurogenesis in the hippocampus (linked to memory and emotional processing)
- Improves sleep latency by 34% in participants with insomnia
- Increases parasympathetic nervous system activity, the state of calm
The False Argument Against Electric Bikes
For a long time, critics framed e-bikes as the easy way out, as if adding a motor erased effort, discipline, or legitimacy. In their mind, assistance meant avoidance. But the numbers paint a different picture entirely. A 2021 study from the University of Zurich found that e-bike riders ride more often, ride further, and record similar cardiovascular gains to acoustic cyclists, the difference isn’t intensity, it’s consistency. And consistency has always been the real engine of fitness.
The electric motor doesn’t replace effort; it removes friction, the excuses, the barriers, the thousand tiny reasons we don’t move when we need movement most. It’s what keeps a rider going on the days when time is tight, when the motivation isn’t there, when the weather is miserable, when life is too heavy to ask any more of us. The motor isn’t a loophole. It’s a lifeline. The e-bike is not the soft option. It’s the sustainable one, the one you can rely on, day after day, year after year.
Freedom as a Biological Need
There is a moment near the end of every ride, usually when the destination is close enough to feel but not close enough to rush, when the brain quiets itself in a way nothing else seems to manage. The thoughts return, but not in the frantic, spiralling way they arrived. They come back organised, linear, workable. The edges soften. The world stops pressing.
On a ride, the mind returns to factory settings. One problem at a time. One input at a time. One sensation at a time. That rhythm, that unhurried processing, is the closest many riders ever get to therapy, even if they’ve never called it that. You don’t ride to feel better. You ride, and feeling better is the unavoidable consequence of motion.
