Riding for Focus Scott Nydam

Ridingfor Focus

In mid-March, Chris Huizinga, the High School Counselor at Rehoboth Christian School and coowner of the Water Store, filled-out the admin side of The Specialized Foundation’s Riding for Focus Grant application and passed it on to me. Somewhere amid spring break, while road-tripping with the kids with bikes on the car, I managed to fill out the remaining questions and sent it in.

In early April, we were informed we made the first cut, we were then asked to whip-out a not-so-fancy three minute video highlighting the students, administration, teachers, and landscape surrounding Rehoboth.

On May 15th, we were informed Rehoboth received the grant, making it the first RFF program to land in New Mexico. This summer we’ll be receiving 20+ bikes, a maintenance kit, and a turn-key school curriculum to provide 6th thru 9th grade students the opportunity to have cycling become an effective method to improve attention and focus, especially for those students who need it, and all the while instilling a lifelong passion for cycling. Here’s a little story about how this got started and how it hits home for me and countless others, including Founder and CEO of Specialized, Mike Sinyard.

By Scott Nydam

My kids’ laughter and screaming echoed through the rooms. That’s when I saw Dr. Mason’s call coming in. Quickly I pulled out the iPad, sat the boys down, and threw it in their laps.

“Hello, Dr. Mason,” I said.

“Scott, is this a good time?”

“As good as any!” I replied.

After my short testimony, Dr. Mason began offering an understanding I’ll never forget, and and for which I will forever be grateful.

“The executive function of the brain,” Dr. Mason went on to explain “is the just-do-it brain. It sees what’s important, what needs to be done, and just does it. That is, in the case for normal brains…for someone with ADD or ADHD, it’s different,” he continued.

In my last semester of high school (I don’t recall whose idea it was), they pulled me in to the guidance counselor’s office for testing. I remember two things from the experience: one, they confirmed that I had ADD, and two, I performed extraordinarily well in one section of the test, reciting back to the test administrator a sequence of increasingly large numbers as she read them to me. Upon reaching my cap, somewhere over 20 numerals long, I remember opening my eyes, and for the first time, seeing a positive and surprised look on her face.

“How’d you do that?” she asked. “Well, I would just picture an NFL player,” I said, “their jersey number, for each two numbers you would say.”

I think I remember correctly her staring back at me aghast.

I grew up collecting NFL football player cards, riding my BMX bike down to Bill’s Sport Collectibles on Broadway in Old South Denver any time I had the money. I loved it. I had shelves full of cards; 3-ring binders filled with pages of iconic figures. I would visit the cards daily like visiting a shrine, paying recognition.

That’s the thing about ADD or ADHD, sometimes people with it have the ability to accomplish, and/or even overachieve. This sometimes confuses the diagnosis, for those outside the situation, and often for those experiencing it. My oldest brother was never the smartest or best student, but now he is one of the nations few transplant surgeons. He suffers from ADD worse than I do.

“You see,” Dr. Mason continued, “for people with normal brains, the executive function is like a warm-blooded animal. It’s able to modulate and keep temperature and get things done. For people with ADD or ADHD, this just simply does not work the same. People with ADD or ADHD need to rely on a backup system to just-do-it, which is the emotional brain; that needs to get charged in order to just-do-it; it’s more like a cold-blooded animal that needs some time to sit on a rock in the sun to get to temperature before its ever able to just-do-it.”

In the March edition of the Journey, to which I contributed (before talking with Dr. Mason), I wrote:

“Coming from someone who ‘struggled’ in school, who squeaked by in college, and didn’t know what he was going to do with his life, gross muscular activity became the venue where I was able to validate and believe in myself.”

What I was trying to say there, or to say more simply, when I was riding my bike or trekking through the mountains, that’s when I felt good. And you always hear people say that. They go exercise, and especially after exercising repetitively for a good while, they say they

feel good, just as they would sitting on a beach taking some vacation—as if exercise or bodily movement was some sort of unexpected pleasure in life that only a few should expect the chance to partake. As my life became more and more based around gross muscular activity, I began to add to and kind of contend with that notion. I would say, “It’s not that you feel good; it’s that it’s the way you’re supposed to feel.” It’s not like going to the ice cream store. You should be able to expect to feel this sort of good on a daily basis, even if it means simply going for a brisk walk with your coffee before sunrise.

“It’s ‘default meditation,’” I would say. “You do it (meditate) no matter what.”

“When you go out for a ride, you have about ten or twelve things you’re worried about. When you finish your ride, you know the four things you need to do.”

All of these things now have great significance when re-acknowledging my ADD and discovering The Specialized Foundation. Mike Sinyard, Founder and CEO of Specialized, along with his son Anthony, have a shared experience of the effects that ADHD has on life. Mikes says, “[his] inability to stay focused and being easily-distracted were some things I had grown to just accept as ‘normal.’” After returning from rides over and over, and noticing that a lot of those symptoms seem to dissipate, and also seeing the same positive benefits that riding had for his son, Mike decided to create The Specialized Foundation and explore whether or not there was some science behind what he was experiencing. Soon a partnership with the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research (CIBSR), Stanford University School of Medicine, and The Specialized Foundation was born.

Specialized Bicycle Components clearly states that it is a company with products “made for riders by riders.”

We are riders—that fact has guided our every decision since 1974. When quality tires weren’t around, we strove to make the best. When people wanted to ride cruisers in the dirt, we made the first production mountain bike. When roadies wanted to go faster, we doubled-down on carbon and built our own wind tunnel. And when we saw kids struggling to focus in school, we started The Specialized Foundation to help them through cycling.

The creation of The Specialized Foundation and the opportunity it provides schools and communities through the Riding for Focus Grant is quite simply, once again, Specialized - taking things to another level.

For more information on the program, go to www.specializedfoundation.org/ridingforfocus/

If you’d like to check out Specialized bikes, go see Todd at Sports World here in Gallup at 1500 S. Second St.