‘Bull riding is a drug’: rodeo embraces its sports science era – in pictures | Sport
Spurred by cultural phenomena like the hit series Yellowstone and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album and tour, rodeo and all things western are experiencing a cultural resurgence. Attendance, broadcasting and streaming have reached unprecedented heights. Prize money too, which attracts more and more young athletes looking for a chance to make a name for themselves.
But even though rodeo is booming, athlete development remains stale.
“The sport of rodeo is decades behind.” said Doug Champion, 36, founder of Optimal Performance Academy, a new rodeo school that is working to modernize athlete development in a sport whose frontier roots and culture of rugged individualism have been slow to embrace modern sports science. “It’s always been the ‘rodeo cowboy,’ we’re just now moving into the ‘rodeo athlete’ chapter.
Historically, there has been very little money to support anyone outside of rodeo’s top athletes, who have fostered a culture valuing tradition and tenacity, instead of exploring innovation in their sport.
“You feel like you’re an outlaw, a renegade and an individualist,” said Cody Custer, now 60, winner of the 1992 PRCA World Championship and a teacher at the workshop. “I’m just going to plug in and do my own thing and win this thing, instead of going into organizing, team sports, etc.”
Rodeo athletes traditionally come from ranching and farming families, who have historically been medically underserved. These communities, Champion said, rarely went to the doctor and prided themselves on simply “acting like a cowboy” despite injuries or health problems. Young riders from these communities did not expect or receive much medical or performance-oriented care.
“It was just a different way of thinking, no preparation, no taking care of your body, and if you’re injured, sick or tired, it doesn’t matter because being a cowboy is being tough,” Champion said.
Rodeo athletes are largely independents, traveling at their own expense to competitions, hoping to secure a high enough spot to fund their next trip and entry fees. The vast majority of rodeo athletes still have day jobs.
“Riding bulls is a drug. It’s the most addictive thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” said Gabe Martin, 22, of Felton, Delaware, who works maintaining public and residential ponds during the week and rides the bull riding trails on the weekends. “It has engulfed my life and it seems I just can’t get away from it.”
Optimal Performance Academy attracts young athletes from across the country to its week-long training camps. The workshops are a mix of theory and practice. The theory includes advice on nutrition, attracting sponsors through social media, personal finance lessons, as well as goal setting and visualization. The hands-on portion of the workshop includes performance testing, rodeo-specific training, bucking machine training, and two days of live bull riding.
For its seventh workshop in Decanter, Texas, Champion tapped an Australian pioneer of VALD, a type of performance testing that uses force plates, dynamometers, motion capture, and eye and vestibular tests to measure a wide range of key parameters. The idea is to understand each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, then create personalized training programs based on that data.
These tests are ubiquitous in most elite professional and college sports, but this is the first time they have been used for amateur bull riders.
“The most important thing we’ve realized is that nothing in rodeo happens physically that is normal or natural to the body. In no way will getting in shape through regular exercise or everyday life improve your ability to perform in the arena,” Champion said.
Champion, who was a promising young runner himself, broke his back in 2010 falling from a bronco. His long, painful road to recovery led him to realize how much more rodeo athletes could do to increase their strength and technique while riding, and build their resilience to bounce back from injuries.
“It was just about riding as many horses as possible, because if you ride more, you’ll realize it sooner,” Champion said. “Well, I rode 300 horses and smacked my dick into the dirt every time and didn’t learn anything.”
Champion’s hope is to shorten training time for young riders trying to break into the professional circuits, giving them more healthy years to compete and earn a living. Rodeo is notoriously brutal on the body, with most riders forced to retire due to injuries in their late 20s or early 30s.
“It’s just a totally different approach to the trial by fire that’s always been the way you learn rodeo,” Champion said.
