A Cyclist’s Dignity Lives in the Details — and Culture Is Born When Those Details Spread Through the Community.

There are cyclists who simply feel good to ride with. Their effort is well-managed, their judgment is sharp, and you feel safe in their wheel.
It isn’t about speed or looks. It isn’t about exaggerated hand signals or quoting traffic laws either.

It comes down to how they carry themselves in a group — their shosa, their bearing on the bike. And that’s something you can’t learn from a book, an online article, or a classroom. It’s absorbed slowly, by riding alongside others and watching their backs, within a community.

Over the past decade, the connections between cyclists in Japan have shifted from being shop-centered to being SNS-centered. With that shift, the unspoken codes of riding have become harder to pass down. “Riding safely” in particular has slipped, and we’ve seen distortions emerge — crashes turned into entertainment, videos held up for endless public bashing. Within that current, the local cycling culture that once said “this is how it looks cool to ride” has grown thin.

So how does the LOVE CYCLIST community think about all this? Together with three riders from a racing background, we sat down to talk about where we are now, and where we go from here.

Roundtable members

Ryuji (@ryuji_ride) Based in Ehime. 16 years on sports bikes. POC ambassador. A former competitive racer with podium finishes to his name. His background as a cycling magazine editor and at a cyclewear brand also gives him an insider’s view of the industry.	Riku (@rikuchan.jp) Based in Kanagawa. A former road racer, now active mainly in the top category of cyclocross. He embodies a riding style that balances competition with aesthetic, and as he puts it, wants to be “one of those guys who’s both stylish and fast.”
Yokoya (@yokoyan.jp) Based in Chiba. In 2024 he raced with a Yamanashi-based team in his second J Pro Tour season, starting in top-tier races including the Japan Cup. He also runs Hentai Cyclo Club, a cycling community centered on cyclocross racing.

Moderator

Tats Shimizu (@tats_Love Cyclistclist) Based in Tokyo. Editor-in-chief and photographer. Maintains wide-ranging relationships with international brands and uses the media to propose a variety of riding styles. Also shoots extensively for cycling brands at home and abroad. Main bikes: Standert (road) and Factor (gravel).

Why talk about “shosa” now

——— The reason I wanted to sit down with these three and talk about shosa is simple: riding with them feels good. There’s a sense of safety when I’m behind them, the effort feels dialed-in, and the lines they choose feel right.
What the three of them share is a racing background — and not hillclimb, but road racing. Why does the shosa of racers feel so good to ride with? If we trace where their bearing comes from, maybe we can show non-competitive cyclists a path to better riding too. That’s the premise of this conversation.

← Yokoya, Ryuji, Riku (from racing) | Tats (non-racer) →

Riku: Shosa is genuinely hard to put into words. Up until now, when it comes to road bike know-how, you can find plenty of information on going fast, but the part about “riding well in relation to those around you” has barely been discussed.
But what we picked up through training rides and races is exactly that: how to ride in a group without being a hazard to anyone else. That carries over naturally when we ride with everyone in a casual setting too.

Yokoya: I built my riding through training rides too. When I was deep in the shop community in Chiba, I just watched the strong riders relentlessly and copied them. Chiba has loads of training rides, so you naturally end up mixing with top-level guys.
There were sessions where the air was like “if you take so-and-so down, you’re seriously in trouble.” That’s when I learned what it actually means to race in the elite category — that before your legs, what comes first is riding safely in the group.

Ryuji: When I was deep into racing as a student I lived in Nagoya, and went to a shop training ride every week. It was an environment with riders from Inarme Shinano-Yamagata who are still well-known today, and because I was young, getting yelled at during rides was normal. “Don’t drift off your line.” “Don’t cut inside.” I had all of it drilled into me. Honestly, hating being yelled at was a big part of why I forced myself to learn that bearing. Otherwise you didn’t survive in the bunch.

——— That environment has shrunk now. Shop-based training rides have clearly thinned out, and communities have shifted to SNS. In terms of diversity that’s maybe a good thing, but the culture that transmits shosa has been lost, so the right way to ride is harder to pass on. As a result, the cycling culture of “inheriting a style, shosa and all” feels, in Japan, like it’s been broken.

Ryuji: Speed is something you can complete on your own now. You raise your FTP on Zwift, you get info online. But the bearing required to ride with others isn’t anywhere in that package.

——— Which is exactly why thinking about and practicing shosa matters for cyclists of this era. Love Cyclist itself is a media-born community, with different origins from a training-ride scene, but luckily we have plenty of members who race. If we can learn shosa from them, the community takes a better shape.

The bearing that gives a cyclist dignity

——— So what kinds of shosa have the three of you actually built through racing?

Ryuji: Cornering, for one — you get told over and over to hold your line. Cutting inside* in a bunch is basically a no-go (*deliberately diving off your line at an angle toward the inside of the corner). There is a tactic of cutting inside on purpose, then drilling it out of the corner to wear down the riders behind you, but if you do that mindlessly, somebody crashes. So you can usually read someone’s level from how they corner ahead of you.
The same applies on the road. The default is holding your line. If you need to move off it for a parked car or something, you check around you first, and signal if needed. Surprisingly often, people don’t.

Brake timing is another one. In a sketchy situation, you have to decide in a fraction of a second whether it’s safer to brake or to thread a gap. At speed, that kind of split-second judgment becomes essential, and racing sharpens that sense fast. Bad riders just grab the brakes and trigger pile-ups.

Riku: Inside the bunch, you sometimes ride so close you’re literally touching shoulders. Young racers are hot-blooded — leave a gap and they’re in it instantly. So you close the space, hold your line, and that’s part of the bearing too.
Once you’re used to riding like that, you naturally keep a consistent gap from others on any ride, and you stay relaxed even when the distance is tight.

Yokoya: Race enough and a wide field of vision becomes automatic. In a bunch of around 100 riders, the speed on the left side of the road can be different from the right. You watch the waves on both sides, predict where you can slot in, where the pace will change. Without that, you can’t take the best position.
Same with breaks forming — you can’t tell who attacked just by looking ahead. You have to read the whole flow. Racing is riding while sensing the things you can’t directly see. And as the level goes up, your field of vision has to widen further or you can’t keep up.

Ryuji: That sense of vision really only builds if you keep racing. I was away from racing for a while because of family circumstances, and two years ago I went back to Tour de Okinawa and the Niseko Classic. In the middle of the race I just couldn’t read what was happening in the bunch anymore. I found out afterwards that the winning move had already gone, and I hadn’t even noticed it until halfway through. That scared me.
When you step away from racing, it’s not just your legs that fade — your senses do too. If you want to be in the mix again, you have to rebuild that perception.

——— Even so, riding with you feels safe, Ryuji, so that base layer of vision is clearly still there. I sense the same thing watching Riku and Yokoya from behind — like they have everyone’s movements mapped in their heads.

Riku: The shosa of group riding is learned under other people’s eyes — you pick it up to be accepted by the riders around you. Only once you have it can you actually race. And once it becomes second nature, you start to understand whoever you’re riding with too.

Yokoya: That awareness of the whole flow stays with you on every ride. When I’m on the front, my eyes are obviously forward, but my attention is always on the entire group behind me.

Riku: Like looking down from a drone, right?

Yokoya: Exactly. So, for example, if there’s a traffic light up ahead and it looks like it’ll change before we reach it at this speed, I look at how the group is strung out and decide whether to push or ease up.
Pacing too — I look at the members on the ride and the course, gauge what’s just about hangable for everyone, and tune the intensity. If there are members itching to drill it, I’ll pick a place to attack where the group won’t get fractured.

Riku: To put it in another way, I think of it like the driver who’s good in highway traffic.
They match the cars around them, sit in the right lane at the right distance, and instead of jamming the brakes, they adjust position with a delicate on-and-off of the throttle. That kind of driving actually eases congestion and helps everything flow.
People who can do that are usually the ones who carry the right awareness in a cycling bunch too.

——— Listening to this, shosa isn’t really a technique — it’s something coupled with the ability to read the rhythm and intent of the group. Awareness directed outward, not only inward. That’s why it feels good in someone’s wheel, and why the flow stays smooth.

Yokoya: That’s the essence, I think. Not how you move, but how you feel the whole. Just being conscious of the whole already changes the way you ride. The sharpness of that perception becomes your shosa. And the accumulation of that attitude is what eventually connects to something you might call a cyclist’s “dignity.”

Know that crashing is a disgrace

The influence of indoor training

——— There are several reasons shosa is being lost in the current cycling scene. One is the influence of indoor training, including Zwift. I shoot with a wide range of riders for work, and honestly, the more indoor-heavy someone is, the more I notice a slight precariousness in their basic bike handling.

Ryuji: Indoor training has an enormous impact. Even at WorldTour level, crashes are up. There was even a former Zwift world champion who crashed just taking a bottle from the team car.
Around me, I know someone who used indoor training to push their FTP to Mt. Fuji Hillclimb Gold level, and for a while was reporting a crash basically every month. The downsides of indoor are visibly emerging.

Riku: Cycling is, at its core, a real-world sport. Tools like Zwift took off as a substitute when COVID kept us off the roads, and lately the weather is often brutal for outdoor riding. But indoor riding is at best a substitute for real riding — it doesn’t replace the experience of actually being out there. Mathieu and Wout are as good as they are because of their offroad mileage.

Ryuji: And yet, there are cases of riders doing nothing but Zwift every night and then suddenly lining up at a race. The result is forced inside cuts and dangerous moves that ignore what the bunch is doing. Today’s races have an intensity that assumes you’re doing efficient Zwift-style training, so to be in the mix you absolutely need it. But the feel of group riding — that can only be built on the road.

Yokoya: PWR is effective for hillclimbs, but road racing doesn’t reduce to PWR.
So in JPT, I never met anyone whose main training was on Zwift.

Crashing as entertainment

——— Another factor is crashing itself. Crash reports have become an ordinary sight. Not just on everyday rides — in race situations too.

Ryuji: The trend I think is most dangerous, now that shosa isn’t being passed down, is the “entertainment-ification” of crashing.
Whether it’s road racing or a regular ride, safety comes before everything — everyone knows that. Which is to say: not crashing.

——— But now it’s been turned into content to be consumed.

Ryuji: The whole point of refining shosa is to ride safely, so crashing is, to me, the most embarrassing thing you can do. Even riders who’ve raced JPT post their crashes on social media, but that’s like broadcasting your own dark history… It’s a question of awareness around safety. It shouldn’t be something we shrug at and laugh about.

Riku: For what it’s worth, cyclocross is a different culture — falling is a given. Mathieu falls. Wout falls. But the moment you’re on the road, the priority becomes how not to fall.

Ryuji: My original take on this comes from growing up without much money — crashing meant a hit to the wallet, which is its own kind of motivation. But money aside, crashing can injure someone else on the ride with you, and in the worst case, cost a life.

——— It would be great if “crashing is a disgrace” could be the starting line, even in this era. Ideally, “the real beauty is in not crashing” would be shared as a piece of cycling culture.

Yokoya: And on top of that, you widen your vision and try to expand the “marginal gains” of safety — the margin within which you can still push. That’s what matters in practice.

Riku: I’d love to ride with the spirit of the construction site greeting: “stay safe out there.”

——— One last big issue: the environment where someone calls you out on dangerous riding — the kind we all threw ourselves into via training rides — has thinned out. And honestly, in the Love Cyclist community too, there have probably been moments where I or someone else was riding in a way that wasn’t entirely safe, and we’ve barely ever said anything to each other about it. We hadn’t built an environment where it was easy to. I’m sure the three of you, with racing backgrounds, were seeing all kinds of things.

Yokoya: Yeah. But bringing too much of a competitive sensibility into a general community feels wrong, and if you tell someone what they didn’t ask for, you end up out of place. That’s the tricky part…

Riku: I always had this hesitation of, “am I really allowed to say something?” Having watched riders far above me in both ability and bearing through training rides and races, I wondered if I was really in any position to be cautioning or advising people.
Also, the Love Cyclist community gives off this impression of people who want to ride stylishly, not in a tense atmosphere. So I felt that bringing race-grade strictness into that wasn’t quite right either.

——— Ah… maybe I gave the wrong impression there. The “ride stylishly” part is true, but stylish doesn’t mean styling up the kit and gear. When we ride together, the base is enjoying the riding itself, safely and smartly. The shosa that everyone’s back conveys to the rider behind — that’s what I think style is. Kit and gear are one element of it, but if we’re talking style, the bearing matters more.

Ryuji: My era was all shouting. Today it can be conveyed in a much milder way, right?

——— Exactly. So I’d actually like you all to say more. It’s an adult community built on trust — nobody’s going to take offense.

Riku: I’m honestly surprised we’re having this conversation at Love Cyclist.

Yokoya: But this kind of intersection between competition and lifestyle cultures is important.

A world you admire and imitate

——— Let’s close on what each of us can actually put into practice. How can a cyclist who’s never been through that kind of training-ride environment translate today’s conversation into their own riding?

Riku: What I want to say most is: watch people. Shosa isn’t something you absorb from explanations — you watch someone good, imitate them, and bit by bit it becomes yours.
Having a role model — “I want to ride like that” — is the shortest path to building bearing.

——— All three of you have that in common: you learned by riding with people who were good.

Riku: Right. Even something like dancing on the pedals — it all starts with imitation.
You watch a bunch of riders dance and notice, “this one’s resting in this posture,” “this one’s loading the legs in this form.” Then you try the same thing. A resting dance puts the load on the shoulders; a driving dance puts it on the legs. Fast riders are good at those movements, so you break them down piece by piece.

Yokoya: Dancing is genuinely hard to verbalize. If you could fully put it into words, cycling magazines wouldn’t need to keep running “dancing features” over and over. In reality, no matter how much you read, you have to try it, imitate it, fail at it. Picking someone and saying “let me copy this rider’s dance” and trying again and again is the fastest way.

Riku: For example, if you actually try to copy Yukiya Arashiro’s dance, you realize he’s holding it together with every muscle he has.

Yokoya: His impressions of other riders are almost mean (laughs). But just realizing “oh, he’s using his whole body to maintain that form” already makes watching people worthwhile.

Ryuji: The reason I got into racing in the first place was thinking Contador’s dance looked unbelievably cool. I watched it and wondered, “how do I move like that?” — analyzing where he put his power, when he shifted his weight — and eventually I could roughly copy it.
And then a strange thing happens. Dancing becomes easier. You feel, “ah, the right form is actually the relaxed one.”

——— “Break down a movement you find cool and imitate it relentlessly” — that’s a very actionable method.

Riku: It is. Pogačar’s dance, frankly, isn’t a “classically cool” form, but it’s coherent on its own terms. You watch a lot of riders, pick the parts of each you like, and blend them in yourself. Through that process, you end up with a style of your own.

Yokoya: Shosa takes shape like that — gradually becoming “your own form.” You don’t aim for originality from day one; you imitate someone properly first, then fine-tune for your build and your strengths.

——— And that applies beyond dancing — brake timing, choosing lines through corners, positioning in the bunch. If “this person’s wheel is easy to ride,” then where they look, when they stop pedaling, how they manage the gap — all of it becomes material to observe. To be clear, this isn’t about latching onto a stranger’s wheel; the premise is observation within the permitted relationships of your community.

Riku: Going back to the highway analogy — the driver who’s good at the throttle and at managing gaps, that’s the cyclist who can ride without disturbing the flow of the bunch. Behind them, there’s no stress.
Find someone like that among the riders you go out with. Watch their bearing closely. Imitate it. Your own riding will change.

Ryuji: What the cyclists of the next era need, I think, is the attitude of observe, admire, imitate.
Not just reading information, but finding someone real in the field that you want to ride like. That’s the best way to improve, and the shortest route to acquiring shosa.

——— I think that’s also where the Love Cyclist community is headed. A place where the shosa of those with racing experience can be observed and imitated by other members. A gathering of adults who seriously think about “how do we ride coolly, without crashing?”

Yokoya: Kit and gear are important too, but ultimately, I hope to see more people whose shosa is cool. That’s what shapes the atmosphere and culture of the whole community.

Riku: A role model exists, you see their back, you admire them, you imitate them. A community where shosa is passed on like that is a great thing. That’s the kind of place I’d want to be in too.

——— Same here. A cyclist’s dignity lives in their bearing, and bearing only grows inside a community.
At Love Cyclist, through future rides and shoots, I want to keep multiplying the backs that make others think “I want to ride like that.” That accumulation is what will gradually shape a cycling culture fit for this era.

From the back ahead, onward

＊　＊　＊

The deeper you go into shosa, the more you arrive at something less about riding itself and more about the human territory of how cyclists relate to each other. What I felt through this conversation is that the original way a community teaches — by reading the backs of the better riders — has, over the past decade, quietly thinned out. Unlike speed or gear, shosa is grown by the environment itself. Which is why where you ride, and with whom, will only matter more from here on.
I hope this conversation becomes a prompt to reconsider how the people around you ride, and who and how you want to ride with. Even without flash, a quiet bearing that respects everyone around you — accumulated — can grow back the cultural core that’s gone missing. LOVE CYCLIST wants to keep being a place that sparks that.

member / Ryuji, Riku, & Yokoya
edit & photo / Tats (@tats_Love Cyclistclist)