What are you looking at?
When you cycle, the world around you is constantly in motion. The road seems to rush beneath you, and objects nearby move past you faster than those in the distance. This visual motion, known as optic flow, plays an important role in how cyclists regulate their effort.In this dissertation, we examined how this visual motion influences the feeling of psychological momentum — the feeling of moving toward victory — and performance. Using virtual reality, different aspects of optic flow were manipulated while participants were cycling. The results showed that exposure to fast-moving elements close to the cyclist, such as the road just in front of the wheel, lead cyclists to exert more effort and improve their performance.We also investigated whether cyclists can actively use this effect by directing their gaze toward these elements. This turned out to be less effective when the full visual field remained visible, suggesting that restricting the field of view plays a role in increasing effort.Finally, we found that the movement of opponents has a strong impact. When you approach an opponent, which you can see because its image grows larger, this strengthens the feeling of momentum. Changes over time play an important role here: accelerating approach enhances this feeling, whereas decelerating approach weakens it.These findings show that what you see while cycling directly influences both performance and psychological momentum. This opens up possibilities for smarter training methods and innovative applications, for example in virtual reality.