That's what it takes to win in rodeo -- eight seconds on a tough bull and a willingness to hurt -- and that's why they climb that dirt road in their muddy pickups. They come to see a man named Gary Leffew. They come because they believe he can help them get those eight seconds.

In 1970 Leffew was the best in the world at staying on a bull. Now he teaches bull riding at his ranch, a dusty collection of outbuildings and sore cowboys near the Los Padres National Forest. He teaches that and more.

Leffew believes the key to riding a bull well is to ride him first in your head. His approach is a cerebral and -- to many cowboys -- surprising mix of old broken-bone guts and new age, good-thinking positivity. Thus his students learn to ride bulls, in part, by not riding bulls. Instead they spend hours on carpet-covered barrels, perfecting balance and position while Leffew and son Brett correct their technique. Sometimes they hike up the windy and dung-splattered foothills to meditate and to mentally rehearse great rides.

Yes, they do ride real bulls, but sparingly. It's too dangerous to do too often, even for easy-healing young men. And besides, they're not all men and they're not all that young.

The money

Stay on a bull for eight seconds at a local rodeo and you might collect a nice belt buckle or a check for $2000, if the bull does his job and gives you a hard enough time. But it can get better. With bull riding so popular now, top riders make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, not counting endorsements. That's why people pay $2,500 for Leffew's 30-day boot camp, which includes room in the bunkhouse and a chair at his kitchen table, where lunch might be (retired) bull burgers. These people, they see a bull, they smell money. But there's more to it: Rumor has it that a person can find himself, or herself, riding bulls. The funny part is that no matter what brings them to Leffew, they usually find something different than what they expected.

Belts, buckles and swagger

They're dressed like cowboys but they're not acting like cowboys, sitting cross-legged on a plateau, trying to catch their breath after a predawn hike up a steep foothill.

"OK," says Anna Mclean, a mental-skills trainer from Australia, "I just want you to empty your minds." This is the time for meditation, which Leffew considers an important part of sports, and life. Soon it's time to visualize a ride. The trick is to see it as they're on the bull, not as if they're watching themselves -- paying the entry fee, putting on the chaps, stretching, adjusting their flak jackets. "What do you smell?" asks Mclean. "Can you smell the bulls? What do you hear? The crowd? Feel the rope in your hands, see the chute gate open. Experience the perfect bull ride. Throw your hat in the air. Hear the cheering, feel good about yourself."

Now it's for real

Camp will be over in a few days. It's time to turn it up. Everybody feels it. The bull fighters -- they used to be called clowns, but what they do is more serious than funny -- take their positions in the arena and stop smiling, despite the happy buzz of impending danger. The cowboy working the gate locks eyes with the rider, who waits on the bull's back. Leffew is ready with the video camera, the Van Halen CD in the arena's nuclear-powered sound system is driving the adrenalin and the bull is starting to act up, thrashing around in the chute, threatening to crush the rider's legs against the boards, almost getting his front legs over the gate. It's time to go. In a case like this not riding can be as dangerous as riding.

The rider is Justin Cornwell, 23, a blacksmith from Ohio. He nods. The gate swings. It's not a bull ride, it's one of those '50s-era rocket launches gone bad, the kind that turned into huge, pinwheeling firecrackers. But Cornwell picks up the rhythm fine, free hand tomahawking the air, just like on the barrel. Riders say that if a bull would just buck and run straight for eight seconds, it wouldn't be so bad. When bulls spin it's harder, and Cornwell's rocket spins from the git-go, and now, maybe six seconds in, the bull stops, just like that, and throws his head down and thrusts his hind end upward, higher, higher, and with his body now almost vertical, physics has left Cornwell no options. He's flying. He comes down hard, vertical, right on his head, which makes some people think about last March, when a popular pro rider left an arena paralyzed from the chest down. But Cornwell gets up quick and collects his hat, not giving the bull a chance to hook him into the air or stomp him or kick him into another state. Climbing over the boards, he gives the bull a quick hard look that says: "You and me Ń we ainŐt done yet."

Leffew smiles. They're getting it. They're riding hard, living right and learning one of the universal truths: Eight seconds can be a long time. Long enough to live, long enough to die, long enough to hope.
Life Magazine (c) 1999