cycling technique

zander said:

hello there, i was wondering about cycling technique, in relation to the size of gears.

i don't know about everyone else, i use my arms as oposed to my legs, using my arms basiclly halves the effort needed for my legs.

i don't know, what is a good tehnique for cycling a road bike competitively?

What exactly are you trying to say here? Are you driving big gears and pulling hard on the bars to turn them over? If so you're probably over geared for the terrain. The fastest cyclists in world as well as folks who ride long tours manage those speeds and distances by riding fairly fast cadences typically in the 80-100 rpm range. Tightening up the upper body and pulling on the bars doesn't help you go faster and it's not all that good an idea from a safety and bike handling standpoint. You should be riding with a relaxed upper body and not pulling hard on the bars except during out of the saddle climbing and sprints.

Along with OP's earlier post on pushing 61 chainring, this is starting to sound like a troll. 😕

sogood said:

Along with OP's earlier post on pushing 61 chainring, this is starting to sound like a troll. 😕

Ahh, missed the other posts, yep a 61 is one heck of a buzz saw down there......

I use my arms when climbing to keep my body centered because of the dynamic torque factors created on steep climbs but the rest of the time they keep my nose from hitting the drop bars.

Pushing the monster size chainrings you mentioned are just asking to hurt yourself. its not necesary and very few serious riders do it. Stick to a standard 53/39 in front and work on cadence a bit. The 53 is still a solid gear to push and you can power around on that, but bigger isnt necesary.

jhuskey said:

I use my arms when climbing to keep my body centered because of the dynamic torque factors created on steep climbs but the rest of the time they keep my nose from hitting the drop bars.

I do as well and it seems to help. Are you using the bottom bars as well when you do this or the brake hoods?

Bolter03 said:

I do as well and it seems to help. Are you using the bottom bars as well when you do this or the brake hoods?

When climbing I use the center of ther bar with my hands spaced at a comfortable position . This isolates any rocking motion to a more centered area so the bike doesn't rock so much.

Quoted post said:

Along with OP's earlier post on pushing 61 chainring, this is starting to sound like a troll. 😕

no i'm genuinely asking for advice on my technique. what the other members are saying about pulling on the handlebars when going uphill was what i was referring to when i said i pulled on the bars, and all i was looking for was some advice on what i could improve on.

thanks for the people who didn't think i was trolling...

zander said:

no i'm genuinely asking for advice on my technique. what the other members are saying about pulling on the handlebars when going uphill was what i was referring to when i said i pulled on the bars, and all i was looking for was some advice on what i could improve on.

thanks for the people who didn't think i was trolling...

I wish you weren't trolling.

But given the type of questions you asked and the odd 61 chainring you used, there's just some incompatibility. It's freakishly rare for someone to spec a road bike with 61 chainring yet don't really understand a lot of the basics of cycling. As for garlic on ligament repair, well, that'll really smoke all the fibroblasts.

Good luck on your improvements.

Quoted post said:

It's freakishly rare for someone to spec a road bike with 61 chainring yet don't really understand a lot of the basics of cycling.

i was curious as to why even though 53 is standard issue on nearly all road bikes, why professionals wouldn't raise the gearing a little bit, then i found out that you could buy up to a 62 chainring, so i thought i'd try it, but maybe to avoid being freakishly rare, i should've instead, reached for a book on the basics of cycling...

sorry, i don't mean to be so sarcastic. another thing that seems to confuse me is that there seems to be this universal opinion that anything above a 53 is completely ridiculous and weird, but as far as i know nobody that replied to any of my topics seemed to mention even trying a chainring over 53... weird.

Quoted post said:

to spec a road bike with 61 chainring

i think you might have got the wrong end of the stick i didn't buy the chainring with the bike. and i didn't start cycling yesterday, i've been cycling since i was 8, in and around glasgow city centre which is 4 miles from my home, i then proceeded to cycle to; stirling, clydebank, bellahouston, cardonald, basically the whole of glasgow on a bike. it was a piece of [censored] mountain bike actually. only people in glasgow will understand the places but i used to cycle everywhere, in fact i cycled so much that when my body fat was analysed at 18, i was found to have only 4.1% body fat, which was checked 3 times, so it was correct. i think he said it was slightly better than an olympian athlete, thats probably alot of [censored], but i was really fit.

sorry for the whole long story, but just so you don't think i'm a crazy nut who walked into a bike shop thinking he'd be a big man and go ten better than everyone else.

my first road bike was a saracen tour for £300, didn't even have sti shifters, had to settle for downtube shifters and it came with a 53 chainring. i used it for 6 months and went up to a 55, then a 58, and then a 61, so i did cycle everything before the 61, i'm not stupid enough to jump from a 53 to a 61 chainring.

well i think thats everyhting, more than everything i think...

i just wanted to improve my technique, diet and knowledge. due to the larger rings, diet and technique are even more relevant to my riding.

i hope thats answered all of your curiosities. thanks for the help.

edit: garlic, smoking the fibroblasts? might be a stupid question but is that physiotherapist terminology? i just thought it improved circulation, hence improved recovery.

zander said:

... nobody that replied to any of my topics seemed to mention even trying a chainring over 53... weird....

I ride a 55 big ring on my time trial bike and it's huge for anything other than tailwinds and descents. Anyone that's ridden much track and had to pay attention to gearing knows a 53:12 or 53:11 is a massive gear that can easily be spun to over 40 mph at reasonable cadences of 115 to 105 rpm. The only good reason to go to bigger chainrings is to be able to use a middle cog with it's larger chain wrap and better chain line. A 61 tooth chainring is absolutely massive when paired with a 12 or 11 tooth cog in the rear.

Riding a 61:11 for instance works out to 149 gear inches for old schoolers and trackies or 39.2 feet(~11.9 meters) of rollout for every revolution of the cranks. And if you go to a big chainring like that you're limited to what you can use for an inner ring since front and rear derailleurs have limits in terms of differences in number of teeth and how much slack chain they'll take up. So if you go with a 61 in the front you'll probably have to go with something like a 47 tooth small ring which would be a real problem if you ride much in the hills. Again you could get away with it on a dedicated time trial bike but it's not very versatile for general road riding.

Sure really big chainrings have some specialty uses like flat time trialing or derny racing but the racing community has had over a hundred years to play with this stuff and there are some good reasons that most road bikes don't ship with ultra large rings. With the advent of commonly available 12 and 11 tooth rear cogs there's really no reason for really big rings on general road racing bikes. Remember it's all about gear ratios, your legs don't care(beyond small mechanical efficiency differences) whether you ride a 53:12 or a 61:14 they're roughly the same gear.

-Dave

Hey Dave did shifting get noticably slower with the 55t? Do you think my Sora front derailer could handle a 53 or 54t? I was considering changing my steel 52t when I need to raise the intensity on my KK just a bit this winter.

daveryanwyoming said:

I ride a 55 big ring on my time trial bike and it's huge for anything other than tailwinds and descents. Anyone that's ridden much track and had to pay attention to gearing knows a 53:12 or 53:11 is a massive gear that can easily be spun to over 40 mph at reasonable cadences of 115 to 105 rpm. The only good reason to go to bigger chainrings is to be able to use a middle cog with it's larger chain wrap and better chain line. A 61 tooth chainring is absolutely massive when paired with a 12 or 11 tooth cog in the rear.

Riding a 61:11 for instance works out to 149 gear inches for old schoolers and trackies or 39.2 feet(~11.9 meters) of rollout for every revolution of the cranks. And if you go to a big chainring like that you're limited to what you can use for an inner ring since front and rear derailleurs have limits in terms of differences in number of teeth and how much slack chain they'll take up. So if you go with a 61 in the front you'll probably have to go with something like a 47 tooth small ring which would be a real problem if you ride much in the hills. Again you could get away with it on a dedicated time trial bike but it's not very versatile for general road riding.

Sure really big chainrings have some specialty uses like flat time trialing or derny racing but the racing community has had over a hundred years to play with this stuff and there are some good reasons that most road bikes don't ship with ultra large rings. With the advent of commonly available 12 and 11 tooth rear cogs there's really no reason for really big rings on general road racing bikes. Remember it's all about gear ratios, your legs don't care(beyond small mechanical efficiency differences) whether you ride a 53:12 or a 61:14 they're roughly the same gear.

-Dave

wiredued said:

Hey Dave did shifting get noticably slower with the 55t? Do you think my Sora front derailer could handle a 53 or 54t? I was considering changing my steel 52t when I need to raise the intensity on my KK just a bit this winter.

I've got my 55 paired up with a 44 tooth inner ring and they seem to shift pretty well. But this is on my TT bike with bar end shifters, not STI shifters so it's a different feel and I can't really compare to my road bike. I expect your Sora derailleur can handle 53 teeth just fine and maybe 54 teeth, but wouldn't it be easier and maybe even less expensive to get a rear cluster with a smaller top cog? I never geared out on my KK with a 53:12, but I also don't use it for sprinting since the slipping and jerky feel of sprinting on a trainer drives me crazy.

-Dave

wiredued said:

I was considering changing my steel 52t when I need to raise the intensity on my KK just a bit this winter.

Spinning out the 52x12 on your KK already? That's some big improvement. 😉

zander said:

...using my arms basiclly halves the effort needed for my legs.

No it doesn't, but it does basically halve the bloodflow available to your legs. That's bad for performance cycling.

As has been mentioned, most experienced cyclists have drifted toward gear-cadence combinations which allow them to travel up all but the steepest hills without being forced out of the saddle or into using their arms to supplement the weight of their body on the pedals.

Unless you're riding a single-speed bike, gearing adjustments are better made with rear cassette selections than different chainrings.

Edit: jeez... just saw your other posts about the knee pain/injury. Take the advice you've received multiple times now and look into some more conventional gearing.

Thanks Dave I was thinking of changing more for my 3x20s that I do in the 52x19 combo right now the next cog is 17 kind of a big jump. I could switch the 40t middle ring with a 38t that I have but I like the 40t for outdoors and don't like shifting chain rings on the KK. I always forget to go back to the 52 for out of saddle 52x11 stretch at low L6 for a minute. The custom cassette I have now is 11,13,15,17,19,21,23,26 another alternative I might try is a custom 11,12,14,16,18,20,22,25.

daveryanwyoming said:

I've got my 55 paired up with a 44 tooth inner ring and they seem to shift pretty well. But this is on my TT bike with bar end shifters, not STI shifters so it's a different feel and I can't really compare to my road bike. I expect your Sora derailleur can handle 53 teeth just fine and maybe 54 teeth, but wouldn't it be easier and maybe even less expensive to get a rear cluster with a smaller top cog? I never geared out on my KK with a 53:12, but I also don't use it for sprinting since the slipping and jerky feel of sprinting on a trainer drives me crazy.

-Dave

LOL I can't spin out that combo yet but I spun my 52/15 at 140rpm 37.8mph a while back. I almost caught up to Lucy.🙂

frenchyge said:

Spinning out the 52x12 on your KK already? That's some big improvement. 😉

zander said:

hello there, i was wondering about cycling technique, in relation to the size of gears.

i don't know about everyone else, i use my arms as oposed to my legs, using my arms basiclly halves the effort needed for my legs.

i don't know, what is a good tehnique for cycling a road bike competitively?

are you clipped in?....Toe clips.

wiredued said:

...The custom cassette I have now is 11,13,15,17,19,21,23,26 another alternative I might try is a custom 11,12,14,16,18,20,22,25.

If you'll be inside on the trainer for most of the winter I'd just get the least expensive compatible 12-19, 12-21 or 12-23 cassette you can find. That will fill the gaps nicely and it's nice to have a tight cluster for crits and time trials during the race season. Unless you expect to climb big hills during the off season you shouldn't need the 25 or 26 tooth cogs or the 11 for that matter.

-Dave