Cadance

My experience is that aiming for a cadence of 100 rpm on flats and no lower than 85 when climbing keeps my knees happy and my muscles are provided with enough oxygen.

This was however not the case when I started biking seven years ago. I was then grinding at 60 to 90 and only occasionally did I touch 100 so it needed a lot of work getting my body used to this kind of high cadence without bouncing like crazy in the saddel so if you need to increase your cadence - do it a little at the time.

Last, but not least, don't forget to not just push down the pedals but keep a smooth circle utilizing every inch of it.

hazyjane said:

My experience is that aiming for a cadence of 100 rpm on flats and no lower than 85 when climbing keeps my knees happy and my muscles are provided with enough oxygen.

I'm not sure i understand what you mean about the oxygen. The power that you ride at (along with other factors) sets the demand for O2 consumption. Pedalling at a higher rather than lower cadence at a fixed power output is most likely to result in a higher O2 demand (i.e., VO2 increases), as thermodynamic effiency decreases.

Depending on your topographical conditions, and gearing on your bike, it may be impossible to maintain ~ 85 revs/min on climbs. For e.g., where i'm located even with a 39 x 25 lowest gear, my climbing cadence can often be as low as 45 revs/min, and rarely gets above 80 revs/min. Today on the 3 biggest climbs i rode over my cadence was between 31 and 71 revs/min.

Quoted post said:

Last, but not least, don't forget to not just push down the pedals but keep a smooth circle utilizing every inch of it.

From data from force measuring pedals, better (e.g. elite) riders push down more and pull up less, in other words they don't pedal all the way around the circle.

Ric

as a relative beginner on a roadie myself, i try to keep at around 85rpm, but am happy as long as i'm doing over 80rpm...

A steady 80-100 rpm cadence seems the ideal cadence for most people in most situations.

ric_stern/RST said:

I'm not sure i understand what you mean about the oxygen. The power that you ride at (along with other factors) sets the demand for O2 consumption. Pedalling at a higher rather than lower cadence at a fixed power output is most likely to result in a higher O2 demand (i.e., VO2 increases), as thermodynamic effiency decreases.

Pedalling faster decreases the risk for bonk. One analogy (although not the best) I've heard is that you could probably lift a 1kg handle for several hours (although you might die from boredom) but try lifting the accumulated weight of those hours´of lifting at the same time and you'll have quite a challange.

By pedalling faster you avoid the bonk because your muscles are constantly provided with oxygen and have time to produce and recieve energy for you to spend.

It takes a lot of training though and in the beginning 90 rpm uphills seems impossible :eek: (and of course is if your not fit enough and don't have gears enough - that was me some years ago) but IT IS POSSIBLE!

hazyjane said:

Pedalling faster decreases the risk for bonk. One analogy (although not the best) I've heard is that you could probably lift a 1kg handle for several hours (although you might die from boredom) but try lifting the accumulated weight of those hours´of lifting at the same time and you'll have quite a challange.

higher cadences at a fixed power output increases VO2 and decreases thermodynamic efficiency. so, you expend *more* energy at higher rather than lower cadences.

Quoted post said:

By pedalling faster you avoid the bonk because your muscles are constantly provided with oxygen and have time to produce and recieve energy for you to spend.

this is completely untrue. so, you're saying when i sprint (which is at high cadence) i get all the O2 i need?

Quoted post said:

It takes a lot of training though and in the beginning 90 rpm uphills seems impossible :eek: (and of course is if your not fit enough and don't have gears enough - that was me some years ago) but IT IS POSSIBLE!

It is NOT possible, depending on topography and gears. For e.g., i live on the top of a 16% climb. in 39 x 25 @ 90 revs/min that's a velocity of 4.95 m/s, which at my and my bikes mass would require a power output of around 670 W. At the end of any bike ride that would be hard for me, and even if i wasn't too lazy to go that hard, i'd only be able to sustain it for seconds.

I often do hill intervals of ~ 4-mins duration on this climb, and do these at my ~MAP (370 - 390 W) in 39 x 25, that's about 50 - 60 revs/min on the steepest sections of the climbs. An elite pro, who maybe able to sustain ~ 520 W at the same mass as me (~70 kg) would only be able to ride at ~ 4.0 m/s, which with 39 x 25 would be a cadence of ~ 70 ish revs/min.

Sure, i could get lower gear ratios, but then other situations could be compromised. Just that 90 revs/min isn't possible with typical gearing for anything more than a few seconds, no matter what your fitness is (depending on your topography).

Ric

You obviously don't want to spin faster - so don't. 🙂 I've just taken on Armstrong's philosophy and it works for me (at least my knees don't hurt anymore adn I seem to endure longer). I read how Armstrong, after his sick leave, measured watts, hear rate, cadence and speed and found his ultimate cadence significantly higher than before.

Of course you can tread the high gears if you want - there are numerous elite cyclists that do that successfully so that seem to work too.

By the way. Regarding the pedalling force ric just draw stupid conclusions.
Of course you push more than pull since the muscles you use are different in size but to draw the conclusion elite cyclists don't pedal all around is just stupid.

Greg LeMond's shoe scrape-the-mud-off-your-sole visualization technique is an excellent example of how to utlize the the bottom of the pedal stroke. USE IT if it helps you!

hazyjane said:

You obviously don't want to spin faster - so don't. 🙂 I've just taken on Armstrong's philosophy and it works for me (at least my knees don't hurt anymore adn I seem to endure longer). I read how Armstrong, after his sick leave, measured watts, hear rate, cadence and speed and found his ultimate cadence significantly higher than before.

sure, riding at a higher rather than lower cadence is more comfortable as the forces are reduced, but this is not the same as what you said (that it expends less energy).

as power output increases, the most efficient, and the most optimal cadences will increase, but unless you happen to be able to produce as much power as Armstrong could (which is highly unlikely!) your optimal and most efficient cadences will be lower than his.

Whether i want to spin or not is immaterial -- the point i was making is that with standard road gears (e.g., 11 - 23 and 53 x 39) or low road gears (e.g., 12 - 25 and 53 x 39) you're cadence is constrained by the gearing and your local topography. It's basically impossible for me (or anyone) to spin at 90 revs/min up the hills i have, due to the physics involved.

Quoted post said:

By the way. Regarding the pedalling force ric just draw stupid conclusions.
Of course you push more than pull since the muscles you use are different in size but to draw the conclusion elite cyclists don't pedal all around is just stupid.

then i suggest you read e.g., Coyle et al 91.

Ric

ric_stern/RST said:

From data from force measuring pedals, better (e.g. elite) riders push down more and pull up less, in other words they don't pedal all the way around the circle.

Ric

This is contrary to anything I have ever read....do you have a link to support this claim?

BillM said:

This is contrary to anything I have ever read....do you have a link to support this claim?

most peer reviewed research on this subject. for e.g., see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=1997818&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum

Ric

Nice - pick one out of over 100 scientific reports on the subject. Please!?!?

What about these studies (all scientific reports with links to abstract at PubMed):

• In professional road cyclists, low pedaling cadences are less efficient
  
• Cycling cadence alters exercise hemodynamics
  
• Effect of pedal cadence on the accumulated oxygen deficit, maximal aerobic power and blood lactate transition thresholds of high-performance junior endurance cyclists.
  

I'm not saying you must pedal at 120 all the time ONLY that it's probably not a good idea treading at 60 rpm and worth a try to increase a little and see if it feels better.

hazyjane said:

Nice - pick one out of over 100 scientific reports on the subject. Please!?!?

please show your peer reviewed subject on this issue then

hazyjane said:

Nice - pick one out of over 100 scientific reports on the subject. Please!?!?

Yes, that's a bad study to support pushing down so much given that in the abstract it says...

"Factors possibly contributing to the ability of group 1 to produce higher "downstroke power" are a greater percentage of Type I muscle fibers (P less than 0.05) and a 23% greater (P less than 0.05) muscle capillary density compared with group 2."

This could suggest that people who do not have the high percentage of slow fibers and capillary density of a national-class elite rider (group 1) will not be able to use the method of a relatively stronger downstroke, but could instead try to even out the application of force through the pedal circle.

The study also doesn't offer insight about whether or not those riders in Group 1 might improve their output if they spent a month or more trying to apply relatively higher force during some other portions of the pedal stroke. As we know, some very good riders have done this.

Also, Group 1 was only 6 riders. Are they riders with objectives similar to your own?

Consider though, that even though you feel some pressure on the top of your foot/shoe when you "pull up" and/or back on the pedals that amount of force could be just a pound or three, and compared to the downward force you may be using that would be in the dozens of pounds or even higher in a sprint. So, that upward force is still relatively low compared to the downward force.

What about these studies (all scientific reports with links to abstract at PubMed):

• In professional road cyclists, low pedaling cadences are less efficient
  
• Cycling cadence alters exercise hemodynamics
  
• Effect of pedal cadence on the accumulated oxygen deficit, maximal aerobic power and blood lactate transition thresholds of high-performance junior endurance cyclists.
  

I'm not saying you must pedal at 120 all the time ONLY that it's probably not a good idea treading at 60 rpm and worth a try to increase a little and see if it feels better.

ric_stern/RST said:

please show your peer reviewed subject on this issue then

Do you have any studies to share where the riders tried various cadences and upstroke/downstroke strategies with sufficient time (weeks, months) to adapt to what could help them?

Some riders in the real world do this experiment. Some found that it didn't help, and some found that it did.

Some interesting reading here, http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=4065 including the links at the bottom of the page.

Excellent link!!! Thanx 😄 !!!!

I don't have that. Not that I can remember anyway... but search PubMed yourself and see if you find anything.🙂

To get abstracts of the articles I mentioned above I just did a simple PubMed search (you don't need an account or pay anything) at ncbi.nlm.nih.govquery.fcgiOpen ↗. I typed the words cycling and cadence with just a blank space in between in the quick search field. To get the full articles you must subscribe, for most of them anyway.

hazyjane said:

I'm not saying you must pedal at 120 all the time ...

Hey, thanks a lot for being so graceful. 😄

Quoted post said:

ONLY that it's probably not a good idea treading at 60 rpm and worth a try to increase a little and see if it feels better

You are not answering Ric's main point on this, which is that, given standard road gearing, it may be physically impossible for most riders to stay even above 80rpm, if the hill is steep enough. Given the limited power output of human beings that is an incontrovertible fact, end of story. My guess is that Ric will agree that you should stay in the high cadences though as long as that's feasible, so I doubt there really can be any reasonable agreement between the two of you on that point. As an aside, when I read that Armstrong zips up some of the passes in the Alps at 110rpm, I wonder what gearing he uses for that. Even he won't be able to crank out a kilowatt for any significant amount of time...

Now, as far as your idea of "getting more oxygen to the muscle" is concerned, I seem to recall that indeed muscle motion in the legs in conjunction with valves in (some of) the main veins in the leg creates a pumping effect, leading to increased blood flow to the muscles in question(*). If that is correct, then one would expect a benefit of higher cadences over lower ones at identical power, up to some point. Ric's point of decreasing thermodynamic and also biomechanical efficiency at higher cadences still remains valid. What the optimum cadence is given these factors will depend a lot on the individual rider's make-up. Typically, the guys with the really big legs will be more efficient at lower cadences, and vice versa. You can observe that law at work in pro riders as well, comparing e.g. Armstrong with Ullrich.

Finally, I really don't want to get into the pedalling-technique debate, but I agree with your "Use it if it helps you"-dictum... 😉

(*) P.S.: Of course, this is exactly what Cycling cadence alters exercise hemodynamics is talking about. Note also the final sentence in the abstract: "It is not known if this might contribute to the natural selection of higher cadences by cycling athletes, even though there is reduced economy." [emphasis mine]

BillM said:

This is contrary to anything I have ever read....do you have a link to support this claim?

I can confirm by experience. I don't need any studies to confirm that. All I need, is a heart rate monitor, a powermeter, and a turbo trainer.

🙂 Yeah grace is my middle name. So boring with tech stuff when a beginner asks a very basic question and I answered what MY experience was. I won't answer the last comment on what I supposedly said that it "expends less energy" one because it's not the words I used *Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

Boooooring!

The most important for a beginner is to ENJOY and HAVE FUN!!! Woooohaaaa!!!

That's it from me. See you in another thread.