Tire pressures help training?

The easiest way to increase resistance is by shifting to a different gear.

How about simply riding a bit harder? In the end, on a given day for a given duration only a certain power can be produced with is unaffected by gear, grade, tire pressure or head wind.

john979 said:

How about simply riding a bit harder? In the end, on a given day for a given duration only a certain power can be produced with is unaffected by gear, grade, tire pressure or head wind.

I guess I'm out thinking myself on that one. Or should I say not thinking.

stilesiii said:

Would training at lower tire pressures be an effective way of training? It seems intuative that lower pressures would increase resistance and provide better work. I live in an area without hills, all flats.

I am training with tires @ 90 psi, I would think that when I change wheels and load tires to 120psi, I will benefit on raceday. Is this ignorance? What do you guys think?

It is a fallacy to think that higher pressures always means lower rolling resistance. Hard to tell without a power meter.

Maybe hard to believe, but actually, the opposite is true: lower pressures have LOWER rolling resistance, as the tires don't have to expend as much energy rolling over irregularities in the road surface. Use other methods of training to get stronger, not by varying tyre pressure.

BikingBrian said:

Maybe hard to believe, but actually, the opposite is true: lower pressures have LOWER rolling resistance, as the tires don't have to expend as much energy rolling over irregularities in the road surface. Use other methods of training to get stronger, not by varying tyre pressure.

There is no set answer to this -- it depends upon the surface and the tire construction. Certainly on a smooth surface, I don't ever remember seeing test data where higher pressure did not provide lower rolling resistance, a practical application being railroads.