BICYCLES

Practice single leg pedaling on a trainer. Get 2 sturdy boxes, short step stools, or milk crates, 1 off to each side near cranks. Warm up, then rest 1 foot on top of a box & pedal with other leg. Do about a minute then switch sides. Then do both legs again for a minute. Repeat a couple of times. Once you get good can lengthen duration. Light resistance, slow-moderate cadence.

 

Don't do this unless you plan on actually doing your bike rides with one leg and need to train for that.

There are two effective ways to increase cadence. Do downhill (like 4% grade) seated accelerations of six sets of 30 seconds in a 39x15. You should aim for a max rpm of 190rpm or so. The second way is the same thing but on a set of rollers. The rollers force you to be smooth and relaxed.

 

crank length and seat height may need to be investigated. ideally hips should be close to motionless...no bouncing.

 

Your seat is probably set too high if your frame is already correctly-sized. You would likely also feel leg strain if your seat is set too low. Just make sure the seat is also not set too far forward or too far back.

Crank length effects are very subtle unless you are a very tall rider with very long legs in which case you are not a good candidate for high cadence anyway. Smooth 90s cadence is fine for a tall rider.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I had some knee pain so I moved the seat up, maybe too much.

 

He asked about how to smooth out his stroke, not increase his cadence. Isolated leg training accomplishes this well because you have to pull across the bottom & back up all with one leg. Nothing I said has anything to do with cadence. If you are trying to do a very high cadence, I guarantee at some point you will be bouncing off the seat.

 

It doesn't work. It's been proven that it doesn't work by multiple studies going way back to the early 90's.

The only way to smooth out a pedal stroke is to properly transition pedal strokes from side to side. He said he's running into problems when he hits the 90's in rpm. The best way to sort that out is with seated sprints and accelerations.

 

90s is not a super high cadence, that's normal range. If you're spinning that fast (say 120 & higher), the shifter & higher gears are there for a reason. If you want to practice high cadence to smooth out your form, great. I would worry more about making the bike go faster & less about my legs going faster as an absolute goal. At some point you have to put the power down one way or another.

 

While I don't disagree with the second part of your post, the way to get better at cycling is to work the extremes of the strength and fitness requirements for the task at hand and on the event day (whatever that may be) you meet in the middle of all of those extremes. That way, you're capable of performing every task with which you're faced in said event as you've mastered them all to the extreme in training.

The mistake that most people make is they try to duplicate whatever they're training for and figure that simply by doing that exact thing more often, that's all they need to be good.

For example, if someone has a goal of - let's say - riding 100 miles in 5 hours they will repeatedly go out and ride at 20 mph for as long as possible, repeating over and over. That's futile. The way to accomplish that goal would be working the extremes of distance, speed, power phases, and (yes) cadence and on the day of the ride, they would easily be able to reach their goal time for the ride.

If someone wants to be smoother at a 90 rpm pedal speed, they're not going to solve that by riding 90 rpm for longer. They have to work the extremes of what's required for that.

 

That's quite plausible if the front of your knees hurt. If your seat is correctly set up you should also be able to comfortably ride no-hands if the bike is in proper condition... this is the same idea as riding the rollers.

 

Avg cadence: 92 rpm, avg cadence during the attack 102 rpm. That high cadence stuff really gets put to good use. Like a screen door in a submarine.

Team Sky | Chris Froome power data

If somebody is already having trouble in the 90s (normal range cadence) with bouncing or getting jerky, I would look into fit, flexibility, and range of motion problems.

 

Well, I'm not sure how many pro teams you were on, how many national teams your were named to, how many world championship appearances you had, or how many national championships you won, but speaking from my personal experience as someone who had his fair share of all of those, it's a necessary part of training.

What you see on race day is not an indication of what's used in training. As I said earlier, training is working the extremes and meeting in the middle on race day.

I can assure you that Chris Froome incorporates high cadence training into his program. David Brailsford wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Agree 100% with Sherpa.
I never made it to the P12 level but raced cat3 and masters for years. Broke 4 hrs for 100 miles but basically was happy finishing in the pack and not being dropped.
Used Carmichaels's training program which included fixed gear off season work, high cadence intervals, low cadence power work (essentially weights on the bike), followed by progression to tempo intervals, above threshold intervals, and steady state work. All this was tempered by recovery days...essentially a 12 mph walk on the bike. You gotta work the extremes. In a race, one minute you are riding piano, next minute you are in the gutter hanging on for dear life at 38 mph.
I had a teammate who could ride at 21.7 mph all day long but once the screw was tightened, he was jettisoned out the exhaust portal. He got dropped in crits all the time.
I enjoyed the discipline that it took to improve incrementally with a regimented training program. After over 10 years of doing this, it became somewhat of a second job.

Now I ride a fixie. No power meter, no odo, no clock.

 

As a Brit I reckon that was a blinkin' marvelous tour.

As a cycling fan it was a shame we didn't see any big ding-dong battles between the GC contenders in the mountains.

 

There was also Cav back to winning ways, including a stint in Yellow & Green, Steve Cummings' stage win, Adam Yates' in the White jersey, and top 10s for Dan McLay in some of the early sprint stages.

I think we'd have seen some good racing up Ventoux if not for the crowd/motorbike incident.

 

Igor, surely you jest.

All the same, it may just be that Froome has simply been a GC leader on a different level and Quintana not performing to expectations. It was like he was ill or had some sort of health issue. Maybe we'll find out later when the Olympics roll around.

Aside from Froome's dynamic performance, we had Tom Dumoulin's before his misfortune, Peter Sagan with his wonderful dynamism and humour, Steve Cumming's brave performance, Cav's return to form, crazy weather in the mountains, exciting mountain time trial, entertaining rides drom Julian Alaphilippe, Adam Yates. And what about the exciting breakaway with Froome, Sagan, Thomas and Bodnar in Stage 11?...

I think 2016 TdF has been a great tour compared to recent ones!
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I understand why you feel that way. Personally, GC standing for Froome is just confirmation of who is the best all-round rider. It's Froome and he didn't play it safe when he established his buffer. He went out on a limb several times and he got his buffer by himself. Quintana was right behind him every time, benefiting from the actions of whomever was setting the pace... but Quintana did not react when Froome made his critical moves. Once Froome established a sizable buffer, Quintana had missed his chances.

The closest challenger was actually Richie Port, who rode really impressively but BMC divided its support for its 3 leaders and never seemed too serious about going for a GC challenge once Port had his unfortunate flat tire and lost 1:40 at the start of the tour. I think they now realize Tejay van Garderen is more of a classics rider than a grand tour GC prospect. He's too big for the multiple major climbs. They need to invest in Richie Port.

What I enjoy most were all the spirited riding by the specialists and upcoming GC talent. I really didn't care if SKY dominated the GC again because Froome earned it legitimately.

I wasn't keeping tabs on the pro circuit action in the 90s but the Pantani era was "controversial" as you say, plagued by doping and I was pretty put off by it. It was very difficult to get excited by athletes that were most likely doping to achieve their superhuman results. Wiggo's tour was more challenged (more drama) but that was partly because he was more vulnerable as a rider than Froome. IMO, Froome is a more superior all-rounder than Wiggo.

 

My cadence smoothness issue is resolved, saddle was slightly too high. Also found that I wasn't warming up long enough at the start of the ride. Now find my comfortable cadence to be in the mid to high 90s.

How does heart rate generally correspond with cadence? On graded sections I find that my heart rate is lower if spin at a higher rate than if I use a gear that demands more of my legs. My understanding was that the opposite is true. Does this indicate my leg strength needs to improve?

 

Sherpa,

What kind of power (W) can you constantly deliver for 10 or 20 minutes with a normal cadence?

 

HR is an indication of your cardiovascular performance. You need to identify the normal range of your heart and you can gauge that from your HR monitor readings from your workout. Once you know your max HR you can easily match a gear to ensure you are working within a given range of your body's current cardiovascular capacity for the particular challenge you face on a ride. For example, you do not go 90-100% all the time but in a sprint to the line or over a short hill you do want to go that hard. So your HR will confirm that, same with power output, which is a more instantaneous monitor of output.

Hill climbing is a cardiovascular challenge, not a test of strength. So doing weights to increase strength will not make you climb faster and can often have the opposite effect. To climb faster, you need to increase your aerobic capacity which means higher hematocrit, better vascular efficiency. Do long rides and endurance work. You can also lose some weight but not to the point of losing strength. That's why great climbers are very slim and often but not always, small build.

Strength is useful for pushing a bigger gear, like in sprinting and powering up short inclines, but not for long climbs and hilly courses. A bulky build can really mess up a rider's endurance and mechanical efficiency and you also gain weight from muscle mass which you have to carry around and spin. It's like having huge rims and fat rear tires - you burn a lot of fuel to get them going but you do go fast, for a short while.

You also need to understand the relationship between slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibres, as well as the balance between the two in a given rider. This is why experienced riders know the differences between cyclists who are pure climbers, pure sprinters, TT specialists and all-rounders. Once you have enough experience you can determine where you are in terms of these rider types. This is a genetic predisposition and not something you can dramatically change. The ratio of slow-twitch to fast-twitch muscle fibres in your body is in your genes. Once you gauge what kind of physique you have you can tell how well you can ever stack up under various riding conditions. You can then try to maximize your potential physique, like doing more strength work if you are destined to be a sprinter or increase your physical efficiency if you are a climber or somewhere in the middle if you are a all-rounder. An all-rounder who is supremely fit will beat mediocre sprinters in a sprint, mediocre climbers in a climb. What determines how far you can go as an athlete is also your heart, how much capacity, efficiency it has, how fast it can maintain a beat for long periods. Do you have an I-4, big V8 or small V12, cross-plane vs flat-plane?

It's also fun to study the professional star riders because those guys know precisely what they are and they accept that and they do exactly what they have to in order to achieve their potential. They do not try to be everything and that is the way you have to set about in order to make the best of what you have been given, in your genes. Just make sure you understand you can have some cross traits between the various types of riders, but there will be one particular style that you are most comfortable exploring.

 

Now? I have no idea. Probably pretty terrible.

I know that in 2011 my one hour power was 407w at 71kg. My 20 min was slightly higher at 415w and my 10 min was 430w. And fwiw, those weren't my training numbers. My training numbers were much lower. Those were all from different races.

Also interesting is that at that time, my peak wattage was somewhere around 1600w. However, years before when I started using an SRM (2002) my peak wattage was 2100w. My other numbers were way lower. When I retired in 2003 I wasn't great at road racing. Then when I came back to bike racing in 2011, my peak wattage was way down but my extended power was way better. I was a much better road racer and endurance track racer and won some bigger races that way, like a national road race title (not to mention all of my national championship silver medals, of which one or two were to Taylor Phinney when he was reigning world champ).

 

I'm speechless. I knew the pros were delivering massive power, but to maintain over 400 for an hour seems super-human. To me that is like benching 500 lbs for an hour straight. Ugh, I am so weak.

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