Why the high cadence?

[okgo]

upsidedownmark said:

Mostly all been said, but I'd also add that IME at least it depends on how hard you're actually trying to go. My cadence on a 5hr ride (70-80avg) will be a lot lower than it is on a 1h time trial (90-100avg). Going easy tends to be done by dropping cadence.

If you have a different position then that is likely to make a big difference. My TT cadence was over 100, it is generally 87/88 on a road bike. Tighter hip angles on TT bikes dictate a higher cadence in some people.

[louiebaby]

Maximus_Meridius101 said:

louiebaby said:

The two main points I think are:

1. Spinning (eg 90+ rpm) uses slow twitch or endurance muscles, rather than the strength muscles of the fast twitch.

It’s the other way round. Powerful spinning actually engages / causes the fast twitch muscles to be dominant, which cause the glycogen depletion rate to drop.

I thought the Fast Twitch Muscles were the strength / powerlifting muscles, and Slow Twitch Muscles were the the endurance muscle fibres.

I'll have to go back and re-read up!

[okgo]

louiebaby said:

I thought the Fast Twitch Muscles were the strength / powerlifting muscles, and Slow Twitch Muscles were the the endurance muscle fibres.

I'll have to go back and re-read up!

You are correct.

But fast twitch muscle is required for both high and low cadence stuff.

[paulrockliffe]

Pedalling slower = higher forces. This argument always skips the obvious - but less often. The overall load is the same and any benefit is going to be in secondary or tertiary effects.

If you start spinning at 100rpm on the flat, you'll be screwed going up any proper hills as no one does low enough gears. Not a problem for the pros as they'll just apply some hammer, but not many people will get up Honister at 100rpm on shop-bought bike.

Anyway, do most people not settle into a natural power-per-stroke and take it from there? I amble around at 60rpm, but back in the good old days I'd be in a chain gang at 90-100prm. Same effort per stroke, just more of them. For me high cadence isn't a style, it's just riding your bike fast.

[Dnlm]

paulrockliffe said:

Pedalling slower = higher forces. This argument always skips the obvious - but less often. The overall load is the same and any benefit is going to be in secondary or tertiary effects.

If you start spinning at 100rpm on the flat, you'll be screwed going up any proper hills as no one does low enough gears. Not a problem for the pros as they'll just apply some hammer, but not many people will get up Honister at 100rpm on shop-bought bike.

guess the obvious thing is that efficient higher cadence cycling majority of the time allows you to have energy and not totally blow up on the hills. just completing honister is not easy for many.

Hills are where i find changes in my own fitness most obvious - i got a 'natural' 90 cadence after a couple years consciously increasing it. How little i have to drop it to go up the local climbs comfortably changes dramatically - 90 odd spin up a 5-10%er at the end of summer is often a 50-60 grind come end of winter.

[louiebaby]

With anything like this, you need to step back from the problem, and start with the basics. A bit like a Physicist starting with dropping spheres in a vacuum,

Maybe the same example is going for the 1 hour record on a velodrome.

For the time being, ignore air pressure and position on the bike, and simply think about gearing.

You've only got one gear, but you have a lot of options, with different combinations of front and rear sprockets. So you can go for whatever rpm you want, to get whatever speed you want.

For a given speed you're going to need the same amount of Watts regardless of gearing, (ignoring fraction losses due to a higher or lower chain speed.) So what do you want to do? Higher rpm, pressing more softly on each stroke, or lower rpm, pressing harder.

The perfect level will be different from person to person, but at the extremes, spinning will make it a cardio hour, and grinding will make it a weight lifting hour.

I think.

[NGRhodes]

Higher cadence (does not need to be as high as spinning) can help by:

Less force on knees.
Uses muscle groups more evenly leading to better efficiently.
Promotes more efficient pedalling strokes (more circular action rather than down pumps on pedals).
Easier to stay in seat.

[MiseryStreak]

It’s for exactly the same reason that many amateur erg rowers, or more accurately, men who sit on the Concept2 at the gym, whack the resistance up to 10. It’s easier for them to smash out a 2,000 m row using their muscles rather than their heart and lungs.

It gets tiring when rowing beyond this, 5 and 10k rows, and it can lead to injuries, particularly of the lower back, as this is a resistance more akin to deadlifting than rowing on water.

As you get fitter and want to make incremental gains you find the optimum resistance drops and you go faster at a lower resistance/faster pull speed. This doesn’t mean you have to increase your tempo/rpm, it’s like using narrower oars and pulling them through the water faster, allowing more time in the return phase.

It’s the same with bikes, except there is no rest or return phase (it’s a lot more complex) so to move faster with a lower resistance means your legs are spinning faster all the time.

This leads to a higher cadence feeling like a larger aerobic effort and it’s really hard to resist changing up a gear. But In a longer ride you’re protecting your muscle endurance (and joints and tendons, particularly the knees).

I don’t have one but singlespeeds/fixies are very good for improving your high cadence training, as you don’t have a choice!

[okgo]

It, as a subject, is hugely over-thought - which is being proved here.

Most people will settle on something that works for them, based on body type, age, terrain, etc. You are not going to find 50w that you didn't have before by changing your cadence.

[upsidedownmark]

Absolutely. I ride with plenty of rowers who generally have lower cadence, but power to spare (and rubbish bike handling ) on the flipside, the 50kg flyweight runner types tend to spin. Totally different physiology.
On an all out effort, it's simple - if the legs are OK and you're gasping, pull a bigger gear. If the legs are burning and you can speak, spin faster. If everything's going to hell, you've got the right gear..
On lesser efforts, whatever works..

[paulrockliffe]

upsidedownmark said:

Absolutely. I ride with plenty of rowers who generally have lower cadence, but power to spare (and rubbish bike handling ) on the flipside, the 50kg flyweight runner types tend to spin. Totally different physiology.
On an all out effort, it's simple - if the legs are OK and you're gasping, pull a bigger gear. If the legs are burning and you can speak, spin faster. If everything's going to hell, you've got the right gear..
On lesser efforts, whatever works..

Yes, and your rowers with power to spare have power to spare because they're aerobically limited, just like everyone else. Their issue is that they are trained to row, not to bike so they don't have balance between those systems on a bike.

Everyone is aerobically limited on a bike, all these theories that you can use different muscles or your power are complete rubbish. They're true if you're going for a 10 minute ride flat out, but in the real world......

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

paulrockliffe said:

upsidedownmark said:

Absolutely. I ride with plenty of rowers who generally have lower cadence, but power to spare (and rubbish bike handling ) on the flipside, the 50kg flyweight runner types tend to spin. Totally different physiology.
On an all out effort, it's simple - if the legs are OK and you're gasping, pull a bigger gear. If the legs are burning and you can speak, spin faster. If everything's going to hell, you've got the right gear..
On lesser efforts, whatever works..

Yes, and your rowers with power to spare have power to spare because they're aerobically limited, just like everyone else. Their issue is that they are trained to row, not to bike so they don't have balance between those systems on a bike.

Everyone is aerobically limited on a bike, all these theories that you can use different muscles or your power are complete rubbish. They're true if you're going for a 10 minute ride flat out, but in the real world......

And when you stop rowing you don't even have enough power to bend down to adjust the clip in resistance

It does give us time to work on our bike handling skills though. Ex-rowers > triathletes

[Solocle]

My cadence varies with my power output. If I'm going gently, I might be doing 70 rpm. At FTP, it's more like 90. On the last hill climb I did (which was 400W average, 133% FTP, but uphill), again 90 cadence.

[Maximus_Meridius101]

okgo said:

You are correct.

But fast twitch muscle is required for both high and low cadence stuff.

Yes, but you’re deliberately biasing the fast twitch muscles with powerful spinning. It’s the biasing that’s important.

[Maximus_Meridius101]

The ultimate aim is to prevent / delay going into anaerobic respiration. High power spinning reduces the glycogen oxidation rate, due to the fast twitch muscles being engaged powerfully, during this pedalling mode, which reduces demand for oxygen, so delays / prevents the undesirable anaerobic respiration, for as long as possible. The better your aerobic fitness / endurance is, the easier you find it to achieve, and prolong the desired ‘pedalling mode’.

Edited by Maximus_Meridius101 on Friday 16th April 00:44

[Maximus_Meridius101]

paulrockliffe said:

Everyone is aerobically limited on a bike,

Yes that’s right.

paulrockliffe said:

all these theories that you can use different muscles or your power are complete rubbish. They're true if you're going for a 10 minute ride flat out, but in the real world......

That’s not quite right.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/why-amateurs...

This is why (relatively) low power spinning is a bad idea.

And this explains why the ( relatively) higher power spinning has the effect it has.

https://www.active.com/cycling/articles/why-fast-p...

It’s more about the effect on fuelling modes, each pedalling method has on each type of muscle that’s the key, rather than any distinct variation in mechanical contribution from the muscle types, dependant on pedalling technique. It’s also important not to confuse ‘power’ with ‘force’. Power is the product of force and cadence, which is important to remember, because derivation of power by more forceful lower cadence, or less forceful but higher cadence pedalling are important distinctions, in the case we’re discussing, in this thread. And a key thing to remember is that the actual power you achieve ( exactly how much force is applied at each type of cadence ) from the combination is critical to how the whole thing works.

To cut through the fog. Pressing as hard as possible , for as much of the rotation as possible, at about 90 rpms, and ensuring you have the aerobic endurance to do so = ideal. Pressing hard, but not through as much of the rotation at 90 rpms = not as good / ideal. Pressing not very hard for as much of the rotation as possible, at 90 rpms = a bit of a waste of energy / time. Pressing not very hard, for not as much of the rotation at 90 rpms = complete waste of time / effort, unless you’re not bothered about numbers. Pressing hard through as much of the rotation as possible, at sub 70 rpms ( for example ) = not very good idea for all sorts of mechanical and physiological reasons.

Edited by Maximus_Meridius101 on Friday 16th April 01:56

[yellowjack]

okgo said:

It, as a subject, is hugely over-thought - which is being proved here.

Most people will settle on something that works for them, based on body type, age, terrain, etc. You are not going to find 50w that you didn't have before by changing your cadence.

Definitely over-thought. I remember when I first got a cadence sensor and the discussions that I had on here. Lots of advice to increase my cadence, and I tried to. But no matter how hard I tried, it took too much concentration on cadence to achieve that increase. And that came at a cost to my enjoyment of a bike ride. So now I use a cadence sensor, but I don't pay any attention to the number during a ride, and only give it a cursory glance when I upload data to Strava.

Maximus_Meridius101 said:

The ultimate aim is to prevent / delay going into anaerobic respiration. High power spinning reduces the glycogen oxidation rate, due to the fast twitch muscles being engaged powerfully, during this pedalling mode, which reduces demand for oxygen, so delays / prevents the undesirable anaerobic respiration, for as long as possible. The better your aerobic fitness / endurance is, the easier you find it to achieve, and prolong the desired ‘pedalling mode’.

I understand the science, but can't seem to apply that to riding a bike out on the roads/trails. I looked at the last two weeks of Strava data. Highest average cadence? 59 rpm. Lowest average cadence? 49 rpm. So 54.66 rpm average cadence over the 6 rides. Total 255 miles, at an average speed (overall) of 12.5 mph.

There are reasons that contribute to being slow. Riding a road bike on footpaths, byways, and bridleways has an effect (VeloViewer tiling). As does lots of stopping to take photos and read a map. As does having a plate in my right leg/ankle. But even with those excuses taken into consideration, my figures look like utter crap next to some of you folks. But hey? I enjoy my riding, and despite my low cadence I can keep going all day.

As I've already said, a while back I tried to "train" my cadence up, but as soon as I take my mind of the cadence number on my GPS unit, my cadence just drops back below 60 rpm again. But, as I'm never going to race against a pro cyclist (except maybe that time that ex pros Yanto Barker and Magnus Bäckstedt were on the same start grid at Battle On The Beach as I was... ) I don't feel the need to train as they do. 55 rpm seems to work for me. If, as I ride more, that goes up naturally, then all well and good. But if it stays were it is (or even falls further) then that's good too, so long as I can get up hills without walking and can carry on doing all day exploration rides...

[frisbee]

Cadence is going to be higher on a trainer, possibly to compensate for lower inertia and, if in erg mode, to avoid death spirals.

[Dnlm]

frisbee said:

Cadence is going to be higher on a trainer, possibly to compensate for lower inertia and, if in erg mode, to avoid death spirals.

I knew I didn't like indoor trainers, not that low cadence came with risk of death

[louiebaby]

yellowjack said:

I looked at the last two weeks of Strava data. Highest average cadence? 59 rpm. Lowest average cadence? 49 rpm. So 54.66 rpm average cadence over the 6 rides.

I'm mostly enjoying the discussion, but I have to call out your average of averages. I know it doesn't really matter, but unless all 6 rides were exactly the same route, you can't do this. Averages of averages are something I see all too often in my working life, and it can be very misleading:

If you did one massive ride at 59 rpm, and 5 short rides at 49 rpm, your average rpm is likely to be pretty close to 59 rpm.

Nothing in this post is meant to be taken personally, please read this as though we were having a friendly chat in the pub, discussing things. I'm not stood on a table shouting at you.