wrote4luck

I've been doing the one-legged drill thing to help with my circles, and I find it helps to make my cadence smoother when I'm getting into my LT heart rate. It's also seems to help alot while I'm climbing on the saddle. I could be wrong, but I don't know what else it would be.

jfmckenna

That makes sense to me. I mean how much does a leg weigh? Say 30 pounds? So if you just leave the down stroke leg there as dead weight then thats more force the other leg has to deal with on the next downstroke.

grebletie

Instead of using one-legged drills, and other dubious methods to help to pedal 'circles,' why not just ride rollers?

I've yet to find anyone who hasn't benefited, in terms of smooth pedaling, from continued work on rollers. In my experience, while a trainer is useful for many things, developing a good pedal stroke isn't one of them.

bitingduck

I've seen people do triangles, too.

VosBike

+142. rollers just make smoothness cease to be an issue

Voodoo76

IMO "Circles" is less about where pressure is actually applied and more about developing a pedal stroke where you are still on the bike from the hips up. Less wasted movement and wasted energy. With very few exceptions ride behind a fast racer and you wont see a lot of rocking, bouncing or excessive body movement. This is "Circles", not some mythical state where you are always applying muscle pressure tangent to crank position.

531Aussie

^ good points about high revs and smooth spin. "Back in my day" (the late '80s), everyone was told to 'spin grin and win' on their easy days by spinning an easy gear at high revs to work on smoothness. I never really embraced it, but it was pretty funny seeing other dudes spinning along at 28kph at 130 rpm

marcelinyc

funny aussie track riders spin 220 rpm on rollers

Bob Ross

A friend of mine was recently fit by Paul Levine of Signature Cycles. Paul, in case you haven't heard, uses all manner of cameras & computers & lasers etc. to accurately document a cyclist's performance before and after the fitting. Anyway, while looking over the data Paul comments to my friend "You've got a very smooth pedal stroke."

My friend, who admitted to me his initial reaction was to say "Thanks!", decided to play it coy and instead asked "That's good, right?"

To which Paul replied "No."

Apparently (I'm paraphrasing now) Paul's contention is that a smooth pedal stroke can only be the result of equal effort coming from the larger/stronger leg muscles (quads?) and the smaller/weaker leg muscles (hamstrings?). If your pedal stroke is a smooth consistent circle this almost always means that your stronger muscles aren't working at their maximum potential, and/or that the weaker muscles are being over-stressed.

Ideally one's pedal stroke *should* be asymmetrical, with a more powerful downstroke than upstroke...not really "smooth circles" at all.

Squint

https://www.me.utexas.edu/~neptune/Papers/essr30(4).pdf

San Rensho 

So cadence is a myth? Cadence has no effect on speed? So the guy that just recently set the record for the flying 200m on the track at close to 45 MPH, on an app. 98 inch gear could do the same speed with a 120 inch gear at a lower cadence.

Is that what you are saying?

San Rensho 

Oh, I forgot something. Since we are on the road racing forum, and you are advising racers that all of the things you listed are myths and have absolutely no effect on speed, what was the highest racing category that you achieved by

ignoring your pedaling technique
not building up base miles early in the season
not weight lifting
not caring about cadence
?

Did you make it to cat 1 following your methods? How much prize money did you win following your technique?

grebletie

Actually, I know of at least one study that demonstrated increased efficiency at cadences lower than the typical self-selected cadence (~90). That's not to say it's best to ride at a low cadence, as it's a bit more difficult to respond to attacks, among other things.

I think it's also rather obvious that cadence is a whole different beast on the track, as opposed to road racing, with our gears and whatnot.

And in response to your later post, no need to get testy. I think we can have a discussion about training techniques without having to proffer credentials (or lack thereof).

531Aussie

I assume Squint wasn't talking about sprinting

asgelle

This line of reasoning might have had some merit 60 years ago, but since multiple gears are pretty much the norm in road racing today (c.f. forum title) and riders can control cadence within a fairly narrow band, any compromises that might be necessary for a fixed gear are pretty much irrelevant. I'm certain that Theo Bos could have gone faster if he had had a bike with multiple gears.

popdelusions

I don't know how irrelevant it is...in flat straightaway finishes top road sprinters are typically reaching maximum speeds of around 40-42 mph on geared bikes. Cipollini might have had a momentary maximum of 46 mph at one point, but I don't believe he was averaging that for 200m. Given that, I'm not sure the tradeoff of efficiency for gear development would be worth it. Or are you suggesting that we should be using geared bikes on the track?

Additionally...I'm not sure how many of you also ride track, but just anecdotally I have a faster sprint on the track bike than I do on the road bike. Something is going on (or I'm just an inarticulate shifter!)

asgelle

I don't know what efficiency has to do with things. As mentioned earlier, the most efficient cadence is around 60 rpm, much lower than used for racing. The objective is speed, not efficiency, and it has been shown that self-selected cadence is almost always the fastest for a given individual. As to using gears on track, I never suggested any such thing. I'm saying that having the ability to shift gears to self select the best cadence will result in faster speeds.

San Rensho 

Squint has made a statement that cadence, pedalling technique, base mile training and weight lifting have no effect on speed. This is a racing forum and I say he is doing a disservice to racers here, especially beginning racers, by dismissing long established training techniques. He certainly has the right to have a contrary opinion and I encourage him to. Healthy debate will lead to advancement of training techniques.

But of course he should prove up his statements. I ask him to back up his claims, wherein have I gone wrong?

If he is not a racer, then have him quote quote some accomplished racers or coaches who agree with him that cadence, pedalling technique, base mile training and weight lifting have no effect on speed.

asgelle

Not reading? See post #36.

And look what showed up here from Andy Coggan, https://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.c...ring=;#1173849
"If pedaling style is so important, why has no one ever been able to show it? That is, no study has ever shown a correlation between the pattern of force application and efficiency, nor has any study ever demonstrated that, as group, more efficient cyclists pedal differently than less efficient cyclists. OTOH, numerous studies have demonstrated a correlation between fiber type and efficiency, despite the significant variability involved in quantifying the former."

popdelusions

McEwen can't beat elite track sprinters running similar gearing. And why aren't the road sprinters regularly breaking 50 mph, even with the advantage of a leadout train?

Perhaps I'm just using the wrong terminology here...I'm not talking about style, or pedaling pretty circles as a virtue (I agree with you that's BS). to my thinking the advantage of a geared system in the case you're thinking of is that you can vary gear development to match better with cadence at a given speed.

The thing is, the track sprinters have gone over and over the 200 countless times using every conceivable ratio and they're sacrificing the ability to vary gear development in favor of just using the simplest (perhaps "efficiency" was the wrong word to use hear) drivetrain possible to achieve maximal speed. Somebody like Bos can spin a wider range of cadences than the average rider, so you'd have to think that they've pretty well determined what works best over that distance. And these guys are all training with SRMs these days, so you can't say they're not plumbing the data pretty exhaustively.

I believe Bos was spinning an average cadence of around 92 in the world record run -- what would his options have been with a derailleur system? Where would he make his shifts? Downshift coming into the pole? Upshift going through turn 4?

asgelle

Are you serious? For starters consider these two effects: 1) 150+ km of fatigue, 2) conversion of type IIx fibers. Bonus question, how much more power is needed at 50 mph than 45 mph?

popdelusions

No, I'm being hyperbolic. What about the other points?

EDIT: I actually realized I was being a little silly so I was editing my post, you may not have seen the rest of the material I added)

popdelusions

I should add, because I realize even that my edit was a bit unclear...what I meant by the McEwen anecdote was that he wasn't beating elite track sprinters even though finishing speed in elite track sprinting is similar to or greater than finishing speed in road sprints.

asgelle

Track riders aren't sacrificing anything. You make it sound as if you believe track riders choose to run a fixed gear over shifting systems because they believe it's faster. Track riders use fixed gears because the rules remove any other option.

asgelle

Close, I get 172 rpm.

I'll show my work: 51x15 gear, avg speed = 73.767 km/h both from cyclingnews.com
51x15 gear at 100 rpm = 42.8 km/h per sheldonbrown.com
73.767/42.8 1.72 for 172 rpm.
Now where did you come up with 92?