Originally Posted by SDS
Standing is probably something you need to learn to do on a tandem just to save your butt. Standing up from time to time keeps the blood flow to where you sit going, and that will help save you from saddlesores, butt pain, etc.
First thing to do is to learn to stand up and coast together. You can do that on downhills and level spots if you have enough speed saved up to burn some off coasting.
If you've got enough space between the captain and the stoker, you can learn to begin pedaling from a coasting standing position, and to start from a seated position and stand up and pedal.
Easiest way I know of to learn is to stand up and coast in a high gear on a moderate uphill, and then to start pedaling slowly, concentrating on form and not power so the bike does not go everywhichaway. From there you can advance your skills by practicing doing this at higher and higher cadences until you get up to single bike standing rpms. When you are beginning to learn, the uphill and the high gear keep some resistance under your feet, which helps with your coordination, and the slow pedaling rate makes it a little easier to keep control of the direction you are going.
It's not hard to learn to start from a seated position and stand up and pedal. With experienced stokers I tell them I'm going to stand up, and they can come up or stay seated. Then I just say, "Ready....Now." (sometimes this shortens to "Now."), timing it so my right foot is at 2:00 or so when we start standing up. I should mention that I am left-handed, so that is probably backwards for everybody else. The idea is to give yourself something to stand up on, at the same time driving the pedal down (more power) as you stand up, which is why you start standing up at the beginning of a power stroke. With experienced stokers either one of you or both can stand up without disturbing the bike much. With less experienced stokers, having decided we are going to stand up, I say "1, Stand Up.", with "1", and "Stand Up.", both being pronounced at the 2:00 mark for the right foot. With an experienced stoker in a serious sprint, I would stand up anywhere in the crank circle, but usually we are going so fast that the aerodynamics are better in a seated position.
As for climbing, it's just like a single bike. Seated spinning is the fastest way up a long hill, because few of us can stand up all the way up the hill. You can make more power standing, but it is not as efficient and will tire most of us quickly. One very useful technique on tandems is to stand up to crest the rollers, precisely where tandems tend to lose speed compared to guys on singles. Tandems can be very fast over small rollers, where they can carry speed farther up the hill, and then accelerate from that speed down the opposite side.
I can stand up and climb for miles, and I do some training like that. It's not the most efficient way up the hill, but it helps build muscles. Few women can stand up and pedal for far, and you will have to keep that in mind. They just don't have the quads for it. The thing to do is to ration the amount of standing pedaling so the women can do it throughout the ride.
When I began riding with experienced stokers, I told one of them that another stoker had asked me not to stand up while she was seated because the cadence was lumpy and rocking the bike was hard on her bottom. The experienced stoker told me "Nahhh...you just follow the bike. Go ahead and stand up with or without me." I've been out with her enough times to know she was serious about that. I'd like to train all the stokers up to that standard, but going out with stokers of limited capacity is part of why I ride a tandem. It slows me down just enough to get me into normal club ride speeds, and pulls the stokers up to ride with the guys.
If you're both standing up it seems like you rock the bike slightly less than the normal amount. You have to pay extra attention to keeping the bike going straight. If I am seated and the stoker is standing, the front wheel tends to wobble a little under the bike, but the bike goes nearly straight and hardly rocks. If I am standing and the stoker is seated, I try hard to keep the bike upright and going straight.