Road Bike Racing - Why is lance always out of the saddle?

During the climbs today with ulrich, lance was out of the saddle most of the climb and ulrich was always sitting on the saddle. Is this technique or is lance tired?

Lancve has always done this. Guess it works for him.

His butt hurts? :o


Seriously, it all depends on style and what works best for your particular situation. Standing gives you more power, but you deplete your energy faster. Sitting allows you to spin faster, but develop less power.

I always thought that staying up was much less energy efficient... yet I see pro's up all the time.

standing on the pedals is not an efficient way to climb, but it can work for you if your legs are a bit tired or tight and you want to stretch out.
Siting is always for efficient. Ask any mountain biker

The combination of seated and standing climbing compliment each other in my opinion. I typically climb seated and get up to change the musclular focus on the legs for a bit of a breather.

Standing will allow you to stretch out a bit and releive and soreness in the rear you might have. I can't stay out of the saddle for very long at my body weight but it does help.

I think Lance trains for long out of the saddle pushes so if he focused on it training it is not a big issue.

Lance's riding position is almost more like jogging. He uses his entire body for the power, instead of his legs.

It is technique. Tired riders tend not to stand much (notice Vino on Monday?). During hard efforts and accelerations, he stands for the same reason anyone stands, to utilize body weight to accelerate the bike. And, he's in good enough condition he can do it for loooong stretches, and take brief sit breaks. Even during normal climbs, he's alternating in and out of the saddle, just to rest and alternate muscle sets.

For a really light rider, i.e. almost any climber, there is a lot less difference in effort between riding out of the saddle and seated than for a heavier rider. For a strong, heavy rider like Ulrich, there's little benefit to standing... he's much heavier than Lance, so standing requires supporting a lot more body weight, plus he has more leg strength. He doesn't really need to throw his weight into it. So, all in all, the benefit/penalty trade-off makes standing a bad thing for Jan. That said, I swear I saw him stand on the pedals, albeit briefly, on Saturday.

It is done for power plain and simple. Yes it does work for him the results speak for themselves.

Lance also uses smaller gears, Ullrich uses bigger ones.

I've gone out and tested both ways, and standing pushing bigger gears doesn't work as well as sitting and pedalling the same gear, and sitting and pushing smaller gears doesn't works as well as standing and pedalling the same gear.

Which is better? I have no idea. I like to stand when I climb.

Jan outweighs Lance by about 30 pounds, so he can put a lot more power to the pedals while seated than Lance can. The reason Lance hammers out of the saddle like he does is because he can. He's basically a human lung, and his technique is so refined it's like watching a dancer, thus Phil's frequent comments about Lance "dancing on the pedals."

As for me, I'm still a roadie n00b, so I try to stay seated until I start to run out of gears, then I stand up until I do run out of gears, then just gasp and sob until I finally reach the top (I haven't quit on a climb yet:D)