Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - How do you attack inclines better ?

Hey guys, im 6 2 200 pounds, and pretty athletic but as soon as a incline starts my legs start losing power . It hard to explain but on flats i can ride hard but as soon as i start on a incline my legs turn into jello and can barley peddle:(.

What gearing do you have?

Here's my method. Shift to a lower gear when climbing a hill. Maintain a steady pedaling speed (which is called cadence). The bike will slow down, but resist the tempation to pedal faster. If you have to slow down to walking speed it will be harder to maintain your balance, so concentrate on that. Pedal slower if you start breathing too hard.

Go slow, pedal steady, work on staying balanced, don't let yourself get out of breath. If you start gasping for air that probably means you tried to climb the hill too fast. Next time take it slower. Lower gear, slow steady cadence, stay balanced. If you do it that way you should be able to ride up any hill that you can walk up.

First off: don't "attack"! Hills are all about long-term endurance (and suffering).

My method is very similar to what Platy suggests: I shift to the appropriate front chainring well before I actually need it; if that means I end up coasting for a bit, so be it. Going up the hill, my cadence is determined by my heart rate: I shift the rear derailleur to a gear that allows me to pedal easily but at the same time allows me to keep my heart rate out of the "red zone".

My bikes don't have super-low gearing, so keeping my heart rate at the right level invariably means that I have to reduce my cadence. Instead of the 90-100rpm that I spin on flat terrain, I'll probably do 60-80rpm while climbing. Maybe even lower if the route is especially steep. I keep my cadence consistent and rarely coast while climbing.

For the most part, I stay seated while climbing. Occasionally, I'll stand to pedal through steep sections of the route (or if I just need a break from sitting). When I stand, I may shift to a gear that's a notch or two more difficult than the one I'm using while seated; my goal is to keep my heart rate and cadence as consistent as possible while standing.

Finally, I find that pacing myself properly is much easier if I know exactly how long the climb will be. For anything that's more than a half-mile, I like to use BikeRouteToaster (http://www.bikeroutetoaster.com/) or MyMyRide (http://www.mapmyride.com/) or a similar service to figure how exactly how long the climb will be from bottom to top. Be careful about using these service to estimate the steepness of a climb! They show average grades, and the average may include some significantly steep sections...

What gearing do you have?


I have a caad 9 - 6 2010

Hills, I suck at them. However, I climb a lot on my road rides and my technique isn't so much a "winning technique" but a method I use to endure the pain until it's over.

My method: I ride up hills on my mtn bike. A lot. I do this seated, standing, panting and straining with my heart pounding so hard I can taste blood and can't hear for the drum beat in my ears, or any other way I can. Then I repeat this next week. I do not recommend this method for the faint of heart or those with medical issues but it works.

With this method I have gained 2 full cogs on the cassette since March 2009 for hills I regularly ride on my road bike. A side benefit is that I have increased my overall MPH by 1 1/2 mph over 80 mile rides to almost 14 mph and no longer need a triple crankset.

It is the ONLY way I've found to get faster and stronger on hills.

Long hills are about enduring the pain. Short rollers you can attack. But it it turns into a hill, keep your HR down and use the small gears and just try to get over it with some juice still in the tank. On a climbing ride, I take it easy on the flats and save my energy for the hills.

You sound like some of the folks I ride with. I can't hang with 'em in the flats, but when the road turns up I get payback. They just don't know how to ride up.

I use Rob's method on short training rides and commutes. I go up every hill in the highest gear that I think I can still spin fast, and downshift only if there is no other choice. It means hard effort, and a little pain. But, on a ride under 3 hours (if you're fit), you should be able to recover quickly without bonking.

Then, on a brevet, or a long club ride, I switch back to Platy's method to save energy. But, even when conserving energy, the gains from the short rides make you a better climber.

I'm happy with the progress I've made this year with this method. I went from a very poor climber to at least average (for a club rider). But, a little pain every day is the only path I know.

its a matter of expectations. lower them. use a lower gear and expect your speed to drop significantly.

Also, you don't get better at climbing by avoiding it. If you really want to improve, add in some hill repeats a couple of times a month or more depending on how much you ride.

All the gears in the world won't do you any good if your lungs and heart aren't up to the task.

I have a caad 9 - 6 2010

Ok... so that means you have a 12-26 cassette in the back (went to cannondales website) do you have a compact double or triple crank?
-Gene-

Ease off the pace for a few minutes before you come to the hill. You will lose a few seconds on the flat but you will more than make up the time on the hill if you are fresh at the bottom.

I try to use an easier gear, and don't work so hard that I blow-up before the hill is over. I go slower than I thought that I would up the hill, but still have gas in the engine for pushing it hard down the other side, and maintaining a steady-burn on the flat sections before and after. Sure I lose the group on hills, just like almost all of the heavier riders, but I always come back. Especially when there is a wind on the flat sections (most smaller guys have bigger issues with wind than us bigger folk).

I have found climbing easier since I lost about 30 pounds (I'm still 35 lbs. heavier than you) and started working out at the gym. Lower body work (squats, lunges, leg presses, leg curls, leg extensions, calf raises, etc.) have helped strengthen my legs. It has made a real difference in my climbing ability. BTW, I'm 6' 3, 235.

If you keep climbing them you will get better. I put a scoop of protein powder in my recovery smoothie. I think it has been helping me gain a little strength. On the climb I try to use the biggest ring possible, but keep the cadence above 60.

I found that the problem I had with climbing was not so much trying to grind a way in a big gear, but dropping into too low of a gear and spinning at waaaay too high of a cadence. The rapid spinning wore me out more than the hill itself.

Also, a simple tip, when you are climbing, do not look at the top of the hill, look at a point past your front tire so that you see just enough road ahead to dodge any obstacles. Climbing is psychological as much as it is physical. You are going slow so the top of the hill never seems to get closer. This will destroy your confidence. Look forward a little bit and you will be surprised when you get to the top.

Good luck, ride hard.

I just bought a computer from bonktown , so i plan on seeing what my avg. speed going up this hill is then slowly add more speed each week.

That'll give you some data, which can be interesting. But...

Increases in speed when climbing aren't nearly as important as experience. Practice, practice, and practice!

Over time you'll begin to recognize what gears and what cadence work for you as you climb. As you gain that experience, and fine-tune it, your speed will increase -- and so will your confidence!

As a couple of others mentioned, don't look up at the top of the hill. Your legs and lungs will want to invite your eyes to join the pity party. Don't!
Keep your eyes focused on the road directly ahead.

As you climb, keep your mind occupied with your body's condition:
*Breathing: full and rhythmic -- use your diaphragm to fully empty and inflate your lungs. Open your mouth!
*Other muscle groups: relax and drop your shoulders, lose the 'vice grip' on the bars. That extra tension uses oxygen!
*Pedaling: resist the temptation to 'mash' -- pedal through the full circle, completing each 'down' by imagining that you're scraping mud off the bottom of your shoe as you transition from 'down' to 'back'. Let your hamstrings assist your quads!

If you concentrate on these items, and ignore the mental distractions of 1) the speed indicated on your computer and 2) looking for the tip of the hill, you'll become more aware of your body.

Have fun. Embrace the suffering, but don't make it harder by being distracted by numbers.


I just bought a computer from bonktown , so i plan on seeing what my avg. speed going up this hill is then slowly add more speed each week.

I do not look at the top of the hill, look at a point past your front tire so that you see just enough road ahead to dodge any obstacles. Climbing is psychological as much as it is physical. Look forward a little bit and you will be surprised when you get to the top.

Good luck, ride hard.

+1, I have been surprised by this, it works.

I don't attack!:D

Also, one other tactic I use is to talk to myself. OUT LOUD. Sure you may look a little crazy, but if you can't speak a coherent sentence or two, you are working too hard and will wear down. Just a couple of phrases like "Don't give up" "You can do it" "Almost there." If you can speak easily without fighting for breath, you are at a good heart rate. It also give a little boost mentally.

I don't attack!:D

Passivist! :P

I don't attack!:D
I dunno.. he almost clobbered me with his frame pump when I whistled at his wife... :innocent:
:lol:

On a more serious note to the OP...

Try changing things. When you ride differently, you use different muscles or different energy systems in the body.


If you're sitting, stand up.
If you're standing, sit down.
If you're in an easy gear, switch to one harder and power up (if hill's short enough).
If you're in your small ring, try it in your big ring.

I used to have trouble on a group ride getting over one short hill while still in contact with the group. I would go up in my small ring and pedal as fast as I could to keep up. But inevitably, I would "blow up" near the top and the group would quickly sail away. One day, I forced myself to keep it in the big ring instead of shifting down. I had to get out of the saddle once or twice to keep the cadence up, and for longer periods than I wanted to, but I stayed with the group. The big ring forced me to use my muscular legs instead of relying on my aerobic capacity, which was handicapped by my heavier weight in comparison to the rest of the group.

Granted, on longer hills, I wouldn't be able to keep up like that, but the premise of changing things up still holds.

And to further somebody else's post, experience does play alot here. The more you ride, the more you do hills, the more you know what you can do.

I don't look at the top or attack hills near the bottom. Near the top is another matter. I usually think that I'm farther up the hill than I really am, and looking up at how far is left usually makes me angry enough at me and the hill to push a little harder or even attack during the last bit of the climb. I figure I can take just about anything for a couple of minutes, and will attack near the top...usually if I'm feeling particularly strong or in a really bad mood that day.

Oh...and attack is a relative term. That just means that I push into the red zone with my heart rate, and will probably stand up and use my arms to pull down and help my legs put more pressure on the pedals. It is usually just a slight increase, or stopping a decrease in my speed. Well...I feel like I'm "attacking"...

Experience is the biggest equalizer for sure. How you get up hills faster depends a lot on your genetic and body makeup. Two people at the same height, weight, and with the same basic aerobic capacity can use different styles to better propel themselves up the same hill.

Weight is a big deal, for sure. Lighter people can naturally attack harder and recover faster following big aerobic outputs (less muscle and other tissue, so less oxygen debt).

At the extremes in muscle-type, people with a lot more more slow-twitch muscle fibers tend to do better with a steady pace all the way up, while people with lots of fast-twitch muscle fibers do better if they really attack the hill and slow down to rest in spurts.

It can be funny watching people with different body types attack the same hill on a group ride. The lighter guys that also have lots of fast-twitch muscles around here tend to like to slow down a little bit before the hill really starts to climb, and explode in spurts up the hill, riding faster and harder near the top.

People in the middle can usually hang with the fast guys at first, but get dropped near the top. Too many explosions burns them out.

People with lots of slow-twitch muscle fiber like me, tend to keep a pretty steady pace all the way up the hill. If I slow down with the fast-twitch guys near the bottom and try to keep up with them, I blow up before I get to the top. By the same token, if the attacking types stay my grueling pace from the very bottom of the hill, their legs are usually too rubbery to even keep up with me on the second-half of the same climb.

If they are in better shape, or a lot lighter than you, then all bets are off though. They will toast you.

I dunno.. he almost clobbered me with his frame pump when I whistled at his wife... :innocent:
:lol:

I can't afford to lose her, she buys me bike stuff!:D

Define "incline". Are we talking short 4% rollers? For inclines you should be able to shift down a few gears and your body will hardly know the difference; not much psychology involved. If we're talking significant hills (I know, define "significant") then psychology, hill training, standing, etc. can come into play.

First off: don't "attack"! Hills are all about long-term endurance (and suffering).

It depends on the hill. (for me, at least)

Short hills I'll gear down a little bit, get a rolling start at them, stand up and hammer. But that's only for the hills where I'm not going to lose all my momentum by the time I get to the top.
More often out here (Pac NW) you do find the war-of-attrition hills: 2 to 25 miles long depending on if you're in the foothills or cresting the Cascades, and at least 5 - 6 percent grade. For those, I drop it into my 34/32 combo, and sit back and enjoy the scenery while grinding it out for up to a few hours.

I'm about the same size as you, but for some reason I've always loved climbing hills. I attack rollers, and at least try to attack over the top of long hills. IMO the important factors are gearing, attitude, and fitness. Being in the right chainring at the bottom is helpful, so you're only shifting the rear during the climb. Speaking of shifting, how familiar are you with shifting your bike? Do you always know what gear you're in without looking? Do you know how to shift during a climb? Keep you cadence in your comfort zone through the whole climb. Knowing your physical limits is also critical. Can you distinguish between simply hurting and the verge of a blowup? You need to know the difference, and spend some time in-between.

Off season weight training to strengthen your legs will help, if leg strength is a problem.

Of course these are all just words. Everything I said about technique will become second nature after you've climbed enough hills.

I look to keep around a cadence of 80 when climbing. I change gears as necessary to achieve this. I have trouble right now standing due to some knee issues, so mashing is out for me.

There's an old saying about climbing. It doesn't get easier, you just get faster.

Rollers are rollers. They can be steep, but don't really impact me that much over the length of a 30+ mile ride. I ride how I feel on rollers. Sometimes I stomp up in a big gear, others I spin up with a fast cadence, and still others I just grind up using a steady pace.

A ride with more than a few hills that take more than 15-20 minutes of steady and non-stop climbing each can put a hurting on me over that same distance, though. Any hill that takes a half-hour or more to climb wipe just about anybody out, if they push hard enough all-the-way up. I really have to pace myself and watch my water intake on mountain rides with hills that take 1-2 hours to top. I'm no Mr. Beanz!

...do not look at the top of the hill, look at a point past your front tire so that you see just enough road ahead to dodge any obstacles. Climbing is psychological as much as it is physical...

I was skeptical, but I tried this and found it to be surprisingly effective.

But, a little pain every day is the only path I know.

This.

I don't attack!:D

If BF were the military, you would always be the first wave! :thumb::thumb::thumb:

If BF were the military, you would always be the first wave! :thumb::thumb::thumb:

Actually, if you had a chance to climb with me, you'd see I'm a patient rider, I rarely attack. If I am competing with another rider on a climb, I will try to say up knowing that most fade in the latter part of the ride. I'll pull away but still not attacking, just maintaining my pace. I'm more of a "be a patient and maintain pace" type of rider.

Heck, I've done centuries with some strong riders that punish my arse while I try to keep up for the first 70 miles then they fade, thank goodness. After that, maintaining pace is murder on them!:D I've had guys drop me by half a mile onthe first 5 miles of a 20 mile/5,000ft climb then end up finishing 2 miles behind me!:roflmao2:

If the guy doesn't fade, then that means he's a stronger rider!:thumb:

There are lotsa things out there and plenty of good advice to be had on good technique, but after all is said and done you just need to get out and ride more climbs.

I just bought a computer from bonktown , so i plan on seeing what my avg. speed going up this hill is then slowly add more speed each week.

What cadence are you using? How long is the hill? What gears do you have? Have you ever used a gear calculator (http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/).

For small inclines i use a knife. For big ones i use a Barrett.

"Platy", "aidanpryde", and "bretgross" have most closely voiced my own strategies for riding up long steep grades. I have ridden many long trips through mountianous terrian by practicing these strategies. When riding the Alaskan highway, we encountered many such hills. My partner woulds always wind up and take a run at these hills, petering out before he got even half way up, he never seemed to get it. I would have to wait for him at the top, sometimes having time for a leisurely lunch etc. Steamboat mountian is the longest steep grade I can remember that you can see ahead for miles and miles. By selecting the appropriate gear and energy level needed to make it to the top, and not looking ahead at the depressing task, next thing I knew, I was at the top and thinking to myself, that wasn't so bad afterall, I did it!

I just bought a computer from bonktown , so i plan on seeing what my avg. speed going up this hill is then slowly add more speed each week.

my $.02 coming from a fat middled aged fart who used to be light, toured a lot then started training with racers and racing then the process reversed with life. I had a pretty good hill climbing capability compared to my peers who had much better sprint capability. While they left me at the line I left them up the climbs.

1. get comfortable with climbing BEFORE you try and increase your speed. That's why you have the problem to begin with. You're hitting the hill then amping the effort because it requires more effort to go the same speed up a hill. What you haven't learned is what is the comfortable pace for a given incline. So pay attention to your breathing and NOT any speed or gear.

2. find a breathing effort that's comfortable. Just like on the flats.
Like everyone else has said that means shifting DOWN as the incline begins. Most folks describe it as shifting BEFORE the hill begins but the basic idea is that if you're riding at a particular effort and gear on the flats the same thing happens on a hill of a particular incline. You don't charge into it until your heart rate goes up and you approach an anaerobic effort until you HAVE TO shift down. You down shift as the effort takes you out of our optimum comfort zone. Whether that's 60%70%75%,80% or whatever is up to you.

Going into hills until you blow up is like riding sprints on the flats until you blow up. If you don't do it on the flats why do it on the hills? Charging into a hill makes sense if you're in a hurry and you can MAINTAIN the increased effort. If you can't maintain it, you're wasting it and will have to recover from the effort.

3. This is mostly an attitude/perception problem. You think that riding a particular speed is "bike riding" and something approximating that speed up hills is expected. But if you looked at all the power/speed/incline graphs you'll see that the effort to ride VERY fast on the flats is a LOT more than your normal effort and the effort to ride up inclines even at half your speed on the flats requires a LOT more effort than you are accustomed on the flats.

4. So basically set yourself up for dissapointment, throttle yourself BACK and DON"T attack the hills. Remember, if you aren't attacking on the flats, why do it on the hills? Or to put it another way if your attacks on the flats are 5 second that's how big of a hill you can attack, and that's a pretty short hill. If you've got a hill that's going to take a few minutes to climb and you're accustomed to 5 second sprints you're deluding yourself that you're going to be sprinting for minutes on end. Even Lance doesn't sprint for minutes on end.

So resign yourself to going SLOW at the very bottom of the climb. That means dropping the gears immediately. Then enjoying the ride at 5, 6, 7mph or whatever the breathing effort is that you use on the flats. As you can see from any of the programs where you can plug in numbers your speed drops off a LOT on even low inclines for the same effort on the flats.

The thing I'd use the computer for is measuring avg speed and time up the hill. NOT to increase your speed. Go ahead and try it going slow, charging and blowing up, charging at a sustainable and increased effort. You'll come around pretty quick to the realization that slow and steady requires NO recovery and will get you up the hill at the same or less time than charging and blowing up which WILL require recovery. Finding an increased sustainable effort will help you improve your technique but it WILL require recovery.

If you are serious about wanting to go faster up hills and not just make them tolerable or enjoyable then you will have to increase your power SUBSTANTIALLY. Which requires lots of time and recovery within the time of training. Think of a year. You can make qualitative improvements in a three month season. In a month you can make noticable improvements and lose them a month later. In a week you can get the idea of what I'm talking about.

Coming to terms with the hill is a lot easier than increasing your base power output.

^^^^^^^^^^^^


Im moving up too the rocky mountains in BC for snowboarding . Hopefully I can make enough money to stay up their for the summer and train for cycling .

6'2" and pretty athletic and I'm guessing under 30 would lead me to believe you don't have power/weight ratio problem but possibly a combination of lack of technique and needing a better aerobic base. All of the above still applies. You'll learn technique better staying in your comfort zone and increase your aerobic and base power output by pushing your comfort zone. Do the first before the latter. Poor technique overloads the big dumb muscles and better technique spreads the load around so that whatever power your lungs and heart are capable of will be better applied to the rear wheel. It's a combination of using some muscles less, some more in each leg cycle. Postural muscles as well as ones being used to directly apply power.