Road Cycling - Cadence

I am returning to cycling after an 8 year break. When my base fitness is up where it needs to be I will start some proper training.

What's all this about cadence? How do cyclists make use of cadence measurements in their training?

Any useful links appreciated.

C_hawk66

It's simple.

Keep your cadence high. Between 60-90 RPM depending on the ride condition. The higher your cadence is, the more efficient you are, whether on the uphills or when sprinting.

Here is a simple way to measure your RPM, without a timer.

Count:

mississipi one, missisipy two...

which approximates one second.

In that one second, estimate how many rounds you did. If you did one, then your RPM is 60.

If you did about ~1.5, that's 90 RPM. And so on.

Since we are dealing with esitmates, do this two or three times, and work out and average like that. It's simple mind work really.

You can try it out with a timer too, but I find it too distracting. I can get a fairly accurate RPM without using a timmer in just a few seconds.

There are also computers that have a cadence feature. I guess they are as accurate as you can get.

I would call a 90 cadence on the flats a "normal" cadence. High cadences are more around 110. In my book, a good "high" cadence for hill climbing comes in about 75-90.

The idea behind a higher cadence is that it shifts the work from your legs to your cardiovascular system. It is basically a way to get more efficiency out of your cycling. Instead of relying on super strong legs to push high gears (to get a given speed), you spin smaller gears. When you get really macho, you can spin big gears at a high cadence and go really fast!

Amir is right about how to count it, but he doesn't quite tell you that it is the number of rotations of the cranks per minute (i.e. count each time one leg comes over the top).

You can buy a cyclometer which gives you your cadence. If you already have a cyclometer (and don't want to buy a new one), check out the tables I created in Excel, which help you know your cadence given your speed and gearing. You can download them from: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~jmlee

In the next few days, I am also going to post on my page some tips which I came up with for raising one's cadence.

Cheers.

110 huh? Well, I thought that would be too high for someone who is getting back on cycling after 8 years, as he mentioned.

Dunno if I'm wrong about that or not, but I remember that in my own initial training I couldn't get up that high.

On some of the hills around here I still don't get much over 60 despite having climbed them time and time again.

Start by trying to maintain 70 in a fairly easy gear. If that feels pretty easy, go to 80, then 90, staying at each level until it feels easy. Use a gear that feels almost too easy, ie, very little resistance. Once 90 is pretty comfortable start increasing the gear. Getting up to 90 is not too hard, you just have to be patient and focus on it. I am now trying to move up to 100, and that is still an effort.

Although many people can monitor their cadence by counting, I find it an unnecessary distraction. Guess I just don't like to think that hard while I'm riding. I have to concentrate to hold, say 100 rpm, I don't want to have to be trying to count anything. A computer with cadence allows me to monitor cadence at a glance.

Look back through older posts. There have been several threads on cadence with some very good suggestions.
Raymond

A minor point of clarification: I did not necessarily recommend 110 rpms for everyone. I simply maintained that 60-90 rpms was still a "normal" cadence, and not a "high" cadence. Granted, drawing a strict line would be neither easy nor productive. But, I do think that the vast majority of the bicycling literature will maintain that 70-90 rpms is "normal" for most riders and that "high" begins somewhere above that.

But, I will nevertheless defend the idea that even a person returning to cycling after 8 years could do well by jumping right into 90-110 rpms. Higher cadences are much easier on the joints, ligaments, and tendons (as many people know). After several years of little exercise, these parts of the body are going to be far more liable to injury than the muscles or the cardiovascular system (unless there is some other medical condition present).

Getting a cadence up into the 90-110 range doesn't take effort. It takes a bit of discipline and low gears. If one cannot maintain the cadence one wants, one has to gear down. Rainman is absolutely right, the gear should feel almost too easy. That is a good measure of a good spin.

Naturally, someone getting back into the sport needs to take it easy. But, the arguments here favor high cadence spinning. That said, I think that someone can do very well at 80-90 rpms. I like a high cadence myself, but I'll be the first to admit that it may not be for everyone.

Cheers.

" Eddie B." US team coach in the 80's recommended 82 to 96 rpm.
Now some the very best guys ( ie.: Johan Bruyneel, Chris Charmichael- Armstrongs Directuer Sportif and Coach) are recommending in the neghborhood of 100 rpm or higher at times.
I seem to work best in the 100/100+ neighborhood, if I'm with slower riders I find myself at 80 rpm quite often, that's OK. Low rpm occasionally with little effort won't hurt you too much.
If your ride low rpm with high effort you WILL injure yourself, it may take years but it WILL happen and can be fairly serious requiring surgery and very painful recovery.

If your goal is to ride at 90 rpm practice at 100 rpm, as your rpm tends to drop 10 rpm when you're not thinking about it.

Cadence needs to be developed and practiced over time and emphasized at the start of every year, ( Cadence ends to naturally drop over the year as strength increases). If you're just starting out it may take weeks or months to be able to have a comfortable cadence of 90 rpm, and you will have to work on it, ----------------------------- BE PATIENT --------------------------------

Being able to develop a VERY high cadence/Spin, if only over a very short period of time, ( seconds), tends to smooth out your stroke and make your muscles "fire" more efficiently.

I normally try to develop/work on my spin at the start of each season by doing "max" spins- accelerating in an "easy" gear untill I cannot spin any faster, riding a fixed gear bike to force my legs to go in a complete circle and to spin very fast to get any speed, riding one legged to smooth my stroke and to get more power around the "circle" and restricting myself to my small chainring for the first 1000 miles. MY goal is to be able to hit at least 160 rpm on the road and 200 rpm on my ergometer (stationary bike) every spring. Many teams REQUIRE their riders to hit 300 rpm on their trainers.
Speed comes from being able to SPIN your pedals NOT from pushing a big gear.
There is an old saying- "Spinning is everything"

Ride Smooth
Pat

I started cycling (after 25 years) a little over a year ago at age 60. I started on a city bike, but within six months had my road bike.

Even on the 38 pound city bike I found that 90 was a comfortable, and even natural, cadence. I am always there when in steady state mode. I do get higher - to about 115 - but find that at that rate I need to want to go, because I quickly outpedal the gear.

I suppose that going uphill, which I can't do often here in North Holland, that will not be much of an issue. But I also see the profis in the Giro, for example, doing what seems to be about 20! Of course that is on the steep, and after 150 miles, so I guess I can forgive them. :p

Cheers...Gary