nickthaquick1

Ok so i live next to some decent hills relative to the Boston area (500 feet in ~2 miles) so when i go for a casual, non-commuting ride my obvious choice is to do some climbing -- less traffic, smoother roads. To help motivate my training ill use the stopwatch on my computer and do a time trial from the base of the hill to the top, usually taking me 8 minutes or so. Recently i've been trying to think of ways to better my time and remember reading somewhere on here that it's more efficient to use a low gear and stay seated and just grind the hill out that way. So i've tried it on several occasions to eliminate the possibility of winds, tempature, or having a 'bad day' on the bike and realized my times are consistently slower by 30 seconds or more - which is kind of a lot over an 8 minute climb.
Not only that, but climbing in a lower gear burns a LOT more than mashing the pedals to the top. Are there any best practices in climbing that i don't know about? Obviously keeping as light as possible and having your tires inflated as high as possible helps, but anything else as far as riding style?

Tio

Couple of things (and no disrespect intended), but 500' in two miles is an average of only about 4.7% gradient. This is neither a long climb nor a steep climb. I suspect that even those cyclists who prefer spinning up extended (or steep) climbs at a high cadence would not reap too many benefits from upping the spin from 90 rpm +/-.

Second, assuming that one is on a climb that merits spinning at a high cadence, you have to remember that this is a different style of riding and, therefore, your legs will have to adjust to riding at this tempo.

JoelS

You also need gears low enough to maintain a high cadence at a comfortable load.

topflightpro

There is a difference between spinning up a hill and spinning out on a hill. If you are going at 100+ rpms and not going anywhere, you need to be in a harder gear.

hhnngg1

Actually, I've found similar - for SHORT climbs like the ones you describe, or basically TT efforts <15 minutes, I can definitely go faster with larger gears. Mash like crazy. I'm like almost 2mph faster.

However, for me, once I'm going over 15 minutes of hard effort, that type of mashing = slower time on the backside, or the final 15-30 minutes after that. So I've found it better to pace it with a higher cadence and easier overall effort (=slower speed) for the first 10-15 mins, and then work it hard on the 2nd half - ends up for a much more even pacing and overall faster speed. I think that mashing burns out the legs too quickly at first, although if you're very fresh, you can burn the legs longer.

For long efforts though, I've found that offloading the work to the heart a bit gives a better result - by about 0.5mph. It's more about the EVEN pacing, I think, than the gearing - I encounter the same thing in running where I have to run the first half of a 10k race at an easier pace than expected to hold an overall steady (and faster) pace.

nickthaquick1

i guess i should have emphsised the word 'relative' -- the hill i am climbing is by no means a killer as i do hillsets frequently, but it IS a good workout and tougher than other roads in the area as you can ride a century that has about 1500 feet of total climbing.

blue hills:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Hill

i guess when i read lower gear = better the hill / mountain in question may have warranted a different riding style where mashing is not the ideal riding style, true?

eippo1

There's an important distinction to be made here. Spinning is indeed more efficient for your legs up the hill, not your times. That said, everybody is different and all hills are different. When I'm climbing around Boston, I'll save energy by standing and blasting up hills because I have big quads and it take relatively little out of them over the course of the ride.

However, if I'm climbing out in the Berkshires, this approach would guarantee a very short ride. For these longer slogs with steeps, I will prefer to mix it up and mainly spin up the 5-7% gradients and then shift into a harder gear and stand for the higher gradient portions of the climb.

hhnngg1

An 8 minute hillclimb, while a good workout, qualifies as a SHORT or SMALL hill if it's <15% incline.

Go to any place with mountains, and you'll routinely find climbs of 45mins - 2 hours - continuously with no decline. That's a hill that may prefer smaller gearing to maintain a higher overall average speed since you'll burn out at lactate/mashing intensity on those.

You might have to learn this the hard way - with hard data, like I did. I tested similar efforts on a bike trainer with computer - and mashed my way through a 60 minute all-out effort versus spinning. It was quite apparant that after 20 minutes, my speed on mashing started drop, and continued to do so, whereas by starting with a faster-than-normal cadence, my overall speed stayed higher despite a slower start.

jrobe

You really need a powermeter to make a fair comparison.

You obviously were putting out more power with a bigger gear and lower cadence than your attempts at a smaller gear and higher cadence. One possibility is that you just need to train yourself to climb with higher power outputs but at a higher cadence, and if you did, you might be able to sustain it much longer. Everyones optimal cadence though is different (but it is dependent on training also). Lance Armstrong climbing cadence changed considerably over the years.

merlinextraligh

You really can't draw much of any conclusion from your exeperiment.

1) we don't know what gears and cadences you're using. When you say "mashing" do you mean 50 rpm, or 70? When you say spinning, do you mean 90rpm or 110 rpm? Without specifying what cadences you're actually talking about, we can't draw much of a conclusion.

2) There are a number of flaws in the experiment design leading to both selection bias and confirmation bias.
You're trained to climb that hill at the cadence you always use. It's not surprising that you'll be faster at the cadence you're trained for, and you like.

That doesn't mean that you couldn't be faster training at a different cadence.

However, we can't really guess at that because of No. 1.

hhnngg1

Agree -the hard data will show the reality. You can simulate this with a 'poor man's powermeter' with a bike trainer like KK/Fluid2 + speed sensor on the rear wheel, since power is proportional to speed generated on those trainers. Higher speed = higher power.

billallbritten

Read something about slow twitch and fast twitch muscles before jumping to conclusions one way or the other.

https://www.endurancenation.us/blog/c...cling-cadence/

Slow twitch (used in light load spinning) "recharge" very quickly and can be used full strength (not a good description) many times in a short period. Fast twitch take a long time (I've read "day(s)) somewhere to recharge and cannot be used for long periods of time. Note the bit about slow twitch muscles burn fat for fuel (that's a good thing, I think <grin>) for me.

Phantoj

Consider that the basic definition of efficiency is work output divided by energy input. The most efficient way to ride up a hill may not be the fastest -- either over the long term or short term...

X-LinkedRider

It is not more efficient on each individual hill. It is WAY more efficient over the course of the ride. Around here, we climb 500' in less than a mile and 1500' in just over 1.2 miles in a couple of different locations. Not even those are considered long ascents. Steeper, yes, but not long. You can determine the efficiency of the climb by how you feel after fatigue sets in a little bit. (20-40 miles in) I will absolutely stand by spinning up long and steep hills, as my own rides are proven much more efficient that way. However on the short ones, I'll continue to try and bang.

thump55

This.

In your case, where you are drilling it up the hill (not worried about saving energy for later), it is very simple:

Ride in the gear and at the cadence that you can go the fastest at based on the present terrain and your present body condition. (Your "present" terrain and body condition may change a dozen times or more on a mile long climb.)

Selecting the proper gear, cadence, and deciding whether to sit or stand, all come with experience.

Seattle Forrest

Entirely correct.

rbart4506

I never was too concerned about the high gear low gear mash it up a hill versus spinning until I raced in Catskills and Vermont...

At home a 53x39 is just fine considering the biggest climbs are about 300-400ft with sections at 15%, but mostly in the 6%-8%...

At those races a compact would have been so nice to have...Shorts steep sections are fine, but when you are climbing Devil's Kitchen at a cadence of around 50, you know you need more gear

I made it to the top of that baby, without walking, but the legs were so burnt that the final run into the finish was survival and had nothing to do with making any gains. Being able to spin a bit more on that climb would have definitely saved my legs a bit for that finish and for the next day...

Compacts are sitting at home and will be installed this weekend

GDA

Do that same climb 30 times in a row both ways (and keep a cumulative time) and then you'll realize that spinning is better for overall fitness, endurance and speed at the end of the day.

banerjek

Another poor man's powermeter is an HRM as it gives some idea of relative effort. Note that more effort is not always bad. For example, alternating standing and spinning will boost your HR when you're standing. However, using different muscle sets will help you climb faster, and this is something you can do all day -- unlike mashing.

I agree with the others that the OP's test is no good. For short periods of time, you can get away with anything. Heck, even if you're climbing a few thousand feet a significantly steeper grade than the OP mentioned, you can get away with all kinds of things. But you eventually burn up your legs and are in for a world of hurt. On pretty much every climbing ride, there are always a bunch of hammerheads who stomp up the first mountain and they're already weak and hurting by the second.

TDRILL

Yep different muscles for sure. I've been working on my sitting climbing and can now climb hills that I could only climb out of the saddle before and I'm doing them faster than I used to out of the saddle. You have to build your sitting climbing muscles up before you will see the gains over standing climbing.


Also, there is a difference between efficiency and speed. Since we have a lot of similar grades here, I think you can still be faster sitting, but your absolute fastest time will probably be a combination of both. Hit the bottom with speed, hard tempo up sitting, sprint the top out of the saddle, something like that

pallen

Yeah, you set your hill strategy based on how many miles are ahead and how much climbing is to be done on the whole ride. Not that I am anyone to give advice on hills, I'm slow, but I have to manage energy to keep from burning out.

kf9yr

Also if you're sitting and spinning you can shift back on the saddle and ride heels down (not really literally but it feels like it) you can use more of your glute muscles on a seated climb which will save your quads for the steep bits or sprints.

DropDeadFred

I prefer being in a higher gear and pushing harder on climbs rather than keeping my kadence up. I can't stand spinning fast...longer distances will have to be a compromise if you don't want to burn out though

nhluhr

The only way to become a fast climber is to climb fast. You will NEVER get good at climbing if you don't push yourself. If it's truly just a training effort, make that climb a desperate affair. Be out of breath and about to fall over near the top. Then do it again, slow if you must just to prove to your legs that they can handle it.

Tunnelrat81

All this advice must be taken in perspective. Those giving advice here on endurance climbing are climbing mountains. I routinely refer to the local favorite century routes as "flat centuries," and they include around 4,000 ft.+ of climbing.

You should also be careful about the impressions and conclusions that you come to on your own, on the assumption that they'll extrapolate into big climbs. Certainly if your overall ride is shorter (no more than around 50 mi. or so) you can attack all the rolling hills in whatever gear you'd like and easily make it back home without your legs giving out. This is drastically different though when you're heading out for some extended climbing. Training your legs to be able to spin faster will likely benefit you in many ways.

I've heard it explained this way:

Mechanically speaking, it's more efficient to turn a higher gear (lower cadence) but your muscles can only sustain this for a certain amount of time before requiring extended recovery.

So you either have to compensate for this by not ever riding very far, allowing you to mash as much as you'd like. OR, you can learn how to spin a lower gear, which lessens the strain on your muscles, but tends to work your heart a bit more (the heart recovers very quickly from efforts.) Once you've trained your legs to spin faster, you still have the choice of mashing up shorter climbs to keep up with groups of riders. But when the larger climbs come, many times pacing yourself with a higher cadence and possibly slower pace will prove to pull back the mashers before reaching the top of the climb.

-Jeremy