On anything greater than 8%, even the lowest gear will give a pretty decent training load to anyone who's not training like a competitive racer. Make it a 15% hill, and even in the smallest gear of a triple, it's good training for nearly any rider save the very best.

One of the best ways to force a slow flatlander rider who's stuck in their comfort zone on the flats, is to force them into seriously hilly terrain. No more easy spinning on the steeper sections for those slackers.

I have the opposite effect. If I want to really do some damage on the local group ride, I do more overdistance and overelevation mountain rides than exceed the parameters of the group ride, and then when I rejoin the group ride, I can hammer with them with much better effect.

At the non-pro levels, you raise your FTP by whatever means possible, you generally ride faster both solo and group. Yes there are group tactics that have to be learned in a group, but that's a somewhat different issue than just riding faster on a flat than you typically do as the OP asked, for which raising FTP is generally the answer (outside of an egregiously bad bike fit.)

Since power is force times speed, it is far from clear the guard is more powerful than the receiver. Assuming the guard generates more force than the receiver, without more information there's no way to tell if that extra force is sufficient to overcome the lower speed resulting in more power.

I think the opening post is a little confusing.

You ask whether you will be faster overall if you "include" steep climbs. But it is not clear whether you will add them to your training, or whether they will replace training on flat routes. If it is the former, there is no doubt that you will see an improvement in your overall performance, and most notably of course in your ability to climb. If it is the latter, the question is a lot more complicated, and I actually do not have a clear answer. There is a mental aspect to climbing as well that can make you a stronger cyclist overall. Then it could also differ dependent on the person himself, and what part of his body he should focus on in training to improve his cycling.

I honestly do not think it could hurt. If you have any climbs available in your surrounding areas, I do not see why you would not use them for training. At the very least, it makes things more interesting, which is usually reason enough for me.

Yes.

There have been some really good comments in this thread...frankly...it appears to me everyone is on the same page, certainly not the sentence, but within a few paragraphs.


Living in Colorado always cycling a variety of courses on the front range, and as a rec cyclist passionate about what cycling brings to my healthful and competitive life, "All-Round" rings true for me as the constant goal. It's such a fine balance, power:weight, and finding that perfect form that has me at my best for all the flats, ups and downs.


Specifically for the OP, I would say yes, take climbing opportunities with the same purpose you do as with flat sprinting and those head wind days. For me, along with attention paid to my diet/nutrition, sleep, body weight and yoga conditioning, my growth in cycling comes with variance...mixing it up.

Oh, and FWIW: My biggest gains in measurable power have come with a keener mind. Working that neocortex that manages all the body growth, nueromuscular firing and a sensible balanced life strategy have paid large dividends :)

in short, you are talking about maintaining constant pedal pressure.

I find that moderately steep long hills are the best if your goal is to get faster on the flats. I personally wouldn't even call these "hills" because they're not by any means steep, but enough to where if you try to sustain a good speed it'll hurt. The key is to suck it up and hurt the whole way up.

I see it as running with ankle weights on. For a while I was doing these short 10 mile loops around my house where I give an all out effort. They're short and sweet (or painful depending on how you see it).

IMO, the most important issue is technique. If when climbing, you work hard on applying power throughout all 360 degrees of your stroke, pulling through the dead spot as well as you push, you'll gain the efficiency and technique that will serve you well on the flats. Those muscles take a while to condition, but when the endurance and memory is there, you'll be faster on all terrain.

I haven't found this to be true for me, contrary to how logical it sounds.

Reliably, I'm finding that the lower my cadence (not super slow, but maybe 75-lo 80s), where I'm not as silky smooth as when I am at 90-100, I generate 15-30 more watts on average on climbs, even long 1hr ones, on average. It's really noticeable. If being silky smooth would get me more power, I definitely would have done it, as I do a regular climb here that takes pretty much an hour to ascend, up the whole way. But what I'm finding is that mashing the pedals and keeping a pretty heavy load so you can't slack off, keeps the power up.

I've experimented with higher cadences since I typically train at 90-100 on my weekday indoor training sessions, but there's no doubt it gives worse power results for me.

My hill climb isn't all ugly, but it's far from pretty - in contrast, when I spin high rpms, I can get a super smooth trace on things like TrainerRoad from the powermeter, which is very difficult to get when you're mashing away at low rpms. Still, I'll take the higher power over the smooth pedaling any day.

^^^^^Actually I don't think we're far off. I'm not so much referring to cadence, so much as I'm referring to efficient pedaling. Like you, I probably spin the low 70's on my climbs, but do so fairly smoothly while focusing on pulling through the dead spots. I train one to two days a week on a fixie which forces one to develop a good strong circular pedaling motion, and while it definitely improves my pull on the flats, it's essential when encountering hills on that beast!

This doesn't make sense. If you're generating 400 watts at 100 rpm and another rider is putting out 350 watts at 120 rpm, you will be faster.

This post seems 100% on point. It is NOT a theory, it is his observation.

Plus I like it because it agrees with my personal experience. Steep intervals make me a stronger cyclist which improves my average MPH on all my rides, because the ascents are faster. But they do not make me faster on the flats. I am firmly convinced that I (maybe not you) need to practice riding over 20 MPH on flats to improve my ability to ride over 20 MPH on flats.

However I agree with the logic of all you people saying power is power, and more power translates directly to the ability to ride faster. Logic - yes. But I do not find that it works in practice. Like Big John.

[16-17 MPH on a course with an average ascent of 40-50' per mile is good for me.]

qft

Climbing builds strength (torque). Strength is an excellent prerequisite for speed. However, if you want to go fast on the flats, you need to train fast. Use your newly acquired strength from climbing and then adapt it to speed training techniques.

Until you learn what that word (strength) means, I recommend you avoid using it.

For a beginner of course any training is going to help but for someone like me who has been riding for decades, (I'm 59), there is going to be a plateau, a point where I am not going to get any stronger, either due to time constraints, physical limitations, or lack of inclination.
I like long climbing rides and if I do enough of them I start to feel pretty good on the climbs, but when I go with a fast group it is a big difference, at least the first time chasing the paceline around.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I agree to a point that climbing will make you faster on the flats but at some point you need to go fast to learn to go fast. That's what I meant by saying there is more to it than just power.

I choose not to play with gravity at constant wattage - Uphill (too slow) or Downhill (too fast). I power up on the flats while everyone is conserving for the hills.

That's a good way to be slow.

Speed on flat ground is approximately proportional to the cube root of power output. IOW, you need to work 30% harder for a 10% speed increase or 8X as hard for twice as fast.

Speed up steep hills is approximately linear with power putput. IOW, 30% harder is about 30% faster and doubling your speed would take 1/4 the power as on flat ground.

I find that climb makes me faster overall.... indirectly.

I say indirectly because I love to climb hills and typically go faster up a hill without even thinking about it, whereas I have difficulty making myself put up a huge effort or interval on flat ground. Knowing that I can be the first one to the top of a hill or damn near kill myself going up a climb just makes me want to go hard. This is inadvertantly an interval and I'm not even thinking of it as one, rather I'm just riding up a hill.

I hope that makes sense.

As for the result of what I've been doing for the last couple years hill vs. flat wise, I think it all comes down to power to weight ratio. I'm 145# so my ratio is high enough that I don't have to make as much power as someone who is 175# to go the same speed uphill. Conversely, that same guy takes gravity out of play and is on a flat and goes super fast. This is the reason that I'm not a good crit racer, but have had very good results in hill cilmb races... those big powerful guys don't have as good a power to weight ratio to keep up with me and will get worked going up, but if the road gets flat or turns down for longer than a tiny bit, they'll usually catch me.

Mmmm.
All I know is I can do a flat time trial and get 25mph. I guess that's slow compared to 30mph.

My take from your post is that you're saying that you pace your TT efforts by going hard on the flats, and easier on the hills. As a matter of arithmetic, that's a losing proposition. You'll lose more time on the climbs than you gain on the flats.

The better pacing strategy is to go a bit over threshold, i.e. 105% of FTP ( or more depending on grade) on the uphill portions, even if that means you have to back off a bit below threshold on the descent, or flat sections to recover.

http://www.beatyourpb.com/profiles/b...may-not-always

I'll give you my story and maybe it will apply to you. I started cycling about 5 years ago in Greenville, SC. All we did was climb hills - all the time. I didn't race and most of our group rides were rides to destinations where you regrouped and then road the second half of the ride. A lot of climbing - a lot of elevation gain. For fun, we would do long rides of 10,000 ft of elevation gain. I was fit and in what I considered very decent shape.

Two years later, I drug my bike up to MD to visit my parents and ride the Seagull Century (or something like that) - the ride was flat as a pancake. And I crushed it. I don't remember by average MPH but it was the fastest I had ever ridden. It was a start when you feel like it ride & I started later (due to sleeping in) and I just passed people all day long - even tandem pulling pacelines - just cruised right by them. I had a guy who flatted and his friends / group left him. He jumped on my wheel and I drug him back up to his friends - he thank me a bunch and even bought me a beer after it was over. In summary, I felt like "the man" for sure. I was convinced that since I trained in mountains that it made me a "strong" rider.

6 months after that I got transferred to Orlando FL. Packed up my stuff and moved down. I spent the next 6 months getting dropped from all the fast group rides in town. Confused - I couldn't understand it. I thought I was a "strong" rider, but I guess I was strong when I managed my cadence and my pace. These guys just seem to hammer and hammer away and I always seemed to get dropped at some point on the ride. Eventually, I gained some weight and built up the muscles required to keep up with those fast paced rides & learned how to hide in the wind a little bit.

So my point is - climbing may give you a good base to go fast on the flats but depending on what you are trying to do on the flats - you would be better to train for that specifically.

so you started late and crushed a bunch of freds on a fred century, and felt strong until you rode with strong riders in Florida then came back to reality?

one of the hardest groups in town for me is one that does a 17 mile stretch of flat straight road with the wind always helping. It typically moves in waves averaging usually 29mph for that section, with lulls of 25 and surges of sometimes 35+ if some of our pros or strong cat 1s show up. I'm usually happy when we turn right and sit up.

I simulate hills using leg press machine. Lots of reps. Then do time trial. Seems to help for part of the way. The roads are in terrible shape getting to the hills so I don't do hills much. Nasty railroad tracks in the way also. No fun at all.