Originally Posted by dougmc

So I'm not a particularly strong cyclist. I'm adequate, but I don't do so well on hills.

I'm about 40 lbs overweight and I know that's a lot of it, but I don't think it's all of it.

So I hit a hill, I shift down and go up the hill. If I push it too hard, I peter out and have to stop as expected. If I go slower I can keep going all the way up, though often I can't gear down enough if the hill is steep. (I even put a MTB cassette on my road bike to get lower gears, but even the lowest gear often isn't enough for a 20% grade, for example.)

But one thing is that I never get out of my seat. I know most people stand on the pedals when they're going up the hill and I've tried it, but it feels so weird and uncomfortable (though perhaps that's more weirdness than anything else) that I never want to keep it up. I'd rather just stay in my seat and pedal away.

I've had some knee problems in the past (a year ago) -- turned out to be tendonitis -- but I've gotten stronger since then and haven't had any more serious problems with it, but still, if I let my cadence drop and try to make up with strength, my knees (or tendons in my knees?) will be unhappy with me.

Ultimately, I think my legs are reasonably strong (well, not so much strong, but able to maintain a reasonable cadence) but it's other things that limit my ability to climb -- heart, lungs, liver?

So I want to climb better. Of course, the #1 thing to do is to climb more (relatively easy -- just do it). #2 is likely to be to lose weight (much harder, but still doable.) But beyond that, should I try to do it standing? Keep doing it in the saddle? Push slightly higher gears than I'm comfortable (so I go faster than I can keep for a long period) with and then rest (interval training I guess)?