I'm fairly new to road cycling - been at it 3 or 4 months. Before that, I've ridden BMX bikes off and on most of my life. I've found that apparently like most new roadies, I feel more comfortable pushing big gears than spinning small ones. I've been feeling like this may be the cause that I get dropped so easily on climbs or in headwinds - I start out strong but just get too tired to keep up.

Having this in mind, I've been trying to focus on spinning faster. When I'm on the bike, spinning fast, I feel like I'm hopping on my seat with a jerky motion. I also feel like I'm not getting as much of a stroke out of each leg as I should be. (probably because on my BMX bikes, I'm fully standing when mashing, so my leg is fully extended.. nowhere close to that on a road bike) When I'm on a stationary, I seem to have more luck reaching high RPMs, but my cadence still isn't very smooth and on lower resistances it gets really uneven.

So, my question is, does anyone have any tips for smoothing out my cadence and working on spinning fast? The computer I currently have doesn't have a cadence sensor, but I hope to get one in coming months.