During the winter I have been focusing on pedal technique and cadence speed at the gym. What I am finding (at this time) is I need to focus on my peddling when I want to pull up on the peddles. It has not yet come naturally to me and at times it seems like it never will. When I focus on pulling up while pushing down my cadence increases even though I am not trying to increase it. When I put most of my effort and thought into pulling up, the foot on the down stroke will naturally follow with little to no effort. This forces me to engage different muscle groups which seems to allow my sour muscles to relax a little and recover. I've tried this technique on different difficulty settings and for the most part, I get the same results. I do however find that when on the hill setting it can tax your metabolics as mentioned on #7 ....but to what extent is unkown to me until I can test these practices in the real world, on my bike, on the hills, this spring.

Even if I gain no extra speed or endurance from this experiment, if I end up improving my peddle stroke along with proper gearing when climbing hills, I will consider it a win.

Hope this helps,
John S