This has been mentioned before, but they don't. In fact, they put the body in a powerful position for out of saddle climbing.

We have few hills here in Indiana, except for very steep, short hills around our sand dunes. I'm running 38x15 gearing with an SRAM Automatix 2 speed, giving me gear inches of 67" and 92" with 28 mm tires. I've not found one hill that I can't climb with this setup.

Great that you are riding, I plan to do the same as long as I can. I had to take ~ 9 months off of riding due to my quadruple bypass surgery last year. Now I feel as strong as I ever have on the bike.