Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
In a lower gear! No one ever includes the last part. They make it seem like shorter cranks make you stronger. They do not. Your power does not increase, so if you reduce your leverage by using shorter cranks and thus increase your cadence to compensate, you will find the same gear harder to turn. You 'might' be able to use a lower gear AND a faster cadence to achieve the same road speed as before. Maybe, because cadence is an intrinsic thing. Just because you CAN pedal a faster cadence with shorter cranks does not mean you will want to. Competitive riders want to. They must. Commuters might. Recreational riders probably will not.
It just feels easier on the legs and many of my still unbreakable climbing PRs were done on a bike with short cranks (150 mm)
My current bike of 3 years has 170mm. 170mm was determined to be the correct size for me based on inseam of 83 cm. However, I still perform better and apparently with higher FTP on shorter 150 mm crank spinning higher cadence at lower gear.
I'm simply short on luck finding affordable 150mm 1x crankset the reason why I'm still using 170mm. And even after 3years, I would have adapted to the 170mm crank by now but I till make more power on the 150 crank.