My commute is 11 miles one way and the Williamsburg Bridge is right in the middle of it. My question is this, are there any exercises that would improve my performance in dealing with it? I've been crossing it several times a week for months now and I don't see much, if any, improvement. It pretty much consistently kicks my rear. I'm wondering if some squats or stair climbing or anything else would help.

Think circles, always in circles. Try to pull up on the pedal as much as you are pushing down.
Hammering the pedals will burn those quad muscles and tire you out quicker. I usually try to
talk my way up a hill that has me sucking up a lot of air. It seems to calm my breathing down,
and takes some of the pain away. Stairs climbing may help you though. That activity pretty
much uses all of the leg muscles evenly.

Check your seat height. If it's too low, it'll make hills a lot higher. If you're new to cycling, I'll almost guarantee you're seat's too low.

Other than that, my advice is to hit that hill as hard as you can. Make it your daily sprint. Seriously, I've got some decent hills on my commute and it's definitely an adversarial relationship, but I've gotten consistently stronger on them. Squats and stairs might help too, but nothing will help like training on your nemesis.

One thing you might do (if you haven't already) is get a cyclocomputer. Perhaps it's the case that you're getting faster and don't realize it.

Stairs and squats will help, but make sure you've got the gearing to spin up the hill...I've been doing some serious climbing lately, and swapped out my road 12X25 for a 12X27, and it's an appreciable difference.

i learned my lesson with spinning last year on the queensboro bridge so i don't mash anymore. as for the seat height, my knees are almost fully extended (but not locked) at the bottom of my stroke which i believe is correct.

that's a possibility that i haven't considered. i think what i'm looking for is the ability to spin in a higher gear and not be too pooped out by the time i crest the bridge. i guess the only way to know for sure is measuring it with a computer.

I converted an old road bike to a low ratio fixed gear and use it for cadence training. That has made the biggest improvement to my hill climbing: Being able to spin smooth and fast. (I don't ride the fixie on hills. Only on the track or on a mostly flat loop around my neighbourhood.)

Try flatland cadence drills...

- Find a flat, unobstructed straightaway
- Gear down to your lowest, easiest gear
- Sprint like a madman for a quarter mile, but don't gear up, and don't let yourself "bounce" on the saddle.

The only thing that really worked for me was to ride hills and mountains as much as possible.
Everything else helped in such a small quantity that they are not worth mentioning.

So.... find something steeper and ride it. Rinse and repeat.
AKA hill repeats.

I have it easy and just head up into the Rockies to play.

Find bigger hills and ride them regularly. You could even ride up, down, and back up over and over to really train yourself. It shouldn't take too long before the bridge becomes a piece of cake.

As far as form goes, I put my weight forward and am pulling pretty hard on the hoods when things get rough. I also concentrate on my pedal stroke on tougher climbs to get the most out of my efforts, and focusing on each individual stroke distracts me thinking about how much more hill I have left.

Here's a pedal stroke blurb I stole from the Road Forum:

Oh yeah? Well I ride in the Himalayas. And believe you me, yaks are *not* impressed with my approach to vehicular cycling.

I totally agree with you though - the only way to make that commute hill to seem no big deal is to get your ass kicked by a bigger hill.

I disagree strongly with this advice. Pulling up is biomechanically extremely inefficient - your muscles are not good at it at all. Doing this is likely to waste more energy. It's also potentially bad for your knees. Pulling up makes sense for hard accelerations such as attacking or sprinting in a race. But you're not racing, you're going to work. Keep your pedaling smooth, but don't worry too much about the details.

Honestly, way too much fuss is made about pedal stroke, as you can see from the diagram posted in this thread. Sometimes cyclists have a way of taking something very simple and over-analyzing it to death. The pedal stroke is probably the biggest victim. There is not a shred of evidence that any of this stuff really matters. What evidence we do have suggests that the best cyclists in the world are basically mashers - they produce pretty much all of their power on the downstroke. Some tend to point their toes, some don't. Personal fit and comfort is highly variable! What's important is having a position that lets you get as much power as possible, as efficiently as possible, onto those pedals and keeping a smooth, fast spin. All this nonsense about technique, zones, etc is a bunch of malarkey and smoke-shifting that keeps coaches and less-reputable types employed. The correct technique, again, is whatever lets you comfortably and efficiently put out power without injuring yourself.

In any case, you're commuting, right? The best way to get better at riding up that bridge is to ride it every day. It'll get smaller. Soon enough, it won't be much of a challenge and your commute will be that much more fun!

EDIT: Some actual evidence for you:

1. Emma Colson - Power to Pedals.

2. Michael Smartt - Pedaling Technique Basics.

Enjoy!