I have pressure from the top. At about the 8 o'clock position to the 6 o'clock position I pull back

When I started to ride seriously over 30 years ago I read either an article or book that said to "visualize" pulling up. I used to practice this and always have been able to pedal in circles. I also found after working on it that I could eliminate bounce up to almost 200rpm. I won a lot of TT's over the years so I guess it works, at least for me. I have no doubt I am really pushing on the pedals but I still visualize pulling.

Pull, push, swipe... However you do it, you want smooth circles. You can tell they're smooth by listening to your tires, especially if you have tread or knobbies. Constant hum = smooth. pulsing hum = not smooth.

I read somewhere that Shimano put load cells on pedals and used that data to develop the funky shape of biopace chainrings.

Retro Grouch,
Do you find peddling on a recumbent bikes requires different training techniques?


I ask this because while I go uphill I tend to stand a lot on my bikes.


Thanks,

John S

You'd definitely have to develop a new style since you can't stand up on a recumbent. I tend to muscle my recumbent up the hills but a lot of recumbent folks use some really tiny gears (<20GI) so they can spin up. When I ride a DF bike uphill I tend to stay in the saddle and muscle it up at low RPMs too. I definitely don't pull back on the pedals at all so I'm guessing I basically rely on a 180 degree power stroke.

The difference that bothers me most riding a recumbent is intersections. I can't rotate my torso as much for looking to either side or looking behind so I have to rely on using a rear view mirror and being a lot more cautious.

I've always wondered what a smooth efficient pedaling stroke feels like. In an article, the author mentions how fluid and effortless the ex-racers pedal and that he felt humbled riding with them. What did this person see that made him think that? Most important of all, is what does it feel like and how to get there?

When I think about pedaling, where I focus on smooth circles or trying to be efficient under duress, there are three key images I'll rotate through, applying only one at a time.

Sweeping the feet horizontally. This was mentioned earlier and does help smooth out the stroke.

Pushing the knees into the handlebar. I tend to focus on this more, helps increase speed and riding under effort.

Spinning tight small circles. I believe this helps minimize excessive motion in the lower and upper body and works well at higher cadence.

I believe these three visual thoughts have helped my development, but like most things, there's more work required.

Sometimes, but only rarely and not for very long.

Most of the people posting here don't know what they're talking about. Pedaling technique is a red herring.

Researchers were putting force-sensing pedals on bikes decades ago and looking at how people actually pedal. Even riders who *think* they're pedaling circles don't. In the late 1980's Kautz was looking at pedal forces. You can actually find his original data files here. In 1991 Coyle (and Kautz) published a paper comparing elite "national-level cyclists" with very good regional and "state-level" cyclists. Here's figure 5 from that paper:



Group 1 are the elite national-level cyclists, Group 2 are the very good state-level cyclists. As you can see, on average the Group 2 cyclists pull up very slightly on the pedal on the recovery and push down a little less on the power part of the pedal stroke. On average, the elite national-level cyclists don't pull up on the back side and stomp down harder during the power phase. That means the best cyclists have *less* "circular" pedal strokes, no matter what they thought they were doing. As for "scraping mud" across the bottom of the pedal stroke, if you examine the actual data files you'll see that they don't do that, either.

I have a friend who is a cycling coach. A few years ago he had to have the lower part of his left leg amputated. Now he concentrates on training to maximize his power and doesn't worry about pedal stroke. He can't pull up on the back side or he'd yank his prosthetic off his stump. He can't scrape mud off at the bottom of the stroke, either. All he can do is stomp down, so he stomps down hard. He has years of power files, both pre- and post-amputation. After a long period of recuperation and training, he eventually surpassed his pre-amputation threshold power. Stomping seems to work for him. [Edit:] As for one-legged pedaling, he recommends that you pedal with as many legs as you have.

Hate disagreeing with god here, but . . . I've read that Coyle study. It's of TTers on the TT bikes of the time. I'm one of the advocates of a good pedal stroke that you're dissing, so I'm pretty good at it, and yet I can't pedal circles in that position either. I'd look just like those graphs. Pedaling circles is also not that important for short periods on the flats, even on the hoods, though it will reduce fatigue. Be that as it may, on long rides, especially those with lots of climbing, pedaling circles is how one goes fast. It's not about 1 hour power production, anymore than it's about how much one can squat. It's about many hour power production. The more muscles (muscle volume) you engage, the longer you last at a given power. That's part of it. The other part is that most of us climb at a considerably slower cadence than we use for TTing. Climbing at that slower cadence, one wants to avoid banging one's legs with more powerful contractions than absolutely necessary. The way we do that is by not constantly decelerating and then re-accelerating the bike. Thus obviously there is no need to have a constant power production by each crank, and thus no need to pull up. What is required is that the sum torque of both cranks be constant. That's exactly what a perfect pedal stroke achieves. On the rollers, we hear a steady hummmm. Equally obviously, if our roller pedaling looked like Coyle's graph, that would not be the case.

I've ridden with Chris Ragsdale, first American finisher in RAAM 2013 and winner of the FC 508. He's as smooth as butter, perfect pedal stroke. Same with Merckx for that matter. It's something to aspire to.

Then there's the whole PowerCranks thing. AFAIK, everyone who's trained on them for a number of months (2000-3000 miles) has had results. I realize that there are venomous discussions of this on various forums, and I'm not trying to start one here. I would note that the PowerCrank user unweights the back leg and does not pull up any more than the weight of the crank itself, about as shown in Coyle's graph. The gentle reader can do their own research and decide for themselves.

In cases like this, I tend to use a rule, not quite as effective as Occam's Razor, but good enough: most people are not idiots. I put Greg Lemond in that most people category along with Merckx and my friend Ragsdale.

Try this. Deliberately pull up on the rear pedal while deliberately not pushing down on the front pedal. It will feel strange but do it. You'll see that you can generate some power for a fairly short time before the unusual effort tires out your legs, mostly hamstrings. Maybe 10 or 20 pedal strokes. Then go back to regular pedaling. In a few minutes, switch to pulling up again. Repeat.

Now try something more. In a pretty high gear and low cadence, try pushing with one leg while pulling with the other. Again it will feel strange, and it may take some time before you can develop the coordination. Usually I push my butt back in the saddle. As you do this, the practice at pulling up will be useful.

What is the practical use of this? First, on long rides when your legs are getting really tired, you can give them short breaks by switching to pulling up for 10 or 20 revolutions. Even those little rests help. Second, when you need extra power but don't want to stand up or shift, you can get some extra power for a short burst, by doing the push + pull. Usually this is handy on short grades.

I've never been able to continue pulling up for more than a short time - a few minutes at most. Possibly if you trained it, you could develop more endurance at pulling up. But maybe the training time would be better spent on the pushing down muscles.

This push-pull discussion is interesting to say the least. While I was at the gym last night I focused on a few of the techniques mentioned on these threads. I found most theories here to be...for the most part...true.

After my initial warm up I started the 'clean your shoe' stroke. While this helped to smooth my peddle stroke I found I was using my ankles a lot more which wore out my calf muscles like never before. While this excersize will take time to work on and improve, it helped to keep my cadence at an increased and steady pace (for a the short period).

The second item I worked on was the pull on the upstroke as mentioned by jyl in #35 . I noticed the more you focus on the upstroke, the less you concern yourself with the downstroke. This seems to give you a tremendous amount of added power, but like the 'clean your shoe' stroke, I found that I will burn out the muscles very quickly. I believe one would need to train this way (as in anything) to get really good at it.

I found if you focus on both these peddle styles, your overall stroke seems to improve in both smooth and power no matter how short lived they are. As I continue to experiment with these different stroke styles I also hope to improve my overall ride by incorporating all the things I learned this year. Since I am not a snow bunny, I will continue to wait until spring to find out. Who knows, maybe I will find I continue to resort back to my standard power down stroke.

Thanks for all the info,
John S

Adding some science to my observations above, this study shows an endurance increase even in the short term, 45 minutes, from modifying the pedal stroke to a more smooth circular pattern:
https://www.radlabor.de/fileadmin/PDF...MSS_-_2011.pdf

Searching on the web, I found it notable that there are a large number of websites which refer to the 1991 Coyle study as gospel, as though the science of pedaling dynamics had come to a halt then and there.

My pedaling technique came from a book 30+ years ago. Circular pedaling, pulling through and up, ankling, total relaxation of alternating legs every 10 rotations during TTs, jutting lower jaw forward and inhaling over tongue to keep mouth moist and more was information that I have found helpful.

I know for my abilities the variation of power application to the pedals has helped me even if the studies/testing shows something else.

BTW, these techniques helped immensely during the 112 miles in my Ironman and during my current rides with individuals younger and stronger than me.

Here is a more recent study discussing pedaling "technique".


"When the participants were instructed to pull on the pedal during the upstroke, mechanical effectiveness was greater (index of force effectiveness=62.4+/-9.8%) and gross efficiency was lower (gross efficiency=19.0+/-0.7%) compared with the other pedaling conditions (index of force effectiveness=48.2+/-5.1% and gross efficiency=20.2+/-0.6%; means and standard deviations collapsed across preferred, circling, and pushing conditions). "

Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-rQN...6zPoymgKaIoDLA

It's always comforting to believe in something no matter what objective studies and testing show.

and
Yeah, both were discussed in this recent open-access review article, as well as a review of some of the research on PowerCranks. The Theurel study lacked a control group.

Right, riders do it but I'd describe that as "sometimes, but only rarely and not for long" because it's tiring.

Actually, it was Cat 1 and 2 riders (you don't cat up if you only ride TTs, so they were actually pretty good road racers, too) on a Monark ergometer with their own saddles, drop bars, and in their preferred road bike position. But even if you were right about them being only TTers on TT bikes, that's irrelevant. The main point is that the best riders had less round pedal strokes than the (still very) good riders. And I was pointing out the Coyle study because it's been around for a long time *and you can download the actual individual data files for these riders* so you can examine them yourself if you wanted to.

Well, it may be AFAYK, but I know guys who trained on them and didn't get the promised results. Plus, if PowerCranks were so effective, why are benefits so hard to find in controlled studies? As the review linked to above finds, only the Potteiger and Luttrell study found a significant difference (and it was in GE, not in power) and a subsequent research study could not replicate that finding.

But more than that, in this very thread you can see two different suggestions about how to achieve a "smoother, rounder, more circular pedal stroke." One suggestion was do do one-legged training, and you've brought up PowerCranks and Theurel et al with their feedback loop (which, as has been pointed out, lacked a control). The other suggestion was to ride a fixed-gear. That's pretty odd, because about the farthest you can possibly get from decoupled cranks is a fixed-gear, yet both are suggested as ways to achieve a more circular stroke. So, it should be simple to see who has a rounder, more even, stroke: track riders or PowerCrank users once you put each of them on a normal road bike with normal cranks. And the verdict? Neither. The riders who have the roundest pedal strokes are MTBers. Occam's Razor would say that when diametrically opposed training methods claim to produce exactly the same result but that result isn't actually observed, there's a problem.

I keep coming back this: Rollers. If you can't pedal circles you can't ride rollers. Not a lot of theories or calculations required. If you ride rollers your spin will be better. By definition.