I start all of my posts with the following disclaimer, if you have already read it, proceed to the next paragraph.

Disclaimer: This post is strictly opinion and should be taken as such. I am not a professional rider or coach. I have no formal training in bio-mechanics, health care or physiology. I do have 33 years of MTB experience and a strong dose of common-sense. I believe in the power of communal knowledge and value the opinion of experts and professionals. I also believe that it is critical to question conventional wisdom, which is often rigid and resistant to other points of view. I have found in all aspects of life that while the status quo is often right, it is equally apt to be wrong, either for some or all. Finally, and probably most importantly, every person and situation is different and what works for some will likely not be right for others.

That said, the topic at hand is whether spinning in circles is truly the best/most efficient strategy. I began to question this wisdom when dealing with knee pain. I was able to resolve the issue mainly through bike fit and improved technique. However, I noticed that my knees tended to hurt more when I focused pedaling in circles. I wondered why that could be.

It made me question whether that was the best technique. The common wisdom holds that the cranks spin in a circle and that applying power through as much of the stroke as possible would be the most efficient. There is no denying that from a mechanical standpoint, that is true. However, the mechanics of the drive system on a bike is not the same as the bio-mechanics of the human body. Yet, there is great pressure within the cycling community to accept the spinning in circles philosophy.

It is probably true that for the elite athlete, more overall power can be applied in a circular motion, but it may be to their long-term detriment, in my opinion.

In my case, spinning is circles does not seem to be the best approach. Besides a reduction in knee pain, I find I can ride longer and harder when focusing on the down and back stroke, which are the most powerful.

If you think about how the body works, it is designed to walk and run. Although that is an elliptical motion, nearly all of the power is provided by the quads and buttocks in the down and back stroke. The abs, hamstrings a other various supporting muscles mainly work in the up and forward motion which is only under the load of body weight (only leg weight to be exact).

The body is not designed to put a heavy load on the up and forward portion of the walk/run motion, so why would that be an efficient bio-mechanical strategy on a bicycle?

Another downside - and probably the source of my knee strain is that extra load is present in the knee joint through all parts of the stroke, assuming the use of clipless pedals or cages. The knee joint is not designed to pull up and forward under load. When walking and running, only the weight of the LOWER leg is on the knee joint.

I have greatly reduced the force applied during the up and forward portion of the pedal stroke and am much happier for it. I can ride longer, harder and faster with no knee pain.

I hope you have found this opinion helpful and interesting!

Ride on...

I am neither an expert nor a professional. I don't get pain often, usually I get pain only when I have gone on, what for my then-current conditioning state, is a difficult ride. When I do get pain, if I focus on pedaling in circles, I have less pain. Whenever something is bugging me, the upper calf, the knee, the thigh, doesn't really matter, if I'm questioning whether I can make it home because things don't seem right, if I focus on pedaling in circles, I make it home OK, and usually, the pain has then eased by the time I get home.

I have no doubt that at times, I am not doing things properly, what it is that I am not doing properly, I don't really know. I know that I have never gotten to where pedaling in circles seems natural to me. And I know that I feel better if I pedal in circles. You have put thought into why you think pedaling in circles is not as efficient. I have put no thought into the why, I only observe my personal outcomes, which are apparently different from your personal outcomes.

It isn't so much that you pedal in circles applying force all 360 degrees of motion. It is moving your feet in circles and applying pressure at the proper time to smooth out the stroke.

The difference between cycling and running is there is no up and down per say in running really. More of a push, stretch, jump, land and do it again. They even make bicycle like devices that mimic that motion.

When talking about spinning in circles on a bike we are talking about getting the feet into the power position and pushing as effortlessly or quickly as possible. That often includes getting the trailing foot off of bottom dead center by lifting slightly, some call it pulling but you are really just getting the foot out of the way and ready to push so as to not interfere with the pushing forward and down power stroke.

It can best be demonstrated while riding a fixed gear bike. The feet are going to move in circles even if you are a masher by nature. But if you try to move your feet to match the stroke created by the movement forward of the bike you will find your speed far easier to maintain than if you try to just mash when your foot gets just past top dead center.

I don't know what that word, efficient, means.

They are beginning to find as left / right instrumented pedals come into wider use that nobody pedals in circles or pulls up. There is a teeter totter effect between the pedal going down and the pedal going up.

That is the force on the pushing pedal might be 20 lbs and the force on the upward pedal might be 10 lbs for a net of 10 lbs downward force.

Better cyclists press harder on the front and are better at getting the trailing foot out of the way faster and with lower negative weight than slower cyclists. So given the above example, they might have 25 lbs on the downward pedal and 5 lbs pressure on the back foot for a net of 20 lbs downward force.

That's a big improvement.

It is the word used in this forum for bestest.

I am with you in being skeptical of the conventional wisdom of "smooth stroke" pedaling in circles as the most efficient. It seems like it is, but "seems like" and "is" are often two different things.

I vaguely recall someone measuring pro's power strokes and finding to their surprise that it was more spiky than recreational riders. I might be mis-remembering (like I said, "vaguely").

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...ng_performance

I'm skeptical that the conventional wisdom believes in "full circle pedaling." It seems mainly to be something repeated by the poorly informed. Often, as with the OP, as a straw man to be knocked down.

Whew... not the nobody pulls up myth again.

Some people do pull up... at least some of the time.

Even lifting the 10 to 20 pounds worth of leg constitutes pulling up. Anything more is a bonus.

And, if one wishes, one can buy "power cranks" which will force pedalling in circles.

There are several related issues. Peak efficiency, Peak power, and Short-term power. I'm not seeing any evidence that pulling up increases overall efficiency. However, personally I find that pulling up is the best way to add a little short-term power, especially if I'm already maxed out at pushing down, not that it can necessarily get me much over 30 mph for brief periods. As far as peak power, I'm not sure. I'm not a fast spinner, so with my cycling, I get more power with a little pulling up, but that isn't necessarily the only way to reach maximum power.

Absent power cranks, wouldn't the 10 to 20 lbs worth of the opposite leg offset the weight or the one moving up?

I'm currently taking a few days off due to a sore knee. Since it didn't hurt that much when I was pedaling, I kept riding for maybe 2 weeks after I started feeling the pain. It wasn't getting better, so it needs rest, plain and simple. I didn't get that pain from "thinking in circles" re my pedal stroke, I'm pretty sure I hurt myself, trying to jam uphill out of the saddle, i.e piston strokes. But the point is, for me, I change my stroke several times during the course of a ride from circles to ovals to ankling to "pistoning" etc. Why use only 1 cycle stroke when you have so many at your disposal to help mange power out put/fatigue etc? When it comes to my pedal stroke, I think in terms of "horses for courses" due to changing road and physical conditions and change it as needed or desired.

If it feels right then it is probably right.

That's not what the instrumentation reveals.

Balance: An Introduction to Left/Right Power Data ~ Hunter Allen Power Blog

See section on gross power released and gross power absorbed.

I pull up, and it makes climbing easier. I'm not racing, though, or trying to produce data for a study. I just ride.

All of them? All four?

Seriously bro? Wow, you are clever and funny, thanks. Is this meant to ridicule? What's the purpose of your reply? Way to set a great example as a Senior Member!

Well, it's all moot now.

After my power portion of my stroke my leg just goes limp and my opposite foots power stroke pushes it up.

I don't know if I am pulling on the up stroke all the time, but I am conscience to get my foot around with as little effort to get to the next power portion of my stroke. I've tried to make the strokes as circular as possible.

If at the bottom of your pedal strok you pull your foot back as if you're scraping mud off your show it'll help you unweight that leg and give a bit more power a bit longer in each pedal stroke.

Cheers

Grant Petersen (of Rivendell) wrote a book called 'Just Ride' in 2012, that is a compilation of sometimes controversial shorts, the very first of which calls the pedal in circles conventional wisdom into question.

Although I'm not entirely convinced, he says that even the pros don't pedal in circles (apparently proven in lab studies), they are just better at minimizing the weight on the upward-moving pedal so one leg isn't fighting the other during the stroke.

Awww. Ruined a perfect record.

How's the knee?

That pretty much says it all. What do the pros think? What you think matters little on this. Unweighting the recovering foot constitutes efficient pedaling. The required motion is a semi-circular swipe, doesn't it?

Correct. If you make a concious effort to pull back on the pedal as if you're scraping mud off the bottom of your shoe, then you're helping the upper foot get past the 12 0'clock position. That is in effect pedalling in circles even if you don't lft the lower foot that much.

It's like pixtoning instead o and it's much more efficient. Just try riding a mile or so without unweighting one leg and then try it again whilst trying to scrape the mud off the shoe technique. You'll see a big difference in effort required.

Cheers

Don't push with both feet at the same time obviously, but all the talk about pro's, power meters, studies and sundry advice seems to me to overlook one important fact: our muscles need the same force, the same power, whether we're lifting the back leg up pr pushing it up with the other leg. Either way, our muscles have to lift the leg. Either way, it's the same weight to lift. The only difference is which muscle does the lifting. So there is no mechanical gain in efficiency.

Maybe a little help from not fatiguing the muscle as much (since different muscles can be used), but that's about it. "Scraping" at the bottom, even less a factor - we get a little more pull on the pedal than we would have, but objectively only a tiny amount. Even so I still find myself concentrating on a smooth pedal stroke sometimes.

But with the weight of the opposite leg offsetting the weight of the rising one, the muscular effort is minimal.