Used to be a newb would have their tires too low, cadence too low, and seat too low.

Now we have road tubeless at 50psi and mashing as an option, and my bike fitter just lowered my saddle a cm because of some new idea.

SoI guess we just look for backwards helmets.

There is no such thing as a wrong cadence.

my older brother lived on del playa in 1990-1992…. ouch!

Well, there is such a thing as a wrong cadence, for a particular rider with a particular body on a particular bike on a particular road at a particular time...

So, yeah, there's not really such a thing as a wrong cadence. Sometimes you wanna spin, sometimes you gotta mash. Having a wider comfortable powerband has to be better than having a narrower one, right?

--Shannon

Why would I need to put any weight on the pedals when the pedals themselves are balanced weight at the ends of the cranks.? Guess what, without muscle operating on them, they're not moving because the chain is holding the crank in place. Do you expect to get a perpetual motion machine? Balance has absolutely nothing to do with it. Your conception of the entire mechanism is completely wrong. We're basically walking on the pedals.

You're confounding two things here, I'm not claiming that lifting your legs provides any power to the drive train, but I'm very aware that I'm not letting my ascending leg be a completely dead weight on the pedal. I'm riding platforms, so I'm not under any delusion that doing so in any way propels the bike. Regardless, are you actually claiming that no muscular energy from either leg is expended in putting the leg back to the top? Because that's clearly a stupid assertion-leg power is the only thing advancing the chain, and if the chain doesn't advance, the crank arms don't move. I'm shocked that I'd have to spell this out to anyone who's actually ridden a bike.

I guess you don't know the difference between an article and an abstract.

It's totally beside the point anyway. The lifting of the leg doesn't generate much if any power because those muscles are evolved only to lift the weight of the leg. The muscles used on the downstroke are evolved to propel our entire weight when walking or running, and are therefore much more powerful.

He's got to explain how the leg goes from the bottom of the crank back up to the top without the use of any muscle power from either leg, and he can't do it sensibly, so he's pulling out this red herring.

He's read the full article. Go to the link and download the article yourself. In particular, he's referring to figures 6 and 7, and the bottom paragraph on page 104 that continues to the top of page 105. Those figures and that paragraph directly contradict your assertion above: the "elite" riders don't pull up as much as the lower skilled riders and, in fact, have less "round" pedal strokes. The elite riders stomp down harder when they push down, and unweight or lift their ascending legs less than the lower skilled riders.

This is true in terms of pedalling technique. I bring this up whenever someone tries to perpetuate the myth that clipless pedals will allow you to produce more power by pulling up on the upstroke. Basically when your leg is raised on the upstroke you are increasing its potential energy (mgh), which is then released again on the downstroke. They do cancel out over each half revolution. Now whether or not you try to "unweight" your leg on the up-stroke to some degree by actively using your hamstrings and hip flexors or just mash harder on the downstroke with your much more powerful quads and glutes doesn't really matter in terms of the total work required. From what I've read most pros do the latter at high power output, but may do the former at lower power outputs. But it's all done at a subconscious level on the bike. The more miles you ride, the more your brain figures out the most efficient way to pedal.

The only time I pull-up on the upstroke is when doing single leg cadence drills and it just reminds me how weak my hamstrings and hip-flexors are relative to my quads and glutes. They are simply less powerful muscle groups.

I definitely agree that there is no meaningful power generated on the up-stroke. Enough studies of hundreds of elite cyclists have repeatedly shown that to be the case at normal cadence and higher power levels.
The weight of the leg itself does cancel out over a half-stroke. You are simply creating and releasing potential energy each time you raise and lower your leg. BUT you still have to expend energy in raising that leg (even if using the other leg to do it) even though you effectively get that energy back in terms of powering the bike forward. So having heavier legs raises your minimum energy expenditure required to pedal. It's no different to standing on the spot and raising your knee in the air and then letting it drop down again. It requires a minimum amount of energy (mgh) to lift your knee in the first place, even though that energy is released as you let it drop back down.

So in a way both of you have a valid point!

That's 25 mph (40 kph) right there! Are you recording cadence? That is not sustainable for pretty much anyone for very long.

If our body was 100% efficient then we’d get back all that energy, but it’s not, so there is wasted energy with every movement.

Sure, but the "mgh" part of raising your leg is at least fully recoverable. I was keeping it simple. I didn't even consider the simple fact that more total mass anywhere on the bike/rider increases the total power required to accelerate or climb a hill.
Was trying to stick to a specific point.

I don't measure cadence and you're right, that's too high for me to sustain for long so it's definitely a bad estimate. I can get to that speed in the flat with a lot of effort, and regularly can keep in the 20-24 mph range in the flat on that gear combo.

So that means your cadence is actually somewhere down in the 50s, which is obviously very low by any standard. It obviously works for you, but it is a pretty extreme outlier for sure.

My optimal cadence varies by load. There is no single best cadence for me.

At lower power levels on long distance rides, I am noodling at 70-72 rpm whereas at threshold on a TT, I prefer 91-94 rpm.

If I am in a criterium sucking hind teet, I might be at 110 rpm coming out of a corner hanging on for dear life.

Pulling back strongly stresses the weakling psoas aka hip flexors with often the feeling recorded as lower back pain on long rides

Understood. I'm just trying to point out that it seems much of the commentary (here and elsewhere) around higher cadences being "better" or "the right way" tend to look at singular components of the process, and how, if extracted and evaluated in a vacuum with zero outside factors, they are irrefutable evidence that lower cadence is worse.

Unfortunately, scientific and other studies often have a confirmation bias and are designed around proving a hypothesis. They aren't always the most objective in their methods, often don't include a wide enough variety of test subjects, and focus on evaluating a very narrow set of results, ignoring other factors and results which they don't deem relevant to what they are trying to prove or disprove. Scientific "fact" also remains treated as such until enough new evidence is produced to disprove it and define the new "fact". Humans tend to like to define everything in terms they can relate to, and can struggle with things that are highly complex and can't be defined in one of the boxes we'd like them to go in. The old idea of the atom being protons, electrons and neutrons. We're now up to 18 predicted types of elementary particles, of which 16 are "prove" having been detected by experiments. Pluto is a planet, not a planet, both it and Eris are both dwarf planets. We come up with words and give them definitions most can grasp and then sometimes those definitions don't work any longer when new evidence is uncovered.

I'm happy to not stick everything into a defined box. I get on my bike and push the pedals at a comfortable rate. If it's getting harder than I want or I'm going uphill, I shift to a lower gear. If it's getting too easy or I want to go faster, I shift to a higher gear. I'm not competing or functioning without the ability to take in more fuel. I'd rather make sure I enjoy my riding rather than make sure I'm riding at an ideal cadence.

It hovers around 60 per my speeds, a bit above, a bit below. But yes, it's a pretty high speed at a very low cadence.

I agree. Personally I use a pretty wide range of cadence in different situations and decades of riding makes that a natural and subconscious choice. The only thing I often do when training is push my cadence envelope a little in either direction to gain flexibility. A lot of structured workouts call for specific cadence depending on the objective or say things like "ride at your normal cadence +5-10 rpm". In that way I've gradually increased my useful cadence range over the years in both directions. I'm fairly happy grinding down in the low 50s when required on a 20%+ slope, or spinning well above 100 rpm at high power. At threshold power on the flat I'm usually in the 85-90 rpm range, but I don't watch it live on my bike computer!

Right, and no one is claiming we all routinely pull "back strongly". That's not to say we don't pull back at all, and that people don't vary in how much they pull back.

I think there's a selection bias inherent in the studies of trained competitive cyclists as to which method is "superior". Basically, most of them are comparatively light body types trained in spinning, and I think that introduces a couple of confounding variables--a) people are generally better at doing things they are trained to do and b) the efficiencies for them don't necessarily translate to other body types, differing strengths and/or infirmities.

Where these conversations tend to break down is people seeming to think there's a "one size fits all" method to cycling that will optimize speed/performance/efficiency without looking at the rather obvious fact that the main component of the vehicle (our bodies) and the engine (our legs & cv system) both vary so widely from person to person.

We should just bear in mind that there is net internal work that must be done to move your legs through the pedaling motion. Some energy is dissipated during that motion with every pedaling cycle because your legs are far from a frictionless system.

We’ve discussed this in the Singlespeed forum. FG riders know this well because they have the choice to not do this internal work and have their legs serve to brake the bike motion. Or they can do only the internal work of keeping up and just let the bike move as it would due to external forces.

For SS and other freewheel riders, we can choose not to do that internal work and we coast. If we do only the internal work, we just manage not to coast and again the bike does what it would based on external forces.

Otto

It seems oversimplified generalizations may also overemphasize the importance of cadence.

I suspect this is the point where the engineer misses the issue that the physiology means that the energy needed to do the work of loading the potential energy is greater than that potential energy due to the inherent inefficiencies of muscle.

I'm neither a physiologist nor an engineer, but I can figure out that if there is energy loss of any kind per revolution, this energy loss is going to be greater at 90 rpm than 60 rpm. My advantage is in being able to put out a lot more torque per revolution on a sustained basis than "normal", so for me it would be unnecessary to reduce the gear and increase the cadence with all of the consequent energy loss per revolution.

BTW, I do vary my cadence a lot on a ride, I often spin a relatively low gear on hills, and will spin a low gear for a short burst to accelerate initially from a stop. I also will ride with a faster cadence in a lower gear into a headwind, and occasionally will do something similar in great heat. Not sure why, but I suspect the faster moving legs are a bit better at dissipating heat. I don't know if the higher torque actually generates more heat internally, but that could also be the case. These could easily be additive factors.

Or we just stop looking for "one size fits all".