Originally Posted by DannoXYZ

Most certainly, depending upon your form. One of the things you must not do is grip the handlebars and pull. That will yank out your back for sure. Hanging onto the bars with a death-grip is just bracing your upper body to make up for poor pedaling form.

Instead, let go of the bars, wrap your fingers into a loose fist and rest the heels of the palms of your hands on top of the bars. Your fingernails should be tapping the top of the bars too. This way, all of your weight is resting on the bony part of your hand and won't be sore. If you find yourself bouncing around, relax and spin your legs more. Smooth form on the hills really help me go faster while keeping the HR down. Also helps keeps the legs from fatiguing on long climbs.

Lemond calls the motion "scraping mud off the bottom of your shoes". It helps people who are still pushing down on the pedal at the bottom of the crank-revolution modify their pedaling-motion to be pulling back at 90-degrees to the crank instead.

What happens when you push on the pedal at the bottom is that you're trying to stretch the crankarms and bend the pedal-axle. Not gonna happen, so instead, all that force pushes your upper body upwards and to the opposite side of the bike. Then people grip the bars and pull to counteract their upper-body moving upwards. You're basically negating the useless force from the legs with an opposing force from the back-muscles. Neither of which does anything to move you forwards on the bike, but it does work the back and and cause lower-back pain and soreness.

Originally Posted by Terex

Depends on how steep the hill is. Up to maybe 15%, yeah. 15-20%, pretty tough. 20%+ - NWIH.

But, great info, as per usual.

Originally Posted by pdedes

no

Originally Posted by patentcad

Diagnosing back pain can be impossible and is often complex. But the easiest thing to address is the bike fit, so start there. It's also a very likely cause, as gsteinb correctly observes.

Originally Posted by tkehler

PS -- I've never been to a forum where there were so many smart-aleck types offering no advice/thoughts/answers at all.

Originally Posted by Metzinger

A lot depends on steepness. If your trying to sit and the speed and cadence go down, things could get torquey.

Originally Posted by merlin55

Out of the saddle climbing for long durations seems to work best for smaller very light riders, like pro riders with bald heads and big earings.

Originally Posted by tkehler

PS -- I've never been to a forum where there were so many smart-aleck types offering no advice/thoughts/answers at all.

Originally Posted by Terex

GOOD Pilates instructors provide amazingly effective instruction in the development of core strength. Although books and tapes are useful, nothing is as good as instruction by a competent professional.

But - just doing crunches, with torso twists and things like that can help. There have been many discussions, with references, on this forum. Use search.