You may be closer than expected for any number of reasons.

In any case the standard reaction of standing can help get you some room. Once you've honed the reaction, it's akin to waving your arms in circles while standing on a beam or sticking a leg out while rock climbing.

And although we're talking climbing here, when someone stands anywhere they may push the bike back. So if you're groveling in a fast, flat road paceline and the rider in front stands up, you should be prepared for the wheel coming back a bit.

I've gotten whacked a few times in the front wheel by guys standing. As long as you don't freak out it should be cool.

Pulling has been shown in biomechanical testing to be ineffective in adding any power advantage to the pedal stroke. Push, don't pull.

does this assume the pedals are already spinning at a decent RPM? would it change if you were starting from a stop? That's probably the only time I pull up with any force.

Well wait a second, when you guys go to sprint you definitely pull on the upstroke right? If what you're saying is right, about not generating much power by pulling, then why would anyone pull up when sprinting? And if you DO pull up when sprinting, couldn't you apply the same logic to hills? Albeit with less intensity so you don't burn out.

Granted, I don't have a power meter so I can't back this up with data. If anyone with a power meter wants to chime in on this...

Sheldon Brown wrote this article on standing.

As much as I love most everything Sheldon had to say I am not sure that cycling technique was his strong point.

One of the interesting things on the Metrigear website blog was their view of what is happening with both pedals during climbing, and that we operate as a 2 stroke engine mostly, with the efforts from both legs adding together.

"Pedaling circles" may be a misnomer in that you cannot give an even amount of power on each pedal for an entire revolution, but you can give even effective force to give even power at all parts of your pedal stroke. The issue with this is that there is no evidence that training to pedal these circles improves efficiency and inspection of elite road cyclists showed that they did not uniformly pedal circles. This was much more the case with elite MTBers however, where even force would be more valuable to ensure you keep traction.

? If you can feel strain on your legs pulling the pedal as it moves upwards then you are moving fast enough to add power on the up-stroke. I do weekly sessions on a Wattbike where I get to see the results live of my pedaling technique - and where any flat spots are. This sort of training has certainly assisted my technique (ie. with camera footage and the onscreen graph, you could see where my heel was flicking up giving a flat spot in power; I now keep my heels down at the bottom of the stroke to ensure I am pulling through).

You add your weight to the pedals, allowing you to lift your weight onto the top of the pedal and drop it.

If you weigh 100kg for example and are pedaling at 60rpm out of the saddle with 175mm cranks, the theoretic potential max power you are putting out is (just by dropping your weight on the pedals):

100 x 10 x (0.175 x 2) = 350W x 2 (for each leg) = 700W

in reality you do much less just from your weight, as you are resting on the bars and the circular nature of the pedaling stroke means you only get a fraction of that height going straight down - but it is interesting from an illustrative point of view that you have a decent amount of power available using your body weight out of the saddle.


When you are standing, you are not only using more of your upper body strength that is not directly going into driving you forwards (as well as the O2 this then deprives from your legs!) but you are also supporting your own weight. Of course it is less efficient! Less efficient from not only a mechanical standpoint but also from an aerodynamics view (important when the grades aren't super steep).

Here a look at a part of the same climb over two different days (a couple of months apart) showing seated vs standing over the same distance:


Devils elbow standing:
Duration: 11:25
Work: 267 kJ
TSS: 20.8 (intensity factor 1.06)
Norm Power: 392
VI: 1
Pw:HR: 100%
Pa:HR: 100%
Distance: 2.597 km
Min Max Avg
Power: 288 551 391 watts
Heart Rate: 115 127 122 bpm
Cadence: 43 74 52 rpm
Speed: 12 15.3 13.7 kph
Pace 3:55 5:00 4:24 min/km
Hub Torque: 2.5 5.2 3.4 N-m
Crank Torque: 43.6 105.2 71.8 N-m



Devils Elbow seated:
Duration: 12:12
Work: 264 kJ
TSS: 20.7 (intensity factor 1.019)
Norm Power: 362
VI: 1
Pw:HR: 2.9%
Pa:HR: 9.88%
Distance: 2.597 km
Min Max Avg
Power: 268 490 361 watts
Heart Rate: 126 166 159 bpm
Cadence: 65 153 87 rpm
Speed: 10.5 15.1 12.7 kph
Pace 3:58 5:43 4:43 min/km
Crank Torque: 18 64.9 40.2 N-m

This is not to say that standing will result in more power, but that you can pump out decent wattage standing. In my climbing I practice high spinning climbing, standing, relaxed tempo, accelerations etc.

As far as shifting to standing goes, I change up two gears before standing. Your legs can take the extra load seated for a moment and when you stand, you stand with one leg at the top of the stroke and drive it downwards to give you some good momentum to keep churning it over.

ditto. that article elicited an "Oh, c'mon.." when normally Sheldon's word is God's word.

I think what he is trying to say is that you lose energy when you stand which I believe to be true. He said the article is not directed towards racing cyclists, but to the average person wanting to get from here to there most efficiently. "Unless you have unusually good form, it also tends to involve a fair amount of thrashing from side to side, which is a waste of energy.", "The added stress flexes many parts of the bicycle, and the energy required to do this flexing is not usually recovered when the parts straighten back out."

This was discussed in the 33 a little while ago, and waterrockets made a good point. If the frame isn't returning almost all of the energy then it has to be deforming. Since I've never noticed frames deforming while climbing almost all of the energy has to be returned.

Spokes flex, frames flex, handlebars flex, I believe they flex more when standing and hammering on the pedals,I don't believe that 100% of the energy causing that flex is returned, some of that energy is lost in the flex.

But the drivetrain is losing less to friction because of lower velocities there. I think that, in the grand scheme of things, it's negligible, and probably less than the difference between a swig of water while climbing.

You cannot just "lose" energy. It has to go somewhere.

It's converted to heat and noise. But I think the amount that doesn't return is pretty small for most bike parts.

I guess I'm just confused because when I stand during a climb the bike slows down unless I go up a couple gears on the cassette. At any rate there must be a benefit to standing while climbing because the pros do it all the time, and as I said in an earlier post when I am able to stand for extended periods during a climb my overall time is better. So I am working on conditioning myself to the extra aerobic effort required to climb out of the saddle, because although I may never race I like to dream that I can!

I like standing, especially for longer, sustained climbs. In that case, standing alot rewards good form. It takes practice to be smooth and consistent, and to build endurance for the standing position. I'm working towards standing to climb for several minutes at a time, not just for those short quick (anaerobic) bursts.

This bears repeating:

It has to deform permanently or be damaged to be more correct (still not 100% true). Flexing is deforming just bikes should not deform permanently or be damaged if designed properly. I am defining damage sort of generally here, because it is BF.

However, there is no easy way of determining if that stored energy will be returned in a productive manner, so you might actually have to absorb that energy.

Looks like you climbed faster, and at a far lower heart rate, standing.

The heartrate was an error. One version of device agent was discarding any HR or cadence figure greater than 127, so no idea what the HR actually was, but it would be likely in line with the other one.

I think standing gets a bad rap. It may be marginally less efficient as far as the bike is concerned, but biomechanically, your hips, feet, and center of gravity are much closer to being in line when standing than when seated, especially up steeper climbs.

Speaking personally, I can climb seated, but not quickly. If i need to climb fast, I'm always out of the saddle. I do pull up through about the bottom 60 degrees of the upstroke. Periodically over my 26 years as a cyclist I have let coaches or training partners try to train me to sit and spin uphill. The technique is there, but not the speed. I've always been faster uphill out of the saddle.

Not saying standing is right for everyone, but it is right for some.

BL

And did I ever learn that, for sure.

Thought crossed my mind. If I think my position is screwed up (after a flight and I didn't put my bike together right or when I'm experimenting with position, typically in the off season) I'll stand when it gets hard. Since my bar to BB distance remains virtually the same (bar tilt will account for a bit of a difference), when I stand I am basically in the "right" position. My body auto-adjusts where to put my hips etc.

On the saddle, if it's too low or high or back or what, it's harder to let the body do what it wants. When standing it happens automatically.

cdr

I stand to mix up my training just as I do gym workouts. Cycling has restrictive motions so anytime you can activate other muscles to share the load and keep you strong on all 3 planes is a good thing. GL