I've heard of spinervals workouts doing 1 leg drills using a hard gear (52-12) and slower cadence. Joe Friel talks about them with an easy gear at higher/comfortable cadence. I'm thinking the important thing is making sure youre feeling pressure throughout and not skipping around...? How did you start and progress with one leg drills?

I ask because I did them for the first time tonight and can't believe how big a limiter it has been, and I want to make sure I do it right. After 10 seconds on an easy gear I started skipping and fatiguing.

Also, to improve cadence and pedaling efficiency, what kind of gear inches might I want to throw on my fixie? More or less, or doesn't matter.

I don't do a lot of them but I go in a pretty easy gear. 39x17 or so, I reckon.

I've yet to try them on fixed gear, but the most challenging ones I've done are the ones on FW without foot retention, just Vans on BMX platforms. I start out with both feet then switch to one leg drills and can keep it going pretty well.

This will help with gearing
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...imer-for-Newbs

You will get almost exactly the same benefit to your 2-legged cycling from 1-legged drills no matter which gear or cadence you use.

1 Legged drills are meant to help you form a complete pedal stroke, moving your feet in circles, the chain shouldn't at any point have "slack" or skip around. I can't imagine doing that in a hard gear...

I figure if you do 1 legged drills at Xrpm, then your average or goal cadence should be Xrpm using your complete pedalstroke.

I recently realized i should have complete pedal strokes (circles of pain) and i got faster


Edit: I don't think doing 1 legged drills on a fixe is worth much considering the pedal will go weather or not you are applying pressure, ruining the point of making the chain not skip

Nope, fixed gear will only help your spin. It will help it considerably.

In a training session this evening I did single-leg drills for the first time.

The coach had us pick a fairly light gear, and do them for a while ... and the drills will increase in length in each future session. I do not believe I would be able to sustain it for more than half a minute in a heavy gear - seems to me that would eliminate the benefits of the exercise.

For what it's worth, I find easy gear one-legged drills to be much more difficult than harder gear ones.

The greater resistance allows me to pedal slower and maintain smooth and consistent resistance throughout the pedal stroke. In an easier gear, I find it much more difficult to maintain a faster cadence to keep that steady resistance throughout the pedal stroke.

My suggestion is that you should find a gearing that you are comfortable doing, then work toward a faster cadence in an easier gear.

On my rollers, I alternate between a hard gear at 50 cadence and an easy gear at 85 cadence. I choose gears that I can hold for 2 minutes with considerable pain. The theory is that at a slow cadence it's easier to analyse the stroke and get it right, while the faster cadence simulates a climbing cadence. I do 2 minutes of legs-together between sets for recovery. I keep at it for between 15 and 45 minutes, depending on conditioning.

If you're riding a gear you can push for over a long distance, say a mile, one legged, without the stroke breakin down; then all you're doin is exercising one leg instead of two.
one-leg cycling has some specific advantages which just pushing a gear doesn't really address. because isolating one leg removes the 'balance' of the other leg during pedal strokes, the 'squareness' of one's strokes become obvious.
so really the Q is "easy or hard cadence", maybe not gear...
ideally you want to take that workout outside your comfort envelope.
if you can pedal a gear, a mile, at 70 rpm, without the stroke breaking down - I would drop down one gear (easier) and shoot for 85 rpm for as long as you can do it without the stroke breaking down. The easier gear will be harder to spin at the higher rpm...
As the one leg gets more 'efficient' and the stroke gets rounder, you can 1) go to 95 rpm or 2) do the next harder gear. My preference is to go up in cadence...
if I can;t do 85 rpm, one legged, then I'm just being frankenstein.
if you're in a gear/cadence you can't spin a couple hundred yards without getting all 'frankenstein walk/spin", then find a gear/cadence you can hold at 85 at least for a 400 yds...
my objective is to get my cadence as high as possible for some reasonable extended time/distance - if it's all goin good at 90 then I start workin at 100 - if I get to 105-110 and I'm still spinning circles after a good 1/2 mile, then I go up a gear.
... I always suggest layin in some 2 leg pedal section before switiching to the other leg - let's the body self-right a bit before you go all one-sided on the other side. the experience of going back to 2 leg, for that short instant, is quite remarkable!

EDIT: when I said "As the one leg gets more 'efficient' and the stroke gets rounder" - I didn;t mean 'minutes'. That efficiency is going to improve over a period of weeks...

Correct. Doing one legged drills on a fixed gear defeats the purpose.

On the other hand, there are all sorts of benefits to doing some nice long rides on a moderately geared FG. I did a lot of base training last winter on 42x16 (69 gi). This year I'm going even lower. Spin, spin, spin.