At Echelon CS, we love providing feedback on a rarely discussed aspect of cycling fitness – technique. Anyone can train hard, but without regular independent assessment, how do you know if you are riding efficiently?
We all know riders who have a very good ‘engine’, but never seem to be able to ride as fast as the amount of training they do would suggest. They have the best “pain face” whilst mashing away at the gears, yet they often scratch their heads when someone they know is training less sails past them – often despite being a heavier build.
All of our coaches at Echelon CS are experienced cyclists who have gone through the technique journey themselves – one of the advantages of including weekly sessions at our studio is that regular observation and feedback from your coach can yield significant improvements in your efficiency.
Have you noticed that our sessions have specific cadence ranges? The little circle at the center of your bike screen has the target cadence for each section of the session – this is designed to work on different aspects of riding.
For example, most new riders like to climb hills with a low cadence between 70 and 75 rpm, primarily due to it keeping their heart rate relatively low for the given intensity they are riding at. The trade off is that once they get to the top of a hill/end of their effort, their legs tend to be very “heavy” and they struggle to follow the accelerations of their fitter (or lighter!) riding buddies.
Conversely, have you ever noticed how you feel during one of the sections where your evilly smiling coach expects you to ride at 110-120% of your FTP but with a cadence in excess of 100rpm for 1-2 minutes? Sure, your heart is jumping out of your skin – but have you ever paid attention to how your legs feel 30 seconds after the interval compared to the same effort at 70-75rpm? Do you feel that once your heart has calmed down, your legs are ready to go for another hard accelerating section compared to an out of saddle, big gear effort of similar duration?
The reason for this is your body is using less torque to produce the same power. Think of torque as the “twisting” motion to create propulsive energy on the bike. In essence, the higher the torque, the more strain on your muscle fibers for a given power. If you are in a big gear (the way many people like to climb) the other trade-off is the difficulty to change pace when a friend accelerates or the gradient suddenly changes on a switchback.
Learning how to hold a higher cadence when riding an interval or hard hill is a powerful tool to take from your Echelon sessions as once your cardiovascular fitness has improved from consistent riding, you will find your road riding will become more enjoyable as you become more efficient.
Of course, like anything in this world, there is a trade-off where too much of a ‘good thing’ can become counterproductive. Riding with a high cadence can be attuned to driving a car at 60kmh in 3rd gear – accelerations are quick and responsive but you burn through a LOT of fuel. Whilst it’s easy to pump more petrol into your car, intensity training at a high cadence can make an athlete extremely fatigued unless they are very well trained.
As always, we at Echelon are not just wanting to give you a great workout in a safe environment – we are passionate about ensuring the lessons you learn in the studio can be replicated on the road so you can get more enjoyment from this riding caper we all love.
That’s about all the space we have for this post. Next time, we will look at another area of technique – body position, how we pedal and the importance of a comfortable position on the bike.
As always – please sing out to your trainer if you would like some proactive pointers and thank you once again for your support.
See you at the studio!
Kym Howard – Senior Coach