Quote:
Originally Posted by merlincustom1
It's a non-issue. Your body gravitates to what's natural.
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The bike is the rare case where a machine is controlling the movement of the user. Try to not pedal in a circle some time - good luck. My point is that the rider's pedal stroke is controlled at all times by the bottom bracket, crank and pedal, so the best pedal stroke looks just like the worst. That leads people to think that there's no skill, or it's a natural motion.
Is there a right way or a wrong way? Telling someone they pedal wrong is like insulting their mother - it doesn't go over well. So, I'll put it this way: Look at what you want to do, then look at how you're doing it. Does the method match the intended result? The answer isn't always clear. Take for example indoor Spinning vs. outdoor cycling - they sort of look like the same thing, but the intended results aren't. Spinning is about the workout, it's about burning calories while going nowhere. Cycling is about the efficient use of energy to get somewhere. They do things in Spinning that I would never do on my bike, but there's a reason.
The concept of finding the best way for any individual rider to pedal seems to elude most people - they all want to ride like their cycling hero, or look like some guy in a Rapha ad. I'm going to give you two concepts to think about
: First, at any given point in the pedal stroke there are multiple muscle groups that can be used. Some are very efficient, some are not. Some are very strong with good blood flow, some are not. Second, your body has a defense mechanism called reciprocal inhibition - it doesn't want to fire opposing muscle groups. So, if the quads fire the hamstrings shut down, hip flexors shut down glutes... You can use this to your advantage (hip flexors shutting down the glutes as the pedal comes up the back of the circle) or to your disadvantage (going toes down brings in a chain of muscles which shut down the glutes).
Getting back to this common concept that there's no wrong way to pedal a bike, there's also this famous Eddy Merckx line, "ride lots" which people go by. Just ride a lot and try harder - that's what cycling is, right? I started working with triathletes last year, many of them come from a strong running background and try to adapt that to the bike. It doesn't really work, but they'll keep trying... Running is about planting a foot and moving the body forward, it's based on hamstring activation. Cycling uses this geared machine where the hamstrings are only the third strongest muscle group, they are also the longest and have the second worst system of mechanical advantage. In other words, running on the bike is only slightly more effective than swimming on the bike.
My suggestion is to spend some time this winter taking a close look at how you pedal the bike. Set up a video camera, watch what happens at high resistance, what happens at high cadence, slow it down and figure out how you're moving the pedals and how you're wasting energy. Ignore what everybody else is doing and concentrate on your own form. Make no assumptions...
For what it's worth, I scrutinize nobody's form more than my own. Assumptions I had made without even knowing I was making them have been proven wrong over and over. I've been coaching for 15 years, I did a bit or racing before that, yet in the past few years I've learned things that have made me both faster and more comfortable on the bike. It's almost never a question of if one little thing is wrong, it's a question of how it effects the whole system. It's all connected - trust me on that. I learned how to use the right muscle group to get the pedal over the top of the stroke and my back problems went away - it makes sense to me now, but who knew???