Hi Cadence Never Worked for Me

[Waldo]

https://road.cc/content/news/256189-...says-new-study

[nooneline]

Interesting. But be careful about generalizing too far from this. The sample size is very small: 9 people. And they're not cyclists - they're just "healthy, active individuals."

This makes me wonder whether or not the effect is similar in people who have experience pedaling at higher cadences - with cycling experience, do you have adaptations to make you more aerobically efficient at those cadences?

[false_Aest]

W T F kind've of a sample size is 9?

"healthy, active individuals" what does this mean exactly?


Someone that walks 1 mile a day?
Someone who rides 50 miles a week?
Someone like me who's got an extra 10-15lbs of fat but rides 7-15 hours a week?
Someone who can run repeated 7min miles but hasn't been on a bike in 10 years?


If road.cc needs content they'd do better by riding their bikes in horse **** and making drawings and posting that to their website.

[prototoast]

My working theory (not scientifically tested) is that a efficient cadence is highly correlated with leg size. I'm not obese, but I'm heavy for a cyclist, and with heavier-than average legs (read: cankles). I figure that no matter how easy or hard I'm pushing the bike, with every pedal stroke, I have to lift the weight of my own leg.

I couldn't access the source article, but I'm curious if they controlled for height / weight / leg mass. I would think that since pros tend to skew much skinnier, that would be an important contributor to their pedaling efficiency.

[Ti Designs]

And things like this form people's opinions about what can or can't be learned or changed.

Try this simple test: Take 20 people, hand them all 3 items and tell them to juggle. Those who haven't learned won't be able to, and yet the chances are that one of them will (the one who at some point had way too much time). You could at this point throw out the person or persons who could juggle as outliers and them make the assumption that people can't juggle, or you could realize that motor skills can be learned...

What I really want to know is how so many studies are done at centers for higher education, and yet they forget about the learning process...

I'm not saying that learning how to pedal faster will make you more efficient, but there's always going to be a trade-off between muscle tension and the number of times the muscle is fired. In other words, being able to spin faster is never going to harm your performance. Motor skills don't weigh anything, and here's the amazing thing - learning another motor skill isn't going to cause one you already have to fall out of your head.

Few new riders can spin that well because they've learned many of their motor skills from walking. To better understand why new riders tend to sway side to side (which can't work at higher cadence) I spent a morning watching people run stadium steps. The big rowers (who were doing specific workouts based on technique) went straight up without any hip rotation. Most people rotated their hip over the next step, which is exactly what they do on the bike.

[Mzilliox]

all this article says is that higher rpms work better for people who are used to pedalling. is this a surprise to anyone, or groundbreaking? and folks not used to pedalling go a bit faster at lower rpm. this would be exactly what i have seen in real life from new cyclists, they cant spin fast, or dont even think to, so they grind at 60 rpm. today that works better for them, because they know nothing. but in 3 weeks of riding, would that still be the best choice? of course not.

my wife is finally after 3 years starting to understand why higher cadence works better.

file under why did anyone feel the need to put this in writing?

[Waldo]

Well, after 33 years of riding, which includes 26 double centuries, I know what works for me and it ain't high cadence.

[54ny77]

You generally need high cadence and a doping budget to achieve meaningful success.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to Chris Carmichael? Has he quietly faded into the sunset?

[redir]

I never used to pay attention to cadence until I started doing Zwift workouts this winter. Zwift is always reminding me to keep a 'cadence of 90 - 100." That seems incredibly fast to me. Just last night I was doing a workout where I had to do 275 watts for 4 minutes rest at 175 and then do 330 watts for four minutes, and so on. What I found was that trying to keep 330 watts at a 95 cadence I'd watch my power meter jump from 290 to 310 back to 300 up to 320 and so on. But if I clicked on one more gear up and kept the cadence at 85 I could ride 330 watts plus or minus 5 no problem.

Now, maybe that just means I suck at keeping a proper cadence, but I liken it to what this article says and that I should go with what feels natural to me. And for the record I'm a cat 2 and have been at this for 20 years

[Ti Designs]

Originally Posted by redir

Now, maybe that just means I suck at keeping a proper cadence, but I liken it to what this article says and that I should go with what feels natural to me. And for the record I'm a cat 2 and have been at this for 20 years

And I'm gonna guess that your strength is climbing...

[MattTuck]

For recreational riding, I support riding whatever cadence feels comfortable.

For racing, I do think there are advantages to a higher cadence that let you respond to attacks more quickly.

Also, agree with the above sentiment -- you can get published with a sample size of 9? No wonder so much junk science gets pedaled around nutrition and sports.

[Mark McM]

I think this study successfully found the answer to the question it asked. But like many other studies, it didn't ask a particularly useful question. And, as is often in the case for studies that ask narrowly focused questions, it is probably not wise to extrapolate the conclusions of this study to a wider set of questions.

To sum it up: "nothing to see here folks, move along."

[makoti]

Originally Posted by nooneline

Interesting. But be careful about generalizing too far from this. The sample size is very small: 9 people. And they're not cyclists - they're just "healthy, active individuals."

This makes me wonder whether or not the effect is similar in people who have experience pedaling at higher cadences - with cycling experience, do you have adaptations to make you more aerobically efficient at those cadences?

I brought that up on a FB group & was told that's plenty. I have a hard time trusting data from such a small test group

[wallymann]

high cadence is essential to me. been riding for +30 years...if i so much as muse about big-ish gears, my legs go 'pop' and OTB i go.

[William]

https://redirect.media.tumblr.com/im...w37po1_540.gif


Mash gears at a high cadence, that was my bag baby!





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