[Closed] Importance of cadence?

Is it dropping? It's gone from 95 to "towards 90" so a 2-3rpm drop - hardly wild

No.

All the stuff I've read is that cadence is pretty much a personal thing and you tend to ride naturally at your optimum cadence.

For long road climbs, cat4 or worse, it pays to use a gear you can spin at ~90+rpm, as it reduces metabolite buildup in your legs while climbing for ~5+ minutes which would otherwise risk you having to jump off the bike or catch up with you after the summit.

Generally, I'm spinning on the flats too, my average cadence for rides is typically in the 100-110rpm ballpark.

No one cares what cadence you pedal at.
No one cares what your Vo2 max is.
And no one cares what power wattage you put out.
No one except yourself.
You're a mid pack no-hoper.
You always will be.
Accept it and move on.

If you don't believe me. Tell your story to your own mother and watch her expression glaze over before your very eyes.

Cadence helps knees and keeps you on the trails as you age 🙂

Jeez, there always one arse isnt there.

Fwiw gwurk i dont give a shit if you or anyone else cares, but id like to ask questions to understand these things with a view to improving my ability.

Perhaps box your negativity or irritability and focus on doing something helpful for someone, you'll feel a lot better for it.

Rorschach answered your question correctly and succinctly.

There was no negativity or irritability in my reply. Just good truthful advice. I am a realist rather than a fantasist. I apologise if you feel hurt by my words.

Would you like me to post your paragraph of endeering encouragment in the "sandcastle" thread? Do you think if one if your teenagers your refer to there recieving this text would feel encouraged?

Luckily im a big boy and can easliy ignore your content which is neither helpful or encouraging in the context of this thread, but I sincerely hope thats not how you communicate to them, else they should quickly seek another mentor.

id like to ask questions to understand these things with a view to improving my ability

Rorschach answered your question correctly and succinctly

Nope. But one word from one person is neither a concensus or necessarily correct, certainly in the remit if a faceless bike forum.

Nobodyofthegoat's is more explanatory.

What?
Sorry to bring you yet more bad news.
Teenagers on bikes in the woods do not care about a middle aged man's crisis over how many pedal revolutions his device counts either.

Who said they did?

Im just pointing out alternate trends of your personality.

Put your handbags away - this isn't mumsnet.

What sillysilly said. 90 plus keeps knees in better shape as you age. Having had various knee ops and a lot of physio I can attest to this, and it is the common advice of physios who specialise in the area.

What Rorschach said.

Not a link to brag about my ride on Wednesday or get kudos, just simply to back up what I wrote earlier about cadence...
http://www.strava.com/activities/1104183882/analysis

I'm still learning this stuff, but sometimes I find durianrider on Youtube has some good advice (can't find video now, but he climbs a hill and commentates on himself and others).

durianrider

I'm interval Watt training with people much fitter than me and they are on 85 warm up, then doing 100-125, dropping cadence at max resistance on both dials to simulate extreme climbs. The trainer says if I can't keep up 100-110min I shouldn't be in the class 🙂

Think it is down to efficiency / HR zone over power output and how long you can keep this up. They use 20min / 1hr FTP tests to measure performance improvement over time.

I was on 85-95 starting out. If I ride without a proper warmup I will struggle at higher cadence from the off that they seem to handle with ease. As long as I warm up it's fine which I guess is why you see turbo trainers at every pro cycle event.

Transfer this to the off-road and it really does help with the knees, endurance and speed

While no one outside of my watt group cares about my watts (they go up no matter your age if you train properly with diet), the people I ride MTB with wonder why I was always the slowest, but now close to the top 🙂

I'll ask the trainer for a more scientific / accurate answer next week.

It depends on the individual, some can spin at high cadences, others can't. You'll have a natural cadence, ideally this aligns with maximal power output.

My natural cadence is around 85rpm, if I've had a winter on the turbo then I can push it to 90. Today's ride the average was 69 but there were some very steep (25%) hills where I prefer to stand - in those instances cadence isn't so important.

Once you get into the 120+ range then your technique comes into play much more otherwise you'll be bouncing around on the bike. I can only hold cadences above 125 for a minute or so even after lots of specific turbo training, it's just not efficient for me.

I'd like to pick up on the point that someone made 'natural cadence is generally most optimum'...

All the literature I've read states otherwise and I've found so in practice when doing ftp tests etc..

I've got a natural cadence of about 80-85, however I can hold a higher wattage for longer at 95. It feels unnatural but the numbers don't lie.

Also gwurk, you've spelt your name wrong the 'T' is inbetween r and y on the keyboard. Bum wobler!

http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/cadence-power-and-heart-rate

Is this any help as a read of potentially more helpful responses?

Thanks TOJV yes it is, and thats exactly the kind of knowledge I'm after. When performing say 110rpm my legs can hurt quite a lot, but on the other hand, performing 20 mins on the tops at 85rpm feels difficult but not so that I can't sustain it.

From your thread:

It's a can of worms. HR will always go up for higher cadences as you are using your cardiovascular system more over muscle strength. I've heard of pros deliberately reducing their cadence in breaks to lower their heart rate.

I've tried this and it works. You can sit in bunch at say 60rpm in 53/13 and be riding along at 33kmph on the flat with little apparent effort.

Why is this all like (or worse than) a foreign language to me?

No, nothing to be concerned about imo.
I'm definitely an advocate of spinning as you can 'replace' heart rates by shovelling carbs in, but once you've used up your muscular strength for the day thats it until you get some protein and a sleep.
It therefore makes sense to spin a lighter gear faster to preserve the muscles for when you really need max power at the expense of some heart rate.

If your average dropped below 85 that might be worth spending time thinking about, but 90 is right about what i'd consider normal.

I went for a flat (for round here) ride yesterday and deliberately kept in a low gear and span. Average cadence was 90rpm compared to Saturday's 69.

The rides were somewhat different though: on Saturday I did 109Km with 2080 metres of ascent; Sunday was 47Km with 570 metres of ascent - apart from one climb these were all long gradual affairs.

The rides shared part of the return so I can compare efforts on some segments. Looking at one (4.9Km, 107m) there's the following data

In big ring:
Time: 12:19
Avg cadence: 74
Avg HR: 163

In small ring:
Time: 13:21
Avg cadence: 92
Avg HR: 148

My PR for this segment is 11:09 with avg cadence of 82, avg HR 154, this was four years ago.

Saturday's 69.

That's the second mention of that number without so much a s**** 😳

This is cadence

Av of 237 rpm!

If you can be bothered you ought to look at your cadence data via Quadrant Analysis in WK04 or Golden Cheetah. It's beyond my level of interest

http://tailwind-coaching.com/2017/01/05/using-quadrant-analysis-improve-your-bike-training/

You have powermeter and Joe F's book? I think he talks about it there.

Cadence in isolation tells you nothing. Absolutely no point getting hung up on it. Although I would add that it is good to train across a wide range of cadence so you are happy no matter where you find yourself.

[s]Krypton[/s] Kryton - no idea.. All i know in Whistler when I was trying to keep up with someone where roots were the size of tree trunks he kept saying it's all about the cadence!!! At which point I just wanted a beer to forget my misery.

trickydisco - Member
This is cadence

That video how the heck did he go from still to about a gazillion mph in less than what looked liked a second...Geez!

Because there's sod all resistance from the rollers and he'll be in a low gear. Bloody good pedalling technique to do that though!

I find anything over 95rpm hard.. I can hang out in the high cadence club for a club run easy enough because most are spinning it out, but I ride alone most of the time and it drops to 85 which is where I'm most comfortable. But I think there's a bit more to this than just stats. Riding hills and stuff (say Sth Downs) means you can normally just power on up in the big ring churning it out, look at the stats and mine will be often in the 70rpm range, but I have tried to high up my cadence (spent a year re-training for just that) but it proved pointless, I produce my best power in the 70-85rpm range.
I'm just a rouleur at heart though, mate of mine is a racer and his cadence is up around the 100 range, and he looks like he's constantly fighting the bike. Out of about 40 guys I ride with, most are in the 70-85rpm range and honestly DGAS about it, or what science lies behind the urban myth that high cadence = good cadence.
One mate is doing LEL now, bet his stats come back at 80rpm aves.

I've tried this and it works. You can sit in bunch at say 60rpm in 53/13 and be riding along at 33kmph on the flat with little apparent effort.

Huh? Surely you can do this in any gear. I'd probably be almost freewheeling at such low speeds in a bunch.

The problem with being at low RPM in a bunch is you'll have no ability to respond to sudden changes of pace or gradient.

If your power is constant then you are putting down a bigger force - that could be down to training. But cadence is largely personal. I'm a spinner#, I'd only be concerned if my cadence was dropping on my fixed wheel road bike!

#Average cadence for 100 miles yesterday was 98 RPM for 4 hrs.

At lower power outputs, you don't need to spin, higher power outputs you do.

So if you're doing more intervally training (with lower average wattage) you'd expect to spin slower.

Spin at whatever speed feels natural anyway, there's nothing worse than people going along at 120rpm at 10mph on the flat cos they've seen the pros spinning and think it must make them faster. Higher RPM will put less load on the knees though, to a point, so try not to strain too much.

Well. For instance i was targeted to do a 4h 200w average ride yesterday. I returned wih an average cadence of 88.

Before this year and my recent bout of training, my average has been 95.

Whatever's comfortable OP.

Its a personal thing.

& bollocks to that numpty who tried to shut you down.

What an idiot.

Developing a smooth cadence engages more muscles, so you'll fatigue less as each muscle is worked slightly less - 90-100 is about optimum. Because track cyclists have a fixed gear, then high-cadence is the way to achieve acceleration / finishing sprint.
I once did nearly 70km in an hour on a spin-bike as part of a charity challenge - average cadence was 150rpm - didn't half have a few painful skin rubs afterwards. I used to ride a fixed gear when out with a fast road group - scared the bejesus out of some doing 180rpm downhill

Spin at whatever speed feels natural anyway, there's nothing worse than people going along at 120rpm at 10mph on the flat cos

That's currently me rehabbing knee injuries as the physio says I can cycle but have to keep it above 90 which feels mega spinny to me, normally average 80ish

Well. For instance i was targeted to do a 4h 200w average ride yesterday. I returned wih an average cadence of 88.

Before this year and my recent bout of training, my average has been 95.

Seriously stop over thinking it. 88 to 95 is next to no difference. Key thing is results, a few differences in cadence is of no matter.

dragon - Member

Seriously stop over thinking it. 88 to 95 is next to no difference. Key thing is results, a few differences in cadence is of no matter.

Yer, this. But Kryton57 does enjoy over thinking things like this sometimes.

Nothing wrong with trying new methods to maximise outputs, but your body will tell you what to do.

😆

You can see I work for Sky can't you 😛

Are you measuring like for like? Is this all on road or MTB too, I always spin faster on road as I use the resistance on MTB to move the bike around and over obstacles

Edit: re-read op and you're training to a lower rpm and acieving a lower rpm. Is this not just the training working?

Is this not just the training working?

My weakness is lengthy climbs, and I'm training for longer MTB events both of which target muscular endurance. So - yes.

There is still some VO2 max in there, the frequency of which increases as I get nearer to race day. So the plan is building my endurance, then sharpening me up, which sounds sensible.

I wouldn't worry too much. We all do different things. My knees are screwed so twiddling just makes things worse. Maybe its a development thing. I was brought up time trialling on a 13-17 block and a 42/52 chainset. I struggle to twiddle a little gear. I'm a lot faster up almost any hill by pushing a medium to high gear(although its gets low on the 25% + ones) at about 60 to 70 rpm max. I suspect I get away with it as we don't have big long hills in Britain where low gears might work. I also find that too low spoils the smoothness of the cadence and it gets a bit jerky. You may find that at some point that's worth a thought.

some of this ^^^

i unintentionally (i was just riding what was in front of me) did a 20 min power best (for the last 18 months) last week on some climb out of/near Penmachno, average speed was sub 10kph and cadence was 68 average

Higher cadences make me feel like my hips are about to disintegrate. I think on a mtb cadence is as much about bike control and traction as optimal physiology. Probably only time off-road cadence is dictated by physiology or training is on a fire road

Maybe its a development thing. I was brought up time trialling on a 13-17 block and a 42/52 chainset. I struggle to twiddle a little gear.

I'm exactly the same. Grew up doing short TTs (mainly 10s, the odd 25). I've no idea what my average cadence is but I'm sure I push larger gears than most up hills. It does mean I'm quite fast on the ups (especially on the fat bike which keeps traction) provided they're not technical. However, my legs 'go' well before my aerobic capacity and when they're gone - well they're gone.

I'm trying to work on spinning better but it just isn't my natural style

This topic and the "Training with Max HR" thread the other day sort of line up with what I've been thinking about/looking at recently.

I've been making more use of my HR zones to manage effort levels for all of my riding, trying not to spend too much time in Z5 digging into my limited Anerobic reserves too much...

I bought a cadence sensor last winter, fitted it to my Road bike and then didn't pay much attention to it for several months, however in recent months I've started using it alongside HR as a way to understand and manage my effort levels when out riding. The key for me seems to be looking at what HR is doing in relation to Cadence at any given moment, it sounds obvious but it isn't always so...

My Heart seems to be happiest on flats/hills (Low-Mid Z4) at between about 85-95rpm with gear selection to suit, if cadence drops due to a steeper incline and more work being needed, HR heads up obviously, I can manage the rate of work with gear choice (till that runs out) and/or adjusting cadence, eventually any climb that goes up enough will send me into Z5 but I can delay that if I pay attention to cadence from the bottom.
If I spin up on the flat over ~100rpm then again HR goes up, so I can use Cadence again as a way to try and manage HR in order to reduce overall fatigue.

I'm getting better at spotting HR and/or cadence heading in the wrong direction before my legs start to tell me about it now and I've taken to riding on the road with only HR Zone, Cadence and Avg speed fields on display as this lets me manage my overall pace and monitor current effort levels.

I've setup My HR Zones based on my understanding of Freil's suggested methods in the cyclists training Bible with just the HRM and a frequently ridden flat(ish) ten miles to do a "Poor mans LTHR" test, so while I'm sure it's not accurate enough for many it's worked well enough for me...

I suppose next obvious thing to do is try and apply the same sort of thing to riding off-road on my MTB/CX bikes, I have noticed I spend more time at higher HR on the MTB certainly, which is of course inevitable, it's a less efficient machine, I don't know how useful I'd find a Cadence number on the MTB but I might just try it.

Power measurement seems to be the bigger thing for people now, but I'm not so sure that many people are using it correctly from what I've read here and elsewhere, it seems like it's become a bit of a "wattage war" without people really thinking about the physiological effects of generating big numbers or whether it can be sustained/recovered from effectively...