Vélo Cyclotourisme Marathon Triathlon Course à pied et Endurance
Portail Sport Endurance Running
How to ride a bike or the art of pedaling
Is pedaling an art? This is a question to ask oneself when seeing cyclists with 20 years of biking experience behind them and who pedal "straight", only the legs are moving while the bike remains vertically still. That is what one should aim for, because pedaling while zigzagging is a waste of energy.
With automatic pedals, pedaling is done in two steps: pressing down on the pedal and lifting it back up. The motion should be natural, and not technical except in one aspect: the cyclist's heel should always be above the pedal (otherwise there is energy loss).
Pedaling rhythm is an important aspect of cycling: When young, one can afford to pedal with their thighs, but with experience, it is better to pedal with the head: the rhythm.
Pedaling rhythm is measured on a bike by the number of pedal strokes per minute. It is not necessary to have a specialized meter to measure pedaling rhythm; a stopwatch and counting one's rhythm for 15 seconds and then multiplying by four is sufficient.
As for the basics: the rhythm can range from 60 pedal strokes per minute (long mountain climb) to 130 (pros can go up to 200). A rhythm of 80 to 90 is a good cruising rhythm on flat terrain.
In practice: pedaling rhythm is directly linked to heart rate. The faster I pedal, the higher my heart rate goes, up to a certain limit. For beginners in physical activity, this cardio-respiratory limit is reached early on, but with practice, training, and perseverance, the limit can be pushed so that riding at an average speed of 30 km/h at 100 pedal strokes/minute can be sustained below 150 heartbeats per minute and last for hours.
On one hand, it is advisable to pedal as smoothly as possible rather than pulling on big gears. On the other hand, it is essential to work on this rhythm progressively. This efficiency will be easier to achieve with a good position of the foot on the pedal.
Tips
To fully understand what it means to "spin", do the following exercise:
Find a flat road, ride at 25 km/h at your own pace, then accelerate to over 30 km/h with a smaller gear (larger cog). It will be painful on the legs.
Recover and repeat the exercise, this time with a larger gear (smaller cog). It will be less painful on the legs, you will be able to accelerate as much, or even faster, and your heart rate will increase and you will be more out of breath.
This exercise is meant to illustrate that you can accelerate either by applying more force (larger gear), or by increasing your cadence (smaller gear).
Note that applying more force does not necessarily increase your heart rate (at the same speed).
Progression will be made throughout the year by trying to ride at a given pace on certain sections of road. This can be on flat terrain, or as a secondary objective, on a hill, or even in the long run, on a mountain pass. It is understood that the limit of the pedaling rate is not physically in the legs, but in the cardio-respiratory system.
Pace and gear are implicitly related: you want to ride at 25 km/h with a cadence of 80 revolutions/minute. The bicycle cadence chart indicates that you need to combine the 40-tooth chainring with the 16-tooth cog, or alternatively, use the 42-tooth chainring with the 17-tooth cog.
When can we use a big gear?
Using a big gear certainly does not mean pedaling at 70 revolutions per minute (except during specific training), it can be done while spinning and in any case in a second phase (the first phase being reserved for endurance training). This means that instead of pedaling at 100 revolutions per minute on a 39 x 18 gear ratio at 27 km/h, the cyclist will pedal at 100 revolutions per minute on a 50 x 18 gear ratio at 35 km/h.
Being better at climbing
To improve climbing, a cyclist needs to improve their power. Often, we talk about power in a general sense and forget the two components of power: the force that is applied to the pedals and the velocity or number of pedal strokes per minute.
A cyclist can improve their force by gaining muscle strength, or improve their velocity by doing exercises to spin their legs faster.
The choice between force or velocity is made by changing the gear ratio.
How to change gears
Changing gears is not done without reason. Either the cyclist wants to go faster quickly and changes gears and then adapts to the new gear. Or the cyclist can go more or less quickly because of the road conditions (slight uphill or downhill, or even steep climb or descent). While continuing to pedal, it is sufficient to shift one tooth up or down depending on whether the road is going up or down and try to maintain the same pedaling rate, even if you have to change gears again 50 or 100 meters later.
Note
Changing gears also involves changing the cog, because as you have understood, the pedaling rate is not the same on these gears with your current speed. It is important to know your gears and to know that shifting from 39 to 50 requires going up 3 cogs.
It is also clear why having a freewheel with well-spaced gears is beneficial: it allows you to maintain the same pedaling rhythm, continuing your effort without quickly raising your heart rate or becoming breathless or even "asphyxiated". Small or large chainring.
Changing gears is not done at random, there is a right time to do it.
When to change gear
One should not consider that because the road goes up, they should shift to the 25-tooth cog, but rather because the road goes up, they may need to change the cog at some point, and possibly up to the 25-tooth cog. As we have seen, it is all a matter of rhythm:
- if I change gear because I see a bump, I change gear too early, I will be out of breath and lose the power I had.
- if I change gear at the foot of the bump, I do not take advantage of my momentum and I will have to spin my wheels. It is still too early.
- if I change gear when I anticipate that I will no longer be able to pull the one I have, then it is the right time. One tooth if the bump is not long and I have speed, a complete cogset and removing a few teeth if the effort will be longer. This way, I keep my power, I fall back into a pedaling rhythm, a cadence not too far from what I had before the bump. And, a few hundred meters or even a few tens of meters later, I can still change gears and go bigger to adapt further. This is an exercise that needs to be practiced.
You will see that if you also spin your wheels, the bumps will go much smoother, you will breathe better, and you will feel less physical fatigue.
Paris-Brest-Paris 2019
I had the opportunity to ride with several groups of different nationalities, and the 2019 course with its 11,000m of elevation gain was an opportunity to see that over a long distance, there are two types of pace that alternate. On the flat, it goes fast, often above 25, even close to 30. Then a bump arrives and everyone passes it by changing gear in the bump. It then goes at less than 20 km/h and at the top of the bump, it starts again with the big gear.
In summary, learning to pedal is learning to adapt one's effort to the profile of the road with a rhythm and a speed that one masters.
Questions and answers : Starting cycling: learning how to ride a bike
Discover 40 years of sporting adventure.
in One Step Higher.