Did your single-speed miles make you stronger on all of your bikes?
 

Last year I picked up a single-speed road-style bike locally used and cheap, this year I put 1800 miles on it using 44/15 gearing. No way for me to objectively judge, but my strong feeling is that it made me an all-around stronger and faster rider for the miles I was on a regular road or mountain bike, anyone else have a similar experience with their single and multi-speed bikes? I think it taught me how to spin better and faster, got me used to using my legs to accelerate a bike so shifting is less necessary, and the extra grunt work seems to have made me stronger than in recent years where I just rode multi-speed bikes. Some love single-speeds, some won't ride without a few dozen speeds at their fingertips, but I have learned to respect them both. None of the other old guys I ride with has one and they don't want one.

So how much time did you spend cycling each year before you got the single speed bike? And what was your combined total with all bikes for the year you rode the single speed? IMO, more miles ridden, regardless of the type bike will improve your cycling.

I haven't had a single speed since I was 7 years old. I might be missing out. But mashing my way up a hill will quickly ruin my fun.

I'm okay with you riding it if it provides you more fun and/or interest. Actually I'm okay with what ever it does for you. Don't let me be the rain on your parade!

I don't know...I stopped riding multi geared bikes 16 years ago and have been riding only singlespeed and fixed bikes ever since. It would be interesting to see what a geared bike feels like after all those years, maybe I'll try it some day...

Any sort of exercise device will give any sort of result depending on how you use it.

You may well be stronger because you feel it is better to use more physical strength to achieve your ends on SS.

Personally I need all the gears I can get, and I still need to practice smooth spinning, because I won't make it up the slope of my driveway without all that help. As for getting stronger ... as I ride more and further, i get stronger. If I decide to do hill repeats or intervals, or just feel like pushing harder (as I have the fitness to accommodate the effort) then i do and I gain. If I had and SS only ... I simply wouldn't ride. I want my heart, lungs, and knees to last me until my last day. Beating them up because it works for someone else would be silly.

But I can well imagine that you see difficult stretches of terrain as challenges to overcome, and dig deeper , push harder, to overcome them. And yes, that will develop strength.

Yes, that's a thing, it will help with pedaling at faster and slower RPMs, as well as having no choice but to muscle up some hills where applicable, that being said, it's not something you couldn't do with a geared bike, just shift less or not at all. I do this on longish rides with slower folks and even let them pick the gear...

I don't think its helped my overall fitness, but its nice as an alternative ride once in a while. There's really nothing superior or inferior about them compared to a geared bicycle, its just a different experience.

Track bike on the road is always fun, if only because I have to deal with the toe overlap!

Barry

I ride a single speed about once a week from May thru August. Its fun in a different way than my geared bikes. I dont think it makes me stronger and I dont think it would make me stronger even if I rode it more.

I don't know if it makes you any stronger than riding a multi-gear bike would provide, but it does get you accustomed to pedaling through a broader range of cadences, especially if you ride fixed gear where you can't coast on downhills. You quickly learn to smooth out your pedaling, so your butt doesn't get pounded into hamburger.

Fix gear rider forever here. I do both, fixed and geared but fully half is on fix gears. I've made concessions for my age and use multiple gear combos on hilly rides, stopping and flipping the wheel or even unscrewing a cog on very hilly rides. But still, there are a lot of hills I go up in my flat ground gears rather than stop and flip. Likewise going down. I can't say this is a miracle upgrade for my geared riding but it does widen my RPM range a lot and makes the need to upgrade to handlebar accessed shifters not necessary. (I don't race or ride with fast groups or paceline. Not because of my equipment choices but because minor wheel touches are yet another head injury (and I already qualify for NFL "loose brain syndrome").

Biggest physical improvement makes very little difference when all the gears are there but quite a bit in every day life. Much more upper body strength and conditioning than pure geared road ever got me. I love that. I feel better and healthier when I ride fix gears. (Yes, single speed does this to some extent. I rode a single speed about 5 years before racing and my first fix gear ride. But I fell in love with the fix gear first ride and never looked back.)

Also the smoother you can pedal, the faster you can go and the more fun downhills are. The vets in my race club told me to set my single speed up fix gear to improve my pedaling style. And they were right!

Singlespeed, no, but a fixed gear made me a stronger, smoother rider. For about 15 years, from 1996 to 2011, I rode fixed about 90%, geared, 10%. I still ride my fg, but only for putzing around town…

I climb out of saddle way more on SS/FG than geared, and use a lot more upper body in the process. If nothing else, it's enabled me to ride longer OOS when needed.

I really think that's helped me on long brevets (geared).

I feel like it's widened my usable cadence range, but I don't know if that equates to fitness rather than form.

Riding SS/FG can definitely help expand your comfort zone as far as having to spin faster or push harder for a given stretch of the road.

Even spending a lot of time on my older 2x5 and 1x6 friction-shift bikes, makes it feel easier and I go moderately faster on the same routes on my modern 9/10-sp brifter bikes, because I don’t need to push as close to my performance limits for as long as on a bike with more limited gearing.

Hitting and holding those peak efforts is what does make you “stronger” but also tires you out, and the longer you hold those peak loads, the longer you need to recover.

My riding habits have not changed for a number of years as far as my miles per year, per week or the routes I ride on. I ride certain routes dozens or even into the hundreds of times each year, and I regularly test my speed over those routes I have ridden countless times. Despite being in my 60s and being a year older, on my favorite multi-speed road bike with zero equipment upgrades since last year, I was consistently one mph or more faster in my average speed in multiple timings, up in the 21+mph bracket, a speed I have not regularly spent time in for a few decades, not it is as easy as pie to do any time I want to.

This single speed bike has flat pedals on it and a free-hub, so it is not a fixie, but just riding the miles with flat pedals has noticeable improved my pedaling, I never have any missteps at all in pedaling with the flats, my feet never come off the pedals or slip, and at will I can move my feet forwards, backwards or sideways or toe them in and out while pedaling. I still have clipless pedals and shoes to ride with, but I have no preference for them at all anymore.

The riding is what made you stronger, not the type of bike you rode.

European racers trained in the winter on fixed-gear bikes for many decades; possibly a few still do. But if doing so really made them stronger, they'd have trained on fixed-gear bikes year round. And, after all, those winter rides on fixed gears were to accumulate "base miles," i.e., what we would now call Zone 1 or 2 rides. Not for building strength but instead for preparing their bodies for the hard racing and training to come.

Prosaic guess: they did winter training on fixed-gear bikes simply because it was easier to clean the bike after wet training rides.

As for the U.S., the few people who were racing during the Dark Ages of the 1930s through the 1950s might have already owned a fixed-gear bike left over from the days of six-day racing and so used that bike for training for road races. In fact, when I started racing at age 13, in 1964, the ABLA rules said that all I had to do was add a hand brake to my track bike (the only bike I owned) to participate in road races and criteriums. (Beat the Nat'l Champ in one criterium in 1965. He clipped a pedal going into the 90-degree turn 50 yards from the finish line, but that's neither here nor there.)

Riding a fixed gear made my pedaling form smoother, but that's about it. I only road it on a velodrome, though.

Yes. My single speed Surly Lowside requires me to leave the saddle with every acceleration. I don't need a personal trainer to tell me what that does to my strength and conditioning. Short anwser: Yes, it made me stronger in general.

Riding fix made me more situationally aware, with only using a front brake and the rear not really a brake, stopping is never as fast and keeping track of everything about you becomes even more important. Good Wouldn't say either ever made me faster.

The other thing that my single speed improved for me was pedaling while standing. I had no real reason to stand up while pedaling with the multi-speed bikes, but it was essential to stand going up steep grades with the single-speed. I never felt comfortable standing up while riding until I started doing it multiple days of the week on the single speeder.

Lou Maltese clued me in on fixies in his time right after he yelled at me for leaning my bike on his car...

Yes ss/fg can make you stronger depending on your chosen gearing.

With that said if you want to be fast you have to train both ends of the spectrum. You have to mash the highest gear, and you have to spin the lowest gear as fast as you can. 30 min a day on each on rollers or a trainer. Then in the real world you make a marriage of spinning and mashing.

I found that I gained strength faster riding the ss than I did my geared bike.

"Stronger" aside, I found SS bikes an absolute joy to ride.

When you have a 48/16 , and have a headwind for 15 miles. You're going to get stronger! Or blow a knee.

Or ... ride more slowly, enjoy the ride less because the extra effort is too close to your absolute output, and don't get crippled.

That is like saying, "Go to the gym, take the highest weights you can lift, and add 10-20 lbs and two more reps per set. You will either lift better or never lift again!"

Yup.

I get that some folks really like S/S or fixie. Some folks like unicycles. Some folks prefer to ride couches. It is all fine with me.

The idea that one type of exercise makes you stronger ... Sorry, ludicrous. it is How you exercise, not what you exercise with.

In the scenario mentioned (overgeared into a headwind) I would be getting much less quality exercise (probably) because the load would be too high to sustain long enough to gain without doing more harm than good.

If I can lift a certain weight safely and with good form 8 times, and maybe strain and jerk and get two more .... I will do eight or (on the good days) ten reps and get a lot of benefit. If I add so much weight that i can only do three reps ... i question whether three reps would do much good for building muscle. The chance to do injury would sure increase.

On the bike ... I would have to slow down so much so as not to hurt myself and also burn out... I would get more strength and better aerobics spinning a lower gear faster and longer. By adjusting gears i could get and stay closer to my optimal output, my limit which is where I would get the best workout without doing too much harm. (One big drawback of overwork is the longer layoff between workouts, so whatever marginally increased improvement I might have seen gets lost before I can go back and use it.)

Not saying it is the same for you. Just pointing out--again---that is it is not the tool or device, but how you use it, which determines how much and how you gain.

Kettlebells don't make you stronger than free wights which don't make you stronger than Nautilus.....

If S/S was the magic key to cycling strength, every World Tour rider would be riding S/S ... I'd imagine.

I don't know.

I've also noticed that spending real time climbing on fix gears makes for a stronger, more useful body in my everyday life off the bike. Lifting stuff, running power tools, etc. Yes, weight lifting would work better but that means doing both riding and lifting. I also find that climbing fixed translates to very quickly being able to re-train upper body muscles for whatever I want to do. More core strength too.

And all I have to do to reap these benefits is settle into the ride on perhaps the purist machine man's ever developed. (And yes, I do use brakes. Good ones fore and aft. Always. The hoods are part of the pure climb. Without my life, the rest is academic.)

Plus (directed smack at mens' egos) look the photos of the top bike racers 100 years ago and now. They looked like real men back then. Now? Geeks girls would never notice with outsized legs.