Originally Posted by
robow
Do you think that such a small difference in crank length, less than 3% from a 175 to a 170mm affects your cadence more, even though you will still be turning the same number of gear inches, or going one gear lower, which can often decrease gear inches by 15% allows for a higher cadence? I'm going to bet on the latter.
The OP asked about opinion/experience, not data verified from double-blind testing.
And those are mine.
You are welcome to yours.
IMO humans can be surprisingly sensitive to changes in bike/rider interaction.
Sometimes the change in feel influences the rider's effort to create a greater difference than physics/mechanics only would suggest.
I have a long history of achy knees.
I kept trying to train myself out of mashing and into spinning.
But as soon as I didn't actively think about pedalling technique, I kept upping the gears and dropping the cadence.
That is, until I went to shorter cranks.
That kicked my average cadence up with 10, w/o me having to think about it.
And my knees stopped aching as often.
For me, there's just something about the feedback from longer cranks that makes me opt for a higher gear, a harder push and a lower cadence.
The pattern still stays true. I've got bikes with different crank lengths, and I always get a higher average cadence on the shorter-cranks bikes.