Originally Posted by
stilltooslow
IMO, the most important issue is technique. If when climbing, you work hard on applying power throughout all 360 degrees of your stroke, pulling through the dead spot as well as you push, you'll gain the efficiency and technique that will serve you well on the flats. Those muscles take a while to condition, but when the endurance and memory is there, you'll be faster on all terrain.
I haven't found this to be true for me, contrary to how logical it sounds.
Reliably, I'm finding that the lower my cadence (not super slow, but maybe 75-lo 80s), where I'm not as silky smooth as when I am at 90-100, I generate 15-30 more watts on average on climbs, even long 1hr ones, on average. It's really noticeable. If being silky smooth would get me more power, I definitely would have done it, as I do a regular climb here that takes pretty much an hour to ascend, up the whole way. But what I'm finding is that mashing the pedals and keeping a pretty heavy load so you can't slack off, keeps the power up.
I've experimented with higher cadences since I typically train at 90-100 on my weekday indoor training sessions, but there's no doubt it gives worse power results for me.
My hill climb isn't all ugly, but it's far from pretty - in contrast, when I spin high rpms, I can get a super smooth trace on things like TrainerRoad from the powermeter, which is very difficult to get when you're mashing away at low rpms. Still, I'll take the higher power over the smooth pedaling any day.