Long Tom

One of the ways I measure my progress is how I climb the big hills on my routes, since they are fixed entities. One in particular, I call her "Nasty Wench", is long, steep, and relentless, and I about died- like literally- the first time I climbed that b!tch in July. However, I knew I'd found my HTFU Valhalla, and that climb plus the other climbs following it on that same road have become an every-other-day thing.

As you'd expect, I've gotten much stronger and faster up these climbs. Yesterday, for the first time, I stood and cranked the entirety of NW... (I thought I'd done it a few days ago but yesterday I realized I'd been sitting and spinning for the first 100 yards or so)... so I addressed that yesterday and cranked it. I never felt close to going anaerobic. Felt GOOD.

It did make me wonder about the relative efficiencies of sitting and spinning vs. standing and cranking it. Obviously, standing my cadence is lower, and it uses completely different muscles- for me, it even involves the upper body significantly as I am tugging on those hoods pretty good.

Anyway, I don't know **** about this stuff, I just go out and ride and have felt my way forward like a blind squirrel finding acorns.... grin... what are the thoughts of the 41 on climbing, sitting vs. standing, and how the two techniques load up the body differently?

TMonk

standing is less efficient, but you can produce more power for short durations

as the limit of the length of the hill tends towards infinity, sitting will get you up faster
as the limit of the length of the hill tends towards zero, standing will get you up faster

when I am climbing hills, I stand only to stretch, or if I absolutely have to (hillltop finish, matching an attack ect). generally when riding solo I only stand to stretch.

bbattle

Good article on climbing out of the saddle: https://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com...he-saddle.html

It's Dave Moulton, ex-racer and framebuilder.

Number400

Your heart rate will rise when you stand. That can be a downside if you are not fit and/or are shagged already and if there are more hills to come or you are racing.

It really depends on how you want to approach the hill. If you are merely trying to survive, then remain seated. If you are trying to save your legs, then stay seated until the going gets tough, then stand/sit as needed.

If you are trying to bridge a gap, then stand until you do, then sit.

If you want to hurt everyone behind you, then go to the front and stand up on every hill while looking back the whole time :-)

megalowmatt

I prefer to spin up hills but standing helps me get out of the monotony of sitting as I usually tense up on long climbs, which means my shoulders hunch and I stay in the same position for too long. I'll stand just for short amounts of time just to break it up.

merlinextraligh

TMonk pretty much nailed it.

Only thing I'd say different is that on very long climbs, I stand for 30 seconds or so, periodicallly, just to recruit different muscle groups, and mix it up mentally.

Nachoman

If nasty wench is the right size hill for repeats, it might be fun to climb it once sitting, once standing and once alternating. I do that on my local little hill, but its' less than a mile long and only about 300-400 feet of climbing.

Long Tom

Yeah, and time them to see what was fastest.

Not sure if I could do repeats.... hmmm.. interesting idea. My buddy would think I'd really gone off the deep end if I started doing that! That hill is in his head... there's two more big climbs and countless short but steep ones on this 6-mile stretch of road so when I crest NW, I'm always thinking ahead to the next climb. I get about a 20-second downhill to recover before it's time to stand and crank the next (much shorter) hill. Hasn't even occurred to me to repeat NW!

I really like standing if I've been sitting for a while. Someone else called it stretching and it's all of that and more; it really seems to agree with my body. Maybe all the steep stuff I've climbed on foot in my life? Dunno.

I'm doing a Century with the above-mentioned buddy tomorrow, and we will be on the flats for a lot of it... honestly I'd rather be in the rollers (at a minimum) but since its my first Century, and his conditioning has fallen off, we are going to yum up some miles on the flats to conserve energy and see how things are going. I'll be LOOKING for places to stand up!

Leinster

A lot of hills where I ride are staircase types, so I find myself standing on the steep parts to get to the next step.

I've noticed a tendency of a few of them to finish with a half mile -> 1.5 mile steep section, though, which is near impossible to stand all the way through.

I've also noticed recently that when a gradient gets above 14-15% or so, my hoods are nearly in my armpits and it's hard to bend my elbows enough to get a good stomp going. Maybe I'll switch to the drops, Pantani style.

aaronmcd

I stand for steep switchbacks, and/or every now and then to stretch/relieve pressure/return blood flow to certain places.
I also like to stand and go all out for the last 300m to 1k, depending on grade and how I'm feeling.

carpediemracing 

Standing is usually worth one gear shift, i.e. if you're sitting and you need to shift down a gear you can stand and keep going. Likewise if you're standing and the gradient eases a bit you can sit instead of shifting up.

I've seen thoughts that if you're lighter than you should stand 2/3 and sit 1/3, for longer climbs. If you're better sitting then 1/3 standing, 2/3 sitting.

If the hill is short, like up to 400-500 meters, then it's almost always quicker to stand. You'll be more tired though. You can explore limits, using gears that you aren't thinking of right now. This story shows how I learned that you can turn big gears on steep hills (the hill in the story is about 14-16% grade; recommended gear was a 53x15). When I'm in doubt I'll hit a hill in some stupid big gear, literally like a 53x12 or so, and just see how far I can get. It's a real eye opener sometimes.

If the hoods seem high when you're standing on semi-steep bits (like up to 18-20%) then you may be able to lower your bars a bit. The steepest I've done is about 20-22% and I had to do it sitting because the rear tire slipped too easily. 15% and the hoods are ideal.

Ghost Ryder

Hey it worked for Chris Horner in this years Vuelta.
Horner is always out of the saddle in crazy climbs, it was one of the best performance I've seen in a while.
If it works for you, who's to say its wrong.
"If it ain't broke..."

Carbonfiberboy 

As above, however we ride hills to train, not necessarily to get up them the fastest. So sometimes I'll sit and spin a hill as fast as I can, sometimes I'll sit and ride it in as big a gear as I can turn comfortably, sometimes I'll stand the whole hill. It's good to work all your modes. A rather fun thing to do is to ride all of one of your standard routes in say, a 70" gear, and try to ride it as fast as you usually do or ride it with one of your buddies who's shifting. Shows up your weaknesses pretty well.

Leinster

I did think about lowering the bars (I still have all the stock spacers below, very un-41) but my current bar position is very comfortable on most flat-to-sub-10% grade situations, so I don't want to give up what's great most of the time just to be better a little bit of the time.

I've been up those types of 20%ers, and sometimes over loose gravel surfaces too, where you need to keep your butt down to get any traction.

Leinster

When I can coax my wife out for a ride, I ride my single speed. I'll never persuade her to try a 12% climb, but I can get a bit of a workout staying at her pace on a 6%er in a 39x14 up and down.

Long Tom

I really need to figure out how to figure a % gradient.

Most of NW, if I'm sitting, is granny gear (34/28) or one up from granny. It's steep (by my standards).

GuyWood

I try and spin up hills but find that if my legs are starting to burn,standing and cranking for even a few seconds allows the spinning muscles a quick break and I feel revived slightly when I sit down again and carry on.

Long Tom

Part of why it feels good to stand might be that I hit the base of the NW series of climbs at around the 37-mile mark. This is yesterday's ride..... you can see NW at around mile 40. See how it's almost vertical?

RollCNY

I primarily ride a single speed, 77.5" gear, and find it far harder to take hills slowly. Every hill becomes a stand up and hammer over. The biweekly group ride ends with a 10% climb, which is usually a pain but not undoable. Mid-summer, I took a bee sting to the tongue at the half way point of the ride, and tried to ride home without pegging my heart rate (and breathing past a swollen tongue was inconvenient). I tried to take that 10% grade slowly, and it was miserable. Hindsight was I would have been better off hammering than riding 20 rpm.

redlude97

There's also a difference between low cadence standing and higher cadence standing. Once you train it enough, you should be able to stand and pedal at a relatively high cadence without going anaerobic which I find has increased my speeds without sacrificing too much efficiency compared to sitting, but low rpm standing tends to be the least efficient IME and takes to you into the red much faster.

Leinster

Strava does that for me. Before I got on there, I just figured it out by pure guesswork and comparing to climbs is seen the pros go up. Once I actually found out how steep the climbs I was doing weren't, it was a bit of an eye opener.

It's be so much easier with metric (100m vertical in 1km = 10%).

Dudelsack 

The most important part of out of the saddle climbing is mastering The Look:

Long Tom

Yeah, I've often entertained myself by wondering, as I'm proudly chugging up some little bump, just how FAST a pro cyclist would blow by me!

Leinster

Yesterday on our post-work ride someone made the mistake of pointing out that the pros can average 22mph up a 6% grade.

And we did a 6% average climb yesterday.

And averaged considerably slower than that.

BoSoxYacht

TMonk and merlinextralight said exactly what I would have added.