Gary in NJ

I'm happiest between 80 and 90 rpm. Once I get above 90 I'm looking for the next gear.

njkayaker

There have been studies done before that show the same results. So, it’s not really news.

It’s well-known that high cadence is not more efficient.

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What is a “recreational” cyclist?

They are talking about cadences higher than 90 RPM, which is, itself, a high cadence.

Novice/casual cyclists often have cadences 60 RPM or lower.

It’s probably hard to do 90 RPM competently without being able to use somewhat higher cadences.

The article implies that there’s a benefit to “professional” cyclists. What’s that benefit? How are all “recreational” cyclists kept from having the same benefit?

======================

Different people are going to prefer different cadences. It’s still useful to be able to use high competently. So, it’s something that might be useful for non-casual riders to learn how to do.

indyfabz

Cycling is a poor form of exercise anyway.

billridesbikes

The power was controlled for all nine subjects based on their fitness and they put out roughly the same power at each of the tested cadences and this was normalized in the study based on their overall fitness. i.e. the power from each of the subjects was not the same. Even though power was controlled for all the subjects the proxy used to measure how efficiently their muscles worked declined at higher cadence. That's my take away from the abstract. That force exerted on the pedals deceases at high cadence isn't new or very even relevant here as we can determine the pedal force from something like: F = k*P/L*C (P = power. L = crank length, C=cadence, k=some normalization constant I'm too tired to figure out) so higher cadence produces less pedal force, less power per pedal revolution, for all other things being equal.

Interestingly, even though the full text is not uploaded to researchgate.net for this paper some earlier studies, which there is full text uploaded, from some of the same authors of this paper didn't find much relation between cadence and this metric. More interesting to me is "Effect of pedaling cadence on muscle oxygenation during high-intensity cycling until exhaustion: a comparison between untrained subjects and triathletes" Houssem Zorgati et al 2015 from the references. Which found that higher aerobic fitness allows better efficiency at higher cadence compared to the untrained group.

wphamilton

Bingo. And beyond being used to higher cadence, what are the training adaptions that are specific to particular cadences? When you've only trained at lower cadences, do you work more efficiently at lower cadences? It seems plausible to me.

Especially since the current (scientific) thought is that cyclists are most efficient at their self-selected cadence.

wolfchild

Especially if done on a steel framed bike. You know all that frame flex means too much wasted effort.

DeadGrandpa

That is funny, yes sir.

I bought my gf a new Garmin Explore and a cadence sensor that pairs with it. She's become a stronger rider since then, or so it seems. I don't know what cadence she pedals, but she mentioned that she frequently pedals to maintain a constant cadence without down shifting (which, of course, maintains a constant speed).

She suggests that if I use cadence as a metric, I will get stronger. But I have never been a "masher" of high gears; I have always been a "spinner" and shifted to maintain a light pedal pressure, varying cadence as seems good to both maintain momentum and muscle strength endurance. I seldom pause from pedaling on our 3+ hour ride.
She sometimes pulls ahead of me on the last third of our 40-50+ mile rides, and sometimes I catch her.

I can't help thinking that her legs (normal for women) are built differently than mine, which are basically those of a skinny teenager. Her legs are built for delivery of power and she typically pedals a bit slower than I do. Somehow, though, on a recent bike riding week in the mountains, I always got to the top well ahead of her, and our gearing was close to the same.

Danhedonia

Thanks billridesbikes ! Exactly - the interesting part was about muscle oxygenation.

My personal approach to cadence is complicated - there is a 'sweet spot' for me in terms of exerting pressure on pedals vs. momentum of pedaling, and I have guessed this is about overall fitness (aerobic, anaerobic capacity, muscle power, etc.). I try to balance them to avoid discomfort, or conversely embrace discomfort to increase speed.

My read of the abstract was that increased cadence will improve fitness related to increased heartrate, but not leg muscles.

Meanwhile, those who can make an actual intellectual argument as to why this study is scientifically not valid would be most welcome. Saying "because" without actual scientific support is not sufficient.

genejockey 

1. Small N.
2. Overly broad selection criteria for subjects requiring much narrower conclusions.
3. Nothing about the subjects preferred cadence, whether they were practiced at spinning higher cadence, etc.

A poorly defined set of subjects, not controlled for level of experience, or even whether they were practiced at spinning a high cadence. This makes the conclusions limited, like maybe you could say that beginning cyclists will not do better ON THIS RIDE by spinning at a higher cadence than they are comfortable with. But the design of the study doesn't support the conclusion that "high cadence is of little value to amateurs".

A proper study to determine that would require a larger number of subjects with defined levels of experience and preferred cadence, because if higher cadence is not efficient for beginners but is efficient for elite athletes, then there may be a point in athletic development where it goes from net negative to net positive. See where I'm going with this?

UnderDawgAl

I only pedal at a cadence of 92.37 rpm.

Gary in NJ

LMAO, great cross-thread call out.

Milton Keynes

What kind of chain lube do people who don't wave use?

Milton Keynes

I'm going to give away one of my secrets, and I hope it doesn't turn me into a pariah: I don't care what my cadence is. I pedal at a speed I feel comfortable with, enough to get me from point A to point B on the bike. If it gets too hard to pedal, I shift down, and if my feet are spinning too fast then I shift up.

HTupolev

Assuming that the shot 50 seconds into this video is real...


...he has a 2x crankset (likely 52-42 or thereabouts) and his big cog is clearly far bigger than 15T. The big cog looks to be around 1/7th the diameter of the wheel, which would put it in the 23T-24T neighborhood. In 1982 this would be fairly ordinary gearing for a strong racer who's going to be tackling mountains.

And I'm sure that his gearing should be taken as optimal practice regardless, since it was very early in the history of that race and nobody had any real idea of what they were doing yet. The only time that anybody has won RAAM at a slower pace than 1982 Lon Haldeman was 1983 Lon Haldeman.

Germany_chris

I like Jan way to much for high cadence cycling

cjenrick

don't just think about power and muscles, consider the knee and hip joints.

guy153

Agree with everyone who said efficiency isn't the point. Nobody cares how many miles per banana you get. It's more about not getting tired as soon.

The other thing it's easy to overlook is that pros aren't really "spinning" the way we are. They're smashing the pedals only also doing it really fast. Grinding and spinning at the same time.

gecho

I think you have to look at not just cadence but wattage. When out with very slow riders I have to lower my cadence to around 70 or less (or handicap myself with a less efficient bike). High cadence at low power just feels weird. To me it feels like you need a certain level of pedal resistance to help maintain your form. Kind of like when you are coasting to a red light so you downshift anticipating a complete stop, but then it goes green but you are in so low a gear that when you start pedaling again you can't turn the pedals fast enough to overcome the freewheeling.

So for some riders then never go fast high cadence makes no sense other than for hill climbing where you have a continuous pedal load thanks to gravity.

ShannonM

It's quite possible that I've got the year wrong. I'll have to look up the article he talked about it in. But he did it, he had reasons to do it, and it worked, so the larger point, I think, stands, that there is no "best" cadence.

--Shannon

ofajen

People don’t wave because they are afraid of being catapaulted by disc brakes.

Otto

ofajen

Optimal cadences, like drop bars, are an illusion for most.

Otto

livedarklions

We had a long thread on this once, and I did a literature search and found absolutely no medical evidence that one or the other approach was better on the joints. Trainers make the claims all the time, often in print, but I don't consider them reliable sources of medical information and they never cite any.

livedarklions

If you look at a gear calculator, you'll see that if you're using a 53x11 combo, you can go quite fast at a relatively low cadence. I do this a lot for well over 100 miles on my very long rides. Needless to say, I'm finding the "efficiency isn't endurance" posts pretty damn funny.

BTW, I'm not going to tell anyone else to use my gearing choices, I just know from trial and error what generally works best for me.

livedarklions

I deliberately don't monitor my cadence. It's a number I don't care about and don't want to start.

I remember a couple years back, there was one of these cadence threads, and I forgot who it was, but he "proved" mathematically that the gear was the dependant variable when you choose your cadence and desired speed with an equation. He couldn't seem to wrap his head around that someone could choose their speed and preferred gear and adjust the cadence (which I think is a good description of what you and I are doing). All I did was invert his equation. He kept trying to invert it back like that proved anything


Some of this is just personal preference. If I spent my rides trying to stick to some particular cadence, I would get bored silly. I like playing with the bike, sometimes varying stuff up just for the sake of variety.

livedarklions

Drop bars are at least tangible objects that actually exist.