kensuf

Different strokes for different folks. If you do it, make sure to do some spinning during recovery rides/in between.

mollusk

So why not go to the gym or do "stomps" instead?

badhat

cuz i have a perfectly good bike with 20 gears and the entire colorado front range to play on, why would pay for a gym

kensuf

Racer Ex 

Because you'd be pumping money that you'd spend on hookers into the legit economy?

Plus you'd get to listen to Techno while watching muted Fox News.

badhat

pssshhh i have a handlebar mount for my iphone i can do that already.

soma5

Those shoes...

Other than that,...

king-tony

I did this extensively last year and I do think there are benefits. Doing it exclusively was a bad idea as it did not translate well to race situations with rapid changes of pace. As I trained for longer periods and at higher intensities with low cadence (70-75rpm for me) I saw that my HR was much lower than at equivalent power at higher cadence. I believe that this is how to really increase muscular endurance (performing this for extended periods at SST levels). I feel that I can switch the load from my muscular to cardiovascular system at will (% of load on each system) and my ability to hold 90% ftp is now greatly extended meaning my power curve from 30 to 120 minutes is much flatter compared to previous seasons. My job is to control the front, chase breaks or be in breaks. For what I am asked to do (along with TTing) this works great. However, I think there is a balance and if you do not work on high cadence performance, you will lose that ability. Also, I don't think this makes ftp any higher than more traditional cadence training. n=1.

carpediemracing 

https://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...ping-road.html

TheKillerPenguin

Be kind to your knees.

shovelhd

I wish my gym had Fox News. The displays are always set on The Food Network, The E! Channel, blah blah blah. Not that I'm paying attention or anything.

fly:yes/land:no

+1

J HY

I've been doing a bit of this lately and have been wondering if it's leading to good or 'bad' adaptations. I'm following an off the rack winter program by hunter allen- which includes alot of weight training. From lifting, my legs have gotten more developed and stronger (off the bike). The plan has been incorperating some low cadence, high force interval workouts which have gotten much easier as a result of the weight training. In fact, I just did an FTP test on 1/11/12, which included a 20 min portion where I avg'd 284 watts and 93rpm, and reached 200bpm. Three days later I did a workout that involved 3x15 at 260-270watts at 65rpm. During the first two intervals, my heart rate was in the 160s the entire time. On the last interval i did reach 174 as my legs were wobbling hard toward the finish. I was surprised to see my HR this much lower during these low cadence intervals compared with my 20min effort in the FTP test. Chances are it's all part of the plan to develop the force now in base, and as the season progresses I'll be doing workouts/rides that specifically or naturally train at higher cadence. None the less, my legs currently feel stronger, but I do feel as i lost some pedaling speed even though i do some spinning at higher cadences regularly.

I am wondering if i should continue to do these workouts to build good force and supplement my weight training, and possibly further develop a 'strength', or to throttle back on the low rev workouts...

AzTallRider

My coach has been assigning low cadence hill work for one of my morning commutes each week:

As many hills as you can on your way to work, big chain ring. Most of ride time in HR zones 2-3. Seated on most hills. Avg pwr >200w today.
Go 150-180 on flats no more than 250 on climbs

250 is well under my FTP, and I could do this workout all day. The 150-180 is recovery, and I spin it up. I do the seated climbs using 70's cadence, when I'd normally be climbing shallow hills (which is all I have on my commute) in the 90's. Recovery is at 100-110.

I'm improving rapidly, but part of that is because I'm relatively new at this (second season training), and who knows which particular workout is providing the most benefit? I believe long base rides i mostly z2 are working well, but it's probable the low cadence has helped my torque, as I seem to have some upper end power right now without having done much in the way of high intrensity intervals so far this year. It's hard to know exactly what is working without turning yourself into a guinea pig in ways that would be contrary to improving your performance. Consistely and accurately measuring progress is one of the hard things, at least for me.

laserfj

awesome

mollusk

I have been thinking about this low(er) cadence stuff a bit from a "common sense" point of view. My gut reaction was "so wrong" because I have found over the years the biggest thing that noobs need to do is learn how to spin instead of mash. With that in mind I would never have a "new" cyclist/racer do such drills.

Then I got to thinking about a bigger picture in terms of training. From my experience (long in years but not that wide in terms of population), the best way to "up" FTP is to ride a lot a little below and do some "sharp" training just above. A "push" and "pull" concept. Perhaps this low(er) cadence training can be viewed in that context. The eventual idea is to be able to develop more "force" in the pedal stroke, but not lower the cadence. That increases the power. So some training is higher that usual force at lower cadence (the low cadence stuff), but it would have to be balanced with lower than normal force and higher cadence to achieve the "push" and the "pull" or the "ying" and the "yang".

I think there might be something here.

kensuf

Have you been reading Friel again? Or talking to your former students?

mollusk

Neither.

Except Veloboy is both a current and former student and I did talk a bit to him today a little about this topic before class.

I think that Shawn G is still around, "Big" Phil is a former student, and Bobby S last I heard is diving in the deep end and going "pro" full time. I didn't talk to any of them today.

And this is only the last few years of student/racers I have known. Jackie C was in my department, but she never had a class with me.

Added in edit: You wouldn't be talking about Swen Hanson, would you? That was a LONG time ago and I didn't talk to him today.

What is it with bike racing and engineering students? I'd think that they would have the smallest amount of time to train except for possibly architecture students drawing bricks for hours on end.

Hida Yanra

It takes both.
Talk to a trackie, since the main limiter of that discipline is that you only get one gear per race, track racers spend most of their time obsessing about how to best strike the balance between high torque low cadence, & high cadence low(er) torque. Factually, "high cadence" and "power at low RPM" are both critical.
I'm doing a TON of high cadence work during my winter base rides... whenever I get healthy again and start up, I'll be doing quite a bit of low cadence, high torque stuff.

High cadence doesn't help if you've got nothing behind it - Low cadence + high torque won't if you can't spin quickly.
takes both.

For example - to jump away from the pack in a crit takes more than shifting to your 53x16 & spinning 12bajillion rpm. There's a balance being played out.

kleinboogie

To me, power is power. Flats, climbs or descents. Sustained FTP workouts are great and pretty much what I need for an ITT. Problem with that, I think someone mentioned, is it screws with the Criterium demand for surges. Finding that balance during the season is a pain in the rear.

Racer Ex 

Live long and prosper.

This is why we have periodized training.

The simple homilie is slow comes slow and goes slow, and fast comes fast and goes fast. It's why sprinters are nothing more than the parasites of bike racing and why every bike race should either a TT of no less than 20km or a road race with massive amounts of 5% climbing.

king-tony

You're my hero.

mollusk

When i first heard about these drills the first thing that came to mind was track racers. You have to be able to turn it over and yet not spin it out too soon. Tough stuff!

Then I started thinking VERY old school where you only had 5 cogs to select from in back so in a hilly or very windy race you were required to "grind" it out some of the time.

It took me a good long "think" to see how such training could work for a modern roadie. I can see it now. But I wonder if going to the gym to do high reps at low weights might get the same benefit with less time on the bike for the "low cadence/high force" part.

jsutkeepspining

+1 i wish we had more long hilly road races were i live.

botto