Originally Posted by
njkayaker
It's useless.
What is a "recreational cyclist"?
If a high cadence is useful for "professional" cyclists, it might be useful for people who ride a lot. The study doesn't get anywhere near providing that information.
It shouldn't be surprising that a high cadence isn't useful for "casual" cyclists.
From the actual article
Nine healthy participants (male/female=6/3) were recruited and completed the study. In terms of their activity levels, 2 participants were triathletes at regional level with 3 years’ experience, 6 regularly engaged in moderate and vigorous exercise, and one engaged in very light physical activity only occasionally [
12]. The participants’ age ranged from 21 to 55 years.
As far as I can tell there was no adaption or training period applied prior to the testing, so for them, "recreational" means new except for the 2 triathletes.
Not sure how useful the study is since it was done only at low power(125w+/-44). Here is the conclusion the researcher draw
We conclude that increasing cadence beyond a given threshold at moderate exercise intensity close to the Tventis less energetically efficient (as confirmed by the higher V̇O2 and V̇CO2 recorded for a given power output here [
Fig. 2]) and that high cadence may compromise skeletal muscle oxygenation during cycling exercise.