Originally Posted by
datlas
I don't disagree, but my suspicion is trained/conditioned cyclists might perform better at self-selected cadence which is typically 80-90. Untrained cyclists are more likely to perform at 60 like the graph shows. I have not done a literature search, though.
The relationship between cadence and metabolic efficiency has been studied quite a lot. Here are a couple that use "well-trained" cyclists as the subjects.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218268/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20386335/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19229554/