BengalCat

The glutes and legs supply almost all of the power when riding a road bike be it on the flats or on climbs. Does anyone have a clear concise breakdown for the quads, adductors, abductors, and calves in the stroke cycle? Separately for the flats, versus say a five-mile Cat 3 climb, especially with regards to the calves. It is clear the calves become proportionately more percentage-wise involved on the long climbs.

Thanks.

PeteHski

This is going to be a train wreck of a thread!

The biggest difference on a climb is cadence. While you might be spinning 90 rpm on the flat, you could easily be down to sub 70 rpm on a long climb. For the same power output, lower cadence loads your leg muscles more, while higher cadence puts more of the load on your cardio system. Remember power is basically torque applied x cadence. So when climbing at a relatively low cadence ALL your leg muscles are working harder relative to flat riding at a higher cadence for any given power output.

How much your calves contribute depends a lot on your pedalling style and cleat position. The further you position your cleats rearward on the shoes, the less your calves are used. The extreme of this is a midfoot mounted cleat, which pretty much takes all the load off your calves. Think of your foot as a lever supported by your calf. The longer that lever, the more load on your calf. A more pronounced toe-down pedalling style will also tend to put more load on the calves.

Saddle height and setback makes a difference to how much your quads and glutes suffer. A lower saddle will tend to load the quads more and glutes less.

In the stroke cycle, all meaningful power is generated in the downstroke. The upstroke is really about unweighting your leg against gravity i.e. absorbing the minimum amount of power rather than producing any meaningful net power.

Kapusta

I don’t know the answer to your question specifically, but I imagine there could be a bit of difference in calf muscle usage based on the difference in foot placement. I tend to move my foot on a flat pedal around fore aft, and it is often more of a mid-foot placement relative to my clipped-in position (mostly at lower cadences, and definitely when out of the saddle).

EDIT: Never mind, I just realized “flats” referred to flat roads, not pedals.

Kapusta

Another point which will almost certainly be ignored in this thread is that flat pedaling technique is a thing, and will change depending on how good the pedals/shoes are. With modern, grippy pedals I can employ power through more of the stroke than with the flat pedals the vast majority of people have experience with. And this I imagine will make some difference in how much you use some of your muscle groups.

EDIT: Never mind, I just realized “flats” referred to flat roads, not pedals.

wolfchild

Just ride your bike and don't worry about it.

gregf83 

I don’t recall ever having sore calves from riding. If I start running I often have a problem where I’ll pop something in my calf and have to take a couple weeks off to heal. During this time I can ride on the flats or hills without any pain but running is out.

Oso Polar

Hmm, why it is clear? Personally, I've never ever noticed some particular additional load on calves on the climbs. And in general they don't seem to be that heavy loaded compared to other leg muscles.

Troul 

the muscles that are mostly sore after an eventful ride can be informative as to which areas are working the most. Whether those sore muscles are best for the purpose, that's related to form, general health, & technique. If your palmaris longus muscles hurt after a long hard climb, you might be doing something to compensate for a weaker part of your body.... IDK how those muscles would even play a major role, but ymmv.

guachi

Just leave this thread and don't worry about what other people find of interest to discuss.

aclinjury

For road bike positioning,
1. quads provide 60%
2. gluts about 30%
3. the rest are the other muscle groups

This is the reason why road cyclists have well developed quads but carry a pancake flatass. And calves? pfff, they don't even exist on roadie.

scottfsmith

Pretty picture:



This one attempts to show relative use by how thick the color is:




Re: climbs vs flats you tend to put more power in each stroke on a climb and for me at least it feels like I add more calf into the equation to get that stronger stroke. Notice how the calves can take you further around the stroke than the quads. I think I add a little more hamstring as well on climbs, but it is not as noticeable as the calves addition is.

pdlamb

I'm going to do the unthinkable and answer the specific question that was asked.

No.

The answer is going to depend on so many variables, that change from one rider to another, and one hill to another, and one fatigue level to another, that there is no clear concise breakdown to be had.

seypat

Good answer! There is some bad language in this clip:

terrymorse 

^^^ This is nonsense.

livedarklions

Or not, I think "this isn't really an answerable question, so don't worry about it" is a perfectly reasonable response, especially when the question is posed in General Cycling rather than Training & Nutrition..

livedarklions

My calves are very big and all I ride in is a road bike position. Might have something to do with my favorite gear being 53x11. My glutes aren't huge, but certainly not flat.

Troul 

I road ride, use all the gears as a favorite; my butt is big & cannot lie, won't deny it either.

BengalCat

A refreshing attitude and attention to detail in any posting forum or site.

pdlamb

I resemble that remark!

Hermes

My counter to your question is why do you want to know?

To answer your question based upon my anecdotal study of me N=1, my quads can get tired and sore racing up hills, racing on the track and sprinting. My glutes and calf muscles never get tired but my calf muscles have cramped twice - once in a hill climb race at the end and on the tandem at the end of a road race.

My ancillary muscles just like to get injured and muck up my cycling. Hence I try stretch and strengthen those in the gym.

ShannonM

I doubt there's any way to predict this for any rider, let alone all riders. Pedaling a bicycle is a profoundly unnatural thing for human legs and feet to do. The compromises required to make it work are going to be different for every pair of legs.

For example, some people naturally drop their heels as cadence drops and effort increases... what used to be called "ankling." The feel has been described as akin to scraping mud off of your shoes. If you try doing it intentionally, you'll find out pretty quickly that your calves are doing more work than they're used to. (Even if you're a natural "ankler," by consciously trying to do it, you'll end up doing more of it than you normally would, because you were doing it anyway but didn't notice.)

If anybody tells you that you're pedaling "wrong," tell them to borrow your legs for a while and then they'll be qualified to have an opinion.

So, the only true answer to your question is "it depends."

--Shannon

PS: Anyone who thinks that cyclists all have flat butts has never seen a track race... them cats got booty.

RChung

I believe Jim Martin and his students at Utah have done some work on muscle activation during the pedal stroke. I know they've done studies on crank length, cadence, and elliptical vs. round rings, but I don't know if they've done specific studies on flat vs. climbing. One difference between flat and climbing is that the crank inertial loads are typically quite different: CIL during climbing is typically low, while CIL on the flat is typically high, which typically affects cadence, pedal force, and (I suspect) the typical shape of the power phase and relative L/R balance. Typically.

So I'd search for some of Jim's and his lab's papers, and look for some of his online presentations, for example look for something like "Myth and science in cycling" by Jim Martin. He updates this fairly regularly, so find the most recent version you can. It may not be exactly what you're looking for but it may give you leads on where to look next.

scottfsmith

Thanks Robert.. I'd never heard of "CIL". In terms of the feel on the bike, I think CIL is basically the fact that at high speed you can't quickly increase your speed (the wall you are pushing in to there is the CIL), and conversely you can keep speed if there is a short period when you are not pushing as hard. And, conversely on a climb you can change your speed really easily (think of that lurch forward you can get with one strong stroke) but conversely you will lose speed even within one stroke if you don't keep the force even.

My own feeling as a biker is I want to keep a more even force through my stroke on the uphills compared to the flats. On the flats you can just bam-bam-bam pulsing power at the most efficient point in the stroke with your biggest muscles, the quads and glutes. If you try that on a climb you will lose speed in the gaps and so won't go as fast overall. So climbing requires a more even stroke which will be putting out a relatively consistent force around the pedal stroke. In terms of the muscles it would be primarily quads/glutes on the flats and relatively more of the other muscles on the hills. Also there is a difference of the more sudden "bam" in the flats vs the slower force/release on hills where it seems like there will be more fast twitch needed in the flats and slow twitch in the climbs perhaps.

I had previously thought this was because more power or lower rpm was common on climbs, but even with the same power and rpm the the optimal muscle firing should be different on flats vs climbs duet the different CIL.

Richard Cranium

Leg Muscle Distribution Load on Flats v Climbs - if your butt hurts you stand - if your knees hurt you sit and or spin

Bingo - why would anyone figure there is some sort of quantifiable answer?

One could ask "Why do some athletes perform unimaginable feats of effort without injuring themselves.? And others go home with sore knees without finishing?

prj71

This^^^

What a silly question to ask.