Climbing technique: what to do with your arms?

[shaun]

I was reading in Bicycling Magazine something about climbing technique...and it sort of surfaced a lot of questions I have had about climbing technique. The article said (paraphrasing) ...that when you push down with your left leg you simultaneously pull up with your left arm.....I will gratefully listen to any advice on climbing technique...in particular to positioning of your body, and what your arms are doing while climbing....

[Eden]

It's much more gentle than it sounds. You can climb with your hands anywhere on the bars, but for most people the most efficient place to climb is with your hands on the top of the bars - if you have relatively wide bars you can even move your hands in from the hoods and hold the bars on the tops. Try to grasp them gently - don't put a strangle hold on your handlebars and try to yank them up and down. As you are climbing gently (again with the gently) rock the bike back and forth and you will find that you are naturally pulling up with your arms as you push down with your legs. But like I said the key is to do it gently and fluidly. If you thrash about you'll just waste energy and you won't endear yourself to anyone who has to ride near you. Just think about Phil Ligett when he talks about a rider "dancing on the pedals" - you want to try to be graceful.

[spokewench]

Shaun

Climbing technique. It may be true that you do this to some extent while standing and climbing. But really good technique climbing includes relaxing your arms. If you are doing a seated climb, you want all or most of your energy to go to your legs. That is what is getting you up the hill. So sit, keep thinking about bending your elbows, dropping your shoulders, relaxing your upper body as much as possible and working on the roundness of your spin as you climb. You want to be efficient. If you have to stand because of the steepness of the hill or because someone has jumped and you need to stand to stay with them, you still want to be relaxed but given that you are standing, your bike will sway under you - let it - but still try to keep a somewhat rounded pedal stroke - you lose efficiency if you mash to the bottom of your pedal stroke and then have to raise the pedal back up.

Hope this helps.

spoke

[lizbids]

My mountain-biking brother told me to scoot my butt up to the tip of the seat, keep my head sort of down and push down with my legs. I did this on my loaded tour of the coast, and it helped me greatly. Any time I squeezed the handlebars I'd end up with numb arms. I tried to keep them relaxed; enough hold to control but light enough to avoid the pressure problems.

[alpinerabbit]

The pulling on the bars would become necessary at 15-20% grade or something. Or a sprint. But it would never be a frantic jerking on the bars, just sort of a supporting motion.

Below that kind of grade, just relax. And you want to do most of your climbing seated because standing wears you out. Only to change the rhythm a bit on a long climb, or relax your back muscles / give your quads some relief on a very long or hard climb.

Oh and do like Lance says: never look at the top of the hill. You only see the 3-4 meters in front of your bike. Suddenly you're up there. It's psychological, but looking at the top of the hill makes it ever so much harder.

[RoadRaven]

Oh and do like Lance says: never look at the top of the hill. You only see the 3-4 meters in front of your bike. Suddenly you're up there. It's psychological, but looking at the top of the hill makes it ever so much harder.

YUP. This is what I do. I am not a hill climber per se... or rather, I do climb hills - but much much more slowly than most of the people I ride or race with.

Looking just in front gets me to the top much more easily than watching where I am trying to get to.

[sundial]

So true!

[RoadRaven]

I notice that I do this when I am climbing something that is an effort.

It helps somehow... but I have never conciously done it.

Like Eden and Spoke say, it does assist in climbing and is not as forceful or difficult as reading about it makes it seem.