Quote Originally Posted by Dogmama View Post
I think of it as dancing on the pedals. Makes it seem a little easier..
hahaha great Phil Liggett-ism!

For me, standing took practice, practice, practice. I grew up on cruisers and flat roads with never enough resistance (or need) to stand up. I was really embarrassed to discover that standing up on my road bike was nothing like standing on a spin bike.

Anyway...It helps to start out in a heavy gear on the trainer to get the hang of it. However, too big of a gear will cause you to have noticeable gaps in the pedal stroke once you start to get tired. It requires a lot of quadriceps control. Then, try short standing bursts outside, again in a pretty big gear--shift up 2 to 3 gears from what feels comfortable sitting and spinning a fairly high cadence. Then get back to the trainer and try lighter gears, faster legs. You may only be able to do it a few seconds at a time. Work on getting longer intervals on the trainer, then return outside. It may help outdoors to practice more on gradual hills in heavy gears (smaller hills just in case you feel like you're getting into trouble, then you can sit and shift down). Then try to stand on the flats, with hands in the drops. Try this in sprint intervals. Spin up fast while shifting into harder gears, then click up one or 2 more, stand, sit, shift down, slow down, repeat.

You may well need to put more weight on the bars. The only thing you need to be mindful of is that TOO much weight on a hill or during a sprint on the front wheel can cause your rear wheel to skip.

Once you get the basic mechanics down of how to stand in a hard enough gear so that the bike doesn't wobble all over the place, then you can start to do more "dancing," smoothly.