Tell me about cadence

[Hi Ho Silver]

The speed of your bike is dependent on the gear ratio being used, the speed at which you rotate the pedals (referred to as the "cadence", measured in RPM), and the force you apply to the pedals. The important thing to grasp is that you can produce the same speed using different levels of gear ratios, cadences, and pedal forces. You can use this fact to help you through a ride. The cadence that is best for you is situational and depends on many things:

~~ If your heart is beating rapidly and you are having a hard time breathing - shift to a slightly harder (higher) gear, slow down your cadence and push harder on the pedals.

~~ If your thighs are burning - shift to a slightly lower (easier) gear, increase your cadence but don't push as hard on the pedals.

~~ If you are experiencing a lot of pain on the saddle and/or in the shoulders - shift to a higher gear, slow down your cadence and push harder on the pedals.

~~ Your "optimal" cadence depends on your cardiovascular condition, your mix of slow-twitch/fast-twitch muscles, and your particular goal for the ride. The definition of "optimal" (e.g. max VO2 efficiency, or minimum muscle strain, etc.) depends on which study you are looking at. Regardless of the study and the definition, a cadence betweeen 80 RPM and 100 RPM is generally considered "optimal".


Your pedalling strategy can vary throughout the course of a ride. For example, on flat sections I cruise along at 88 RPM. On long climbs, I change to an easier gear and mash along at roughly 60 RPM (I find that I can take any hill as long as I pedal along at around 5mph at roughly 60 RPM - despite being over 60 years old and having crappy knees). To accelerate, I'll shift to progressively harder gears and mash away until I get to the speed that I want, and then I'll change gears to find one where I can maintain that speed while spinning along at 88 RPM.

[OakLeaf]

Knott has posted demonstrations before showing that your ideal cadence has to do with your individual proportion of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscles. So just like each engine has a different powerband, each person has a different powerband, too.

Still, 60 rpm seems excessively slow to me. Too slow and you're risking your knees. I'm a pretty slow-twitch endurance type, and the natural cadence I fall into for both easy riding and easy running is right around 85 rpm.

No matter what your ideal is, it's useful to train at high cadence. That helps smooth your pedal stroke like not too much else. Among other things, the lower your cadence, the easier it is to fall into pedaling in squares instead of circles, which not only is inefficient, it's extra hard on your knees.

[Hi Ho Silver]

60 rpm does sound slow, but the book "Bicycling Science" (by Whitt & Wilson) quotes some old studies indicating that lower rpm's are more muscle efficient. I have no idea how valid those studies are. The book also indicates that the "advice to riders to 'keep spinning' is appropriate only for maximum-speed, maximum sprinting". My own experience disagrees with the book. For me, long arduous grinds up the mountains out west were only possible at low rpm. But on the flats, my legs definitely prefer 88 rpm for cruising along.