I feel this. As a >100 kg rider, I climb best when there is no climb.
But like other people mention, having a rider up ahead, or chasing from behind does help tremendously. For me there’s no better confidence booster than beating someone, anyone, up any positive grade. Since starting structured training, it’s happened more and more, which is really nice.
I climb best when I. . .
Can see the others suffering.
Simon Yates won today, they were commenting on his climbing.
About 60 - 70% standing big gear low cadence and 30 - 40% seated high cadence. I have never noticed before how much he sits down and spins an easier gear seated. I always have the big gear swinging the bike picture in my head from the past.
How quickly he spins it up when already in a big gear is how he normally drops people and that is how he dropped McCarthy and Nairo Quintana today.
He dropped Sivakov last man with him after multiple attacks standing that didn’t work. He finally did this seated raising the tempo until Sivakov just popped, not the normal standing explosion.
So maybe practice and be good at both.
I climb best when the momentum of the downhill carries me up the next hill.
I climb better in the big ring, even compared to having a very similar gear ratio in the small ring.
No idea why, drivetrain efficiancy could have something to do with it, but I can’t see that being such a large effect?
I’ve been a variety of weights and find there is a transition range where I feel better and do a lot more standing climbing. At 5’9" I start to stand more around 160lbs and do a lot more standing when I’m under 150lbs. But it is still relative, when I do a lot of standing I’m still sitting 75% of the time. When I don’t stand much I’m probably 90-95% seated.
I spoke to an A grade MTBer who said their bum barely touches the seat during an XC race
I’m with you here. When I was racing XC full time I could climb like a goat on my road bike that I was using for training and never even thought of racing. This was also before 12 speed and Eagle came out. We were racing on 30 or 32t up front with 11-42 in the rear.
A few years later and haven’t raced XC in almost two years minus one 50-miler, my climbing seems hilarious. I’m a still decent climber all things considered, but given my size, I’m actually pretty poor at 5’9", 145 pounds. More of a crit/rolling hills type of profile I guess.
Just like the golden old days of the Tour de France!
Huh? I race expert XC and I’m on the saddle probably 95% of the time.
I climb best when I rent an e-bike 
When I don’t get out of the saddle. I’m so muscularly inefficient when I stand. My heart rate immediately increases 10-15 beats per minute and legs load up.
I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m dealt with this limiter and what I can do to make it a non-limiter.
Talk about working for your supper.
No wonder you’re getting a great workout on the single speed. Grinding up 15% with that gearing isn’t like any of the TR workouts I’ve encountered so far.
I’ve always been amazed by the people who ride SS in my local XCM events. They go a lot steeper than 15% so I’ll have to check out the gearing combo’s next time. (I had a quick look back at one race and the steep bits are in the 25-35% range🤯).
I climb best when … I’m going down hill.
…when I don’t over analyze what I’m doing (cadence, gears, etc…) and just push!
I climb the best when I am racing, or just on my race bike
When I hear other riders are starting to struggle…