My normal rpm is 90/91 and I can hold that with pretty much no conscious effort on most workouts up to and including sweetspot power.
On the first few times I tried lower cadence (65rpm), I really had to concentrate pretty hard to hold that level, even on a workout I know quite well.
I don’t know how many hours of 65rpm I would need to do before I could hold it without consciously working at it, but unless / until I get there, that concentration is a significant factor: quite mentally fatiguing in itself.
I like to crank up the resistance to do low cadence work, and usually climbing will have a significantly lower RPE on my next ride.
Lately, if I’m feeling pretty good and the friends I’m riding with aren’t keeping up on the singletrack, I’ll shift to a hard gear and stay in it (i.e., single speed), and ride at their speed. Same effect, climbing keeps getting easier.
Lower HR (i.e. less cardiovascular stress) doesn’t necessarily mean you can/should do more volume if your leg muscles are doing more work. You might actually be doing more work on a muscle cell level at higher torque (lower cadence) than at lower torque (higher cadence), thus creating the stress needed for adaptations without additional volume. Only way to know is do the extra volume and see if you recover well or not.
For example, during a summer trip I rode up a 1 mile @ 15% climb, probably 60ish RPM, and it was non-stop tension until I crested the climb. It was only a mile long, and despite being able to talk the entire time, my legs were completely drained using a 36x30, far more than any big gear tempo, SS, or LT effort I might normally do. I could not have done this two more times, and thankfully the two remaining climbs, though longer (4 miles and 2 miles), were not as steep.
Mine is that at low RPM you’re getting into more (and bigger) motor units than at high RPM for the same power, in much same way that you get into more and larger motor units at threshold power than at tempo power at similar RPMs.
A motor unit that doesn’t get activated doesn’t send adaptive signals, right?
Whether it’s worth it is debatable, whether it’s A Thing or not, and likely comes down to individual responses to how fatiguing the stimulus is.
As a general notion, doing at least some training at low and high cadences (and points between) has an intrinstic “covering all the bases” appeal to me.
Just one bit I’d like to toss into the debate is the recruitment of particular muscles during the stroke. I had a radical bike refit this year and found myself using muscles I never really engaged much in my previous stroke. It took some getting used too. I did a block of grinds to really feel the difference. It was mainly more engagement with the hips than previously. For the first time in my cycling life I could really consciously offload my knees. That got me thinking: How much were we cheating the stroke with high revs. What I mean is we’ve all seem those charts showing where in the stroke the various movers are supposedly activated. Whether you put much store by that or not, is secondary to my point: How much of that activation chain do we skip and hide with high revs? Momentum will carry us over any lacunae. Harder to do that at lower revs.
The unexpected bonus of the low rev stuff was robustness to headwinds… death spiralling was less likely during gusting or breaking out of wind-shadows. I would recommend it for that alone.
I’m not yet sure of the efficacy, but I do know these efforts suck…
Or at least the fasted ones. Yesterday afternoon did a big Threshold Session, had a regular dinner, then did a modest gym session with only deadlift for lower body plus some upper body exercises. Then this morning before breakfast with just a coffee did a ride at around “Fat Max” with a couple of 10min blocks of low cadence (50-60rpm).
I find they are a useful part to have in your arsenal. I had an event with lots of hills and when I hit a hill with long sections of gradient above 20% and some above 30% my legs weren’t screaming, neither was my HR spiking.
I don’t think any one workout is the magic one. But I’ve found my muscular endurance, particularly on hilly rides / events is far better than it used to be.
I’ve done blocks of 30mins (not fasted). I do not feel it too bad, in fact I think is easier than normal cadence. I can keep my HR in high z2 for the whole set of 3 blocks.
Off topic, but your comment about bike fit / using different muscles reminded me of this discussion on bike fitting with Phil Burt
He talks about a Team Sky rider who was driving the mechanics mad by having them raise / lower his saddle from one day to the next. That, of course, meant they needed to adjust his spare bikes too.
The reason? “If it is a really hard day, I put it up 5mm and I’m using a different part of my quads and I feel really fresh.”
The video is cued up here - 40 seconds or so to hear it from Phil himself
This was my feeling too when doing them. Z2 only; old knees. HR dropped with the revs. Also since I have it, it was about the only time the HRV Alpha-1 on my computer did anything that wasn’t random. It seemed more correlated with cadence than HR or power. At least in Z2.
If we leave training for specific goal aside, I am believer that body chooses most efficient cadence on its own for current conditions as a whole, not just power demand.
For example, my cadence is totally different indoor vs outdoor. I live in completely flat region. This eliminates one variable, leaving wind resistance and microbreaks with outdoor riding vs continuous effort with indoor ERG mode. With that, my natural cadences are:
Z2: outdoor 65-75 vs indoor 90-95
SS/Z4: outdoor 80 vs indoor 100
Z5: outdoor 90-100 vs indoor 110-120
Z7: outdoor 110 vs indoor 130+
Or differently put, my summer cadence is much lower than winter cadence
TR Traditional Base HV plan 2nd block has typical Tuesday workouts that contain low cadence force intervals around SS/Z4. When consciously following cadence instructions, RPE is quite much lower but if I don’t think about it, cadence still creeps up to higher indoor cadence compared to outdoor.
Never bothered to analyze it. Now, with help of intervals.icu, it appears to be very consistently in 25-30Nm range for all my long distance rides (6-12h) at ~70rpm (except every 10min chomps for ~30sec-1min to release some muscle tension, 50Nm at ~40rpm).
To be honest, I don’t know what it means. Asked ChatGPT, it claimed my cadence is relatively low for ultra-distance efforts, and this puts more load on muscular endurance rather than cardiovascular efficiency, leading to increased muscular fatigue. Sounds correct and expected but it has never bothered me. From time to time I try 10-15sec sprint at the end of long rides near home over nicely curved bridge. While fresh, can push it up to 1000W, after 8h ~850W. This is actually pretty ok, I think, although I don’t need this kind of efforts.
So yeah, there it is but whether it is good/bad/indifferent, I don’t know
Yep, and it correlated with my experience: as said in earlier post, I live in flat area, very little experience with hills and none with actual mountains. During one cycling vacation happened to ride in mountains, did 3500m climbing over 7h and liked it very much, never felt overly fatigued or missing gears. Unfortunately it was rented bike, no powermeter, can’t analyze it.
Although have to admit, I was complete coward when descending, with women, children and old men passing me in high speed
Didn’t read it, ChatGPT added note: However, it’s important to note that lower cadences necessitate higher pedal forces to maintain a given power output, which can increase muscular strain. Therefore, selecting an optimal cadence is a balance between metabolic efficiency and muscular fatigue. Individual preferences and physiological responses play significant roles in determining the most suitable cadence for prolonged cycling efforts.
I have heard this before, that’s why never bothered to train any special cadences for different situations, just letting body do whatever it wants.
