Im still just trying to get my cadence up. Im afraid low cadence work would reinforce the wrong thing for me.
I do low cadence sessions, each 40-60 rpm session is high tempo power and each interval no longer than 10 mins or so. I’ve found it works for me, as part of my overall training.
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My self-selected cadence has been 65ish until the past year. If I go low cadence back to that I will fall back into that trap very quickly (ask me how I know LOL). 85 feels soooo high and 90 feels impossible.
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@briddr Look at the workout “Granite” - it’s an entire workout dedicated to working on increasing your cadence. It’s a 1 hour Sweet Spot workout, but most of the interval time is spent in Tempo, just touching Sweet Spot and Endurance. Anyway, I’ve found it useful to help me work on cadence.
I’m a “masher” by default and have gotten my natural cadence up to 85-ish. Not terribly fast, but higher than when I started. Granite gets me into the 95, 100, 105, and 110 cadence range for short efforts. 85 feels slow after spinning away at 100+.
Give it a shot!
EDIT - Sorry, this is a thread dedicated to low cadence and I’m out here posting ideas on going the opposite direction!
EDIT2 - Have the instructions enabled when doing Granite so you can follow the instructions on cadence levels.
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I picked up some low cadence work a month or two ago for 2 reasons:
- Podcasts from both Keegan and Matt Beers speaking so highly of it.
- Moving from Texas to Washington, my terrain has changed drastically. In Texas I could always be in a perfect cadence (85-95) thanks to the flat terrain. My local Washington routes, on a 4 hr ride I probably spend 1.5-2 hrs climbing something steep where I’m basically stuck at like 50-60 rpm at 210-230 watts (high endurance/low tempo) so it makes complete sense to me to at least train a bit in that zone.
Interestingly, I’ve noticed some scenarios where I drop from 90>55 rpm and maintaining the same power, my heart rate drops slightly.
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Same. When not in higher limit of watts, HR almost go up and down with cadence. At the same watts. Probably exaggerated as my fitness is relatively low so just quickness of pedaling raises HR.
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Just did Abney which has workout instructions focused around low cadence intervals. Consistent with this podcast, it warned the rider to cut them short if it caused any pain.
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