Cadence 1: Cycling

Anyone notice how important is cadence? no matter in cycling or running..High spinning cadence on the bike and run is very important to both training and racing success at any time during the season; however, the focus must be jointly placed on maintaining a lower heart rate while achieving these increased abilities.

I found a very useful article to share..well sharing is caring..Please read below link..


Cadence Training Article – The need for speed

Cadence can be applied to any action where there is a repetitive motion: cycling, in terms of how many complete pedal repetitions are made in any given time; running, in terms of how many foot strikes are made in a given time; and, swimming, in terms of how many full arm strokes are made within a given time (although we normally refer to ‘stroke rate’ in swimming). There has been a great deal of research in the last 20-or-so years on cadence and its impact on sporting performance.


Cycling

In terms of sports, cycling should probably be the one we’re all most familiar with when referring to cadence. This has hit the headlines particularly in the last 6 years as Lance Armstrong has won 6 Tour de France races, and a considerable contributor to this dominance is his change in pedalling to a ‘high cadence’ style. Normally, optimum cadence for cyclists has been thought to be around 90-95 revs per minute (pedals revolutions, not wheel revolutions); Armstrong, however, adapted his training to develop a cadence of well over 100 rpm. But why?

What advantage does this give?

Every pedal stroke/running stride, we contract and relax assorted muscles in our bodies and every contraction and controlled relaxation requires energy. Not only this, but every contraction will produce some lactic acid, the amount governed by the strength/force of the contraction. What altering cadence does is affect the rate of contraction and the strength of contraction; hence the amount of lactic acid in the blood too and the amount of energy used.

For example, we are cycling up a hill in a big gear (‘hard to push’). Because it’s hard to push, we’ve got a cadence of, maybe, 70 rpm. Each pedal stroke pushes hard and slowly against the pedal, propelling the bike forward at, say 12 miles per hour. As the pedal stroke takes a relatively long time and we are pushing a big gear, we use a lot of energy and produce a lot of lactic acid – the exercise is anaerobic. It’s like weight lifting: lift a big weight just a couple of times, you soon get tired arms.

Lactic acid builds quickly in this case, we soon tired and our performance suffers. As it takes a finite time to flush this lactic acid from our muscles, we will also take longer to recover. This is all great strength training but not a lot of use in a race when you want to avoid the build of lactic acid as much as possible, and recover quickly after hard effort. Not only that, but the huge force we put on our knees/ankles, joints, muscles, etc, is much more likely to lead to injury.
So what’s the alternative? Well, we can speed up our cadence and pedal an easier gear! This is far more aerobic than using big gears.

Back to our hill example: we now drop a couple of gears so the force needed to push against and
turn the pedal is lower, but we increase our cadence to maintain the same speed.
‘Great’, I hear you say, ‘but where’s the advantage in that? We still have the same speed.’
Correct, but, because we are pushing less force per pedal revolution, we don’t produce anywhere near as much lactic acid, even at higher cadences, and so we can maintain the speed for longer
and recover more quickly – it is aerobic exercise. Ultimately, we can end up ‘spinning’ an easy gear at a high cadence.


This is like lifting a lighter weight more quickly and for more reps – we still lift the same amount of weight as we did before in the same time but we will feel less of the lactic burn and recover far more quickly before the next set. This is excellent stuff for toning and for muscular endurance training. Not only that but it puts less stress on your bones and joints, leading to less injury.

It’s the same principle as changing gear in your car: unless you want to wreck your clutch and
engine, you don’t drive up a steep hill in 3rd gear; you choose 1st or 2nd and increase the engine speed.

Unfortunately, this is not something we can change overnight: if you normally grind away in a big gear, it’s not easy to suddenly alter to spin small gears at fast cadences. There are a number of ways you can make this gradual change:

a. Spend most of the warm up and warm down of a turbo session in an easy gear at a fast cadence (90-120rpm depending on your capabilities). Try and develop a smooth and efficient pedalling style. At first, it will feel ‘jerky’ as you struggle to keep up with the freewheel
during the pedal cycle – it feels like there is a ‘slack period’ in the pedal stroke before your
foot seems to jump forward and fins some resistance again. This is what puts most people off
and they give up.

Persevere – your nerves and muscles will ‘learn’ in time and it will soon become nearly second
nature. A good way to develop smooth pedalling style, where you apply pressure all of the way
around the pedal stroke, is doing one-leg drills on the turbo (4 x 30 sec each leg, building to a
minute each), doing spinning classes, or riding a fixed-gear bike if you have one (nutter).

b. Over the winter, when you are doing your base training, is a perfect time to introduce a higher cadence style. Spend as much of your cycling as possible in winter in the small chainring at the front. It will feel initially like you are going slower but, as your higher cadence becomes more comfortable, the speed will come back. After your base phase, start to introduce power and speedendurance work by pedalling those same high cadences in bigger gears. It’s a logical progression and, if it works, you should spend the next year’s base training at the same cadence but you will be able to do it in a higher gear, increasing your base speed.

c. Go to spinning classes. When it’s cold and wet outside, erm, don’t go outside. Join a spinning class at your local gymnasium for an excellent workout. Do not give up on big gear work altogether, just use it for specific strength building training sessions.

Origial author : Mike Potts