By Gale Bernhardt
For Active.com
Most cyclists are eager to suffer through sprints, lactate threshold intervals or VOmax efforts—but few are enthused about working on pedaling technique. Perhaps it’s because doing heart-pounding, leg-searing efforts feels like you’re making a difference in your fitness. In the back of your mind, you know these efforts and feelings will surely be repeated on race day. But pedaling technique? B-O-R-I-N-G. Pedaling with one leg, doesn’t feel like you are building fitness. It’s just not hard enough.
I’ve said this many times before: anyone can ride hard—not everyone can ride fast.
The most effective use of force during movement, to create power, depends on not only the strength of the muscles involved, but also on a series of coordinated neuromuscular patterns. In short, you need to move efficiently.
Think of what a child looks like as they learn to ride a bicycle for the first time. The motions are jerky, the bike is weaving back and forth and the child is putting a lot of energy in keeping the bicycle upright and moving forward.
That visual is an extreme example of muscles not working in a coordinated effort to move the bicycle forward. Certainly, a child lacks the muscular strength and endurance to pedal a bicycle for any distance when they begin riding.
Another visual example to illustrate the point is to consider that experienced cyclists have very strong legs and good endurance. Ask an experienced cyclist to figure skate and likely you’d witness a muscular and strong athlete struggle to move across the ice, let alone complete complex skating maneuvers. Laboring to simply make it around the rink multiple times, a jerking, tentative cyclist would likely be exhausted in a very short time.
Take the experienced, muscular skater that can spend hours gliding about the ice, completing complex moves and put them on a bicycle. In short time, relative to their time spent in a skating workout, that skater would be exhausted. Of course this assumes the skater does no cross-training as a cyclist.
If you want to excel at cycling, you need to possess many aspects of fitness. One of the aspects is efficient movement. If you train your body to move in a pattern that is efficient for your sport, in this case cycling, you can improve race day performance.
Though your current form inefficiencies may not be as gross as a new cyclist, perhaps doing some fine-tuning now can help your summer riding season. In this column, I offer you a few drills to help improve your neuromuscular patterns for cycling with the goal of improved performance.
Isolated Leg Training
This workout helps work the dead spot out of your pedal stroke. After a warm-up, with light resistance on an indoor trainer, do 100 percent of the work with one leg while the other leg is resting on a stool. The bottom of the stroke is similar to the motion of scraping mud off the bottom of your shoe. The top of the stroke can be improved by driving your toes and knees forward. In all positions, keep the toes relaxed. Do not allow them to curl-up and clinch the bottom of your shoe.
You can do this drill outdoors by relaxing and unweighting one leg while the other leg does 90-percent of the work. Change legs when fatigue sets in or set a specific time interval to prevent excess fatigue. Work your way up to a work interval of 30 to 60 seconds per leg. After doing a work segment with each leg, spin easy with both legs for a minute and then return to single leg work.
Stop pedaling with one leg when form becomes sloppy or jerky. Do not worry about achieving any particular heart rate, smooth pedaling form is most important. Begin with a cumulative time of 3 to 5 minutes on each leg throughout the workout and build time as you become stronger.
Spin Step-Ups
Warm up on an indoor trainer with low resistance and a pedaling cadence of 90 rpm. After 15 to 20 minutes of warm-up, increase cadence to 100 rpm for three minutes, followed by 110 rpm for 2 minutes and then 120+ rpm for one minute. If time allows, spin easy for five minutes to recover and repeat a second time. If you’re just beginning to increase pedaling speed, it may be best to cut all of the suggested times in half, in order to maintain the recommended speeds. It is important the resistance is low, to allow a focus on speed of the movement and not force on the pedals.
You can do this workout outdoors if the road is flat or slightly downhill.
Accelerations
This is another workout designed to work on leg speed. Warm up well, then complete 30-second accelerations, spinning an easy two minutes and 30 seconds (2′ 30") between each acceleration. The end of the 30 seconds should be faster rpm than the beginning. Begin with four to six accelerations and increase the number as you improve coordination and fitness.
Sprints, Getting Started
Do this workout after you have mastered spin step ups and accelerations. Begin with a warm-up of 15 to 20 minutes. After the warm-up, complete several sprints between 10 and 30 seconds in length. Spin very easy, with a low load and high cadence between each sprint to recover. A convenient interval format is to begin each sprint on a five-minute mark, recovering after the sprint until the next five-minute mark. For example, sprint 10 seconds and recover for four minutes and 50 seconds.
For these particular sprints, begin with moderate force at the beginning of each sprint and end each sprint with high power output. The power output at the end of each sprint should be very similar.
Efficient Movement Saves Energy on Race Day
Spend some time on pedaling technique and efficient cycling movement and you just might improve your race performance this season.
One thing is certain: coordinated movement won’t hurt you on race day.
Note: Text for the drills was adapted from the book, Training Plans for Cyclists published by VeloPress.
Gale Bernhardt was the USA Triathlon team coach at the 2003 Pan American Games and 2004 Athens Olympics. Her first Olympic experience was as a personal cycling coach at the 2000 Games in Sydney. She currently serves as one of the World Cup coaches for the International Triathlon Union’s Sport Development Team. Thousands of athletes have had successful training and racing experiences using Gale’s pre-built, easy-to-follow cycling and triathlon training plans. Let Gale and Active Trainer help you succeed.
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