The Last Video On Pedalling Technique You'll Ever Need To Watch

What is the best pedaling technique, and how do you get it? Two of the most enduring questions in cycling. It's no surprise because when you look at other endurance sports like running or swimming or cross-country skiing, their technique can make or break you. Watching a professional cyclist is like poetry in motion, efficiency personified. What is the secret? Well, in this video, we are going to look at what exactly is the most efficient technique, why, and how to get it. It might not be what you're expecting, given that pedaling is second only to balancing on the list of the most important skills in cycling. Actually, if you're riding indoors, it's probably number one. We are still trying to unlock its mysteries, and a lot has changed in recent years, certainly since I made this. There's a well-worn phrase, which is to pedal in circles. Essentially, this means that you should think about using all 360 degrees of the pedal stroke, not just pressing down at the beginning of the stroke. Firstly, let's distill it right back, shall we? The action of our legs moving up and down on the pedals is how we turn energy from our bodies into power to drive the bike forward. The proportion of the total energy that our body is using that goes into the bike is what is known as our gross efficiency. Although, given that our bodies are only about 20% efficient, we should probably rename it as gross inefficiency instead. The majority of the energy becomes heat. As mentioned, other sports like swimming or cross-country skiing or running show a very clear relationship between training and gross efficiency. The more practice you do, the more efficient you get. There's very mixed evidence for this in cycling. In fact, there are widely accepted studies that show that there is no significant difference in gross efficiency between elite cyclists and recreational riders. Total beginners. Incredible, isn't it? That's exactly what a famous study from Moseley et al. found. This would infer that in spite of professional cyclists looking like efficiency personified, there was no measurable difference, which goes against our basic instincts and it's one of those things that we hold in cycling to be an absolute truth. Actually, this popped onto my radar in unexpected fashion relatively recently when I was listening to a Peter Atiyah podcast where he interviewed the Norwegian triathlon-turned-cycling supercoach Olaf Alexander Boo. There, he was talking about the importance of technique in swimming because you're floating and you're unsupported. Whereas in running, technique was less important because the ground was a constant. However, it was still more important than in cycling where technique was effectively non-existent because you are fixed in position with the saddle, the handlebars, and your pedals. Now, clearly, there is a technique to cycling. Otherwise, triathletes wouldn't fall off so much. No, cheap shot. Professional cyclists are not doing any better these days either. If efficiency is the same across the board, you'd think, therefore, that the idea of an optimal pedaling technique would be something of a myth. Are professional cyclists really only as efficient as complete amateurs? Well, perhaps not quite. You see, more recent studies have investigated things in a different way. Rather than keeping power outputs the same between pros and amateurs, they looked at power as a percentage of VO2 max, so effectively testing the pros at a higher power output. Hopke et al. saw the first differences, and then a subsequent meta-analysis showed that, yes, gross efficiency could be improved through training, but only by a small amount, on average, 1.4%. Now, is that related to pedaling technique, though? Do, as common sense would suggest, more experienced and stronger cyclists have a better pedaling technique? Well, no. Firstly, though, what actually is a mechanically efficient pedaling technique? Well, typically, we would measure something called force effectiveness, which is the ratio of force applied to the crank that's moving it versus total force applied to the crank. If you think about it in terms of the balance between one leg pushing down on the pedal and the other weighting the pedal down as it's coming back up. If, for example, you were to imagine a robot pedaling a bike, the ideal way for it to do so would be for it to be pulling up on the pedal at 9 o'clock, pulling back on the pedal at 6 o'clock, pushing down on the pedal at 3 o'clock, and pushing forward on the pedal at 12 o'clock. Now, in reality, humans do not do this, and that observation includes elite and professional cyclists. In fact, studies in which riders have been actively encouraged to pedal in this way have shown that whilst a rider's mechanical efficiency can improve, although only ever by about 3%, at the same time, it reduced their gross efficiency. It took more energy to become more mechanically efficient, counterintuitively. A really good potential explanation for this came from the late Professor Louis Passfield. He told me that our muscles are really good at repeated short contractions, but are less good at sustained so-called isometric contractions. That's because with those repeated short contractions, the muscle gets time to resynthesize a high-energy molecule, ATP. That's the one that powers muscle contraction. By contracting, the muscle effectively helps to pump fuel and oxygen through it, flushing away any byproducts of metabolism. If you try to change your pedaling technique to become more mechanically efficient, you'll be asking your muscle to contract for longer, thereby reducing the amount of recovery that the muscle gets in each pedal cycle. The metabolic cost for doing this is far greater than any mechanical advantage that you might get by directing your forces a little more optimally. Effectively, you are requiring more energy, you are less efficient in spite of producing the same power output. There is a lot of debate about whether or not force effectiveness is actually a useful metric, in part because what we've just talked about, but also because you can get wildly different pedaling techniques, but yet still get a similar force effectiveness ratio. We will leave the theory aside for a moment. Instead, we will take professional cyclists as a proxy for optimal. Can we see a difference between amateurs and pros when we look at pedaling technique in spite of there being only minimal differences in gross efficiency? Yes, but only if they're pedaling hard enough. This is super interesting, I think, but the best piece of research I could find on this was from Bouillod et al. They tested professional cyclists against elite cyclists, and they found that at lower power outputs relative to their maximum power outputs, professional cyclists actually had a lower force effectiveness. However, as the intensities increased, pro cyclists quickly surpassed elites, and their pedaling technique became ever more optimal. There was greater variation, but ultimately, they were better. The difference in pedal stroke, according to Garcia et al., is that they produce higher peak torque, but seemingly as a result of unweighting the pedal on the return stroke. The conclusion is that pros have different pedaling techniques, but it is linked to power output, and that potentially they have a more efficient pedaling stroke only because they are capable of those higher power outputs. It's a phenomenon that's seen in weightlifting as well, which is that technique becomes better, more efficient as the weights lifted increase. In the main, because technique has to, but also because the human body has an incredible ability for working out what is the most efficient way of doing things. I talked to a top Norwegian academic, Ben Ronstad, about this subject a while ago, and he said that whilst he hasn't done any direct research himself on this, he did do a little mini project when he happened to have some of the best Norwegian pro cyclists in his lab just over a decade ago, one of which was Edvald Bosenhagen. He noticed in those cyclists that they all had a higher peak torque earlier in the pedal stroke compared to regular cyclists, so 3 to 3.30 as opposed to 4 o'clock, which is closer to our optimal robotic pedal stroke, remember. You can see why there is a potential mechanical advantage for putting power output in this position versus this position, plus you can also see that there might be that greater period of recovery. Now, I then asked Professor Ronstad whether or not he thought that those pro cyclists had a better pedaling technique because they could put out more power, or whether or not they were able to put out more power because they had a more optimal pedaling technique. He said, we don't know, but if he was to guess, he would say that that pedaling technique came as a result of the higher powers and training at that higher power for a long period of time. After all this, where have we ended up? Well, we can see that improvements in gross efficiency are possible, but that that comes over time through consistent training and not through modifying pedaling technique. We can also see that riders' pedaling techniques do vary, but that it's linked to higher power outputs. The higher the power output, the more efficient the pedal stroke, and this seems to be independent of rider experience. What we observe at those higher power outputs is that riders typically stamp harder on the pedals earlier in the pedal stroke. Then the final point is to question whether or not improvements can be made to pedal stroke. Honestly, the only thing I could find in all of the literature that suggested that might be true is from our old friend, Professor Ronestad again. He found that he was able to change a rider's pedal stroke to conform more closely to that ideal that he had observed on riders like Edvald Boson-Hagen and Lars Petter Nordaug by subjecting cyclists to a training plan that included two heavy weight sessions per week in addition to their normal riding for a period of time. At the end of that, their power outputs had improved across the board, and one of the reasons given for that was potentially that they were putting out power to the pedals earlier in the pedal stroke. Is it worth trying to improve your pedaling technique then in the same way that you might your running or your swimming? The answer is no. I could not find anything in the literature to say that it was possible or beneficial to do so, nor did the academics that I spoke to and nor the coaches. The closest I came was finding that perhaps doing your intervals either on flat roads or on hills, depending on which one you want to be good at, can be good because there's a potential difference in the two. Also, all of the coaches recommended training at different cadences as well, but pedaling technique, no. As frustrating as it sounds, because I get we're all looking for that magic formula on how to improve, the fact is trying to change your pedaling technique will be a waste of effort and a waste of time. However, there are undisputed upsides to this as well. The first is that you don't need to worry, which is a relief. The second is that if you're coming to cycling late, it's great news because there is nothing stopping you from reaching your full potential. That's because there is no special secret technique that is only uncovered after hours and hours of riding over weeks and months, year after year. Just look at Primoz Roglic, Remco Evenepoel, and Christian Faulkner as your role models. The latter in particular didn't even take up racing until the age of 25, having been a rower prior to that, but yet nevertheless, seven years later, she is the double Olympic champion. Pretty good news in my book. This is a controversial topic, I am sure, so I cannot wait to read your thoughts in the comment section down below. Have you found evidence to the contrary? Do you feel like pedaling technique is a really important thing? Like I say, get involved in the comment section down below. I look forward to continuing the discussion with you there. Please, if you've enjoyed this video, give it a big thumbs up as well. I'll see you on the next one.