What Is A Good Bike Cadence

As triathletes we have the additional factor to consider of how our cadence selection and overall force application impacts the run.

What is a good bike cadence.

A cycling cadence serves pretty much the same purpose. While there s no one magic number aiming for 90 rpm is a good goal to avoid leg fatigue and making the most out of those slow twitch muscles. Shift to a gear that feels comfortable and or powerful for you. Average cyclists have a cadence of about 60 rpm.

Just because froome rides a high cadence you see tons of people out on the roads trying to do the same thing. You will likely do one of four things. The act of pedaling a bike is really pretty simple. Advanced and elite cyclists pedal anywhere from 80 to 100 rpms.

It s a simple concept but knowing about how it affects your performance will prove enormously helpful. Cyclists measure this in revolutions per minute or rpm so if one foot pedals a full circle about once every second you are cycling at 60 rpm. If you ve trained with power you know that the same watts can be achieved with 60 rpm 80 rpm or 100 rpm. After all power is a calculation of how hard you push on the pedals torque multiplied by how.

Put bike cadence in context. Professional and elite bikers pedal anywhere from 80 to 100 rpm. Aiming at 90 rpm is a good target to prevent leg exhaustion and make the most of those slow moving muscles. Most long term cyclists will agree that anywhere between 70 and 90 rpm is good for all day riding perhaps a little higher for a harder effort and maybe a little lower if you re an ultra endurance athlete.

Cadence is popular in road cycling triathlon indoor riding and even in spin bike fitness classes and platforms. A good bench mark for an endurance cyclist is 95 rpm. Everyone who rides a bike has a cadence the goal is to discipline that cadence into one that makes you a stronger more efficient cyclist and thereby boosts your morale. You are riding on a flat road approaching a hill that will take you about a minute to climb.

Which way of getting to x feels the easiest to you is what varies. Back to our discussion of cadence. Cadence is simply the speed at which you pedal. You feel good when you climb at 60 70 rpm so you do that shifting to the middle of the cassette.

So what s the ideal cadence for a cyclist. Despite being everywhere it s not obvious how to interpret it because your ideal cadence will be different depending on a number of factors. Cadence is a key measurement because it s a vital component in the power you put out on the bike. Far less so if the ever growing body of research on pedaling cadence is any.