Hey, what's up triathletes?
Taren here.
If you've ever wondered how fast your legs should be spinning on the bike, stick around
because today we are going to go through The Great Cadence Debate of 2017.
We're going to find out whether you should be a masher, low cadence, or a spinner, high
cadence.
Going to let you in on a little spoiler alert: there's no real simple answer.
Still, stick around for it.
I often get asked how fast somebody should be spinning and how fast I spin on the bike.
Now personally, I'll tell you that my cadence is probably higher than most.
That doesn't mean that it's any better or worse, if anything it's probably worse because
during an FTP test, I will be in the high 90s where most people will be around 90 to
95.
There's several schools of thought to high cadence.
What happens with high cadence is that it takes the load off of your muscles and it
doesn't beat them up nearly as much because your legs don't have as much resistance on
the pedals.
It puts most of the load on your cardiovascular system, your lungs and your heart.
What'll end up happening is you'll probably be breathing heavier and your heartbeat will
be a little bit higher.
This approach is often good for long endurance events because when your muscles are getting
broken down in long endurance events, you're kind of setting yourself up for either a bad
run or a bonk later in the bike and a massive drop-off in power.
That said, it's not generally accepted as the best approach because there are a lot
of great cyclists that have cadence in the high 80s and the low 90s.
These are often referred as mashers on the pedal.
Now the benefit to having a lower cadence is that you can probably put out a fair bit
more power because the pressure on the pedals is in a higher gear.
You're pushing harder.
You're putting out more with your muscle system.
Muscle system?
Your muscular system.
Your heart rate is going to be lower and you're not going to be breathing nearly as heavy
as you would with high cadence.
Odds are that you're probably going to be a little bit faster, but it's going to be
at the risk of having a terrible disaster later in the bike if your legs have been beat
up too much on the bike and you're stiff or tired for the run.
Then that leads to The Great Cadence Debate of 2017.
Is it better to be high cadence, low cadence, right in the middle?
Well, you're going to love this answer or you're going to say, "[Fuck off 00:02:18],
Taren."
It depends and it's all about you.
Your best bet is to try both and see what works.
The only way to do this is by training a heck of a lot and seeing how your body reacts.
You've got to train a lot.
You've got to go for long rides with low cadence, long rides with high cadence.
Short rides with low cadence, short rides with high cadence.
Do brick workouts after a low cadence and a high cadence bike.
See what you body reacts to better.
See how it feels afterwards.
See if you're feeling ready to run after and see how your runs go when you're doing those
brick workouts based off of the low cadence and the high cadence workouts.
Even with all that testing, you might just find that there is a natural rhythm to your
cadence that you find feels better for you.
I tend to talk quickly and get a lot of things out and maybe that is what leads to my higher
cadence because I just tend to be a little more high energy.
That said, if there's one or the other that you tend to gravitate towards and your coach
or yourself finds that you should either up your cadence a little bit or drop it down
a little bit more to that meaty part where you're taxing your muscles and your cardiovascular
system in the 90 to 95 cadence range, you can do that.
You end up doing that by controlled workouts where you're watching your cadence and you're
specifically hitting power zones.
I will put a link to a video I did just up here explaining the power zones.
You can hit those same power zones but make sure that you do it with the specific cadence
that you're trying to build.
What's going to happen is the more that you do it, the easier it'll feel and gradually,
if you're at a very high cadence like me, your cadence will come down and feel a little
bit more natural in that 90 to 95 range; or if you're got super low cadence and you're
beating yourself up a lot, you can bring it up into the 90 to 95 range.
That said, if it ever ends up feeling just absolutely awful to be doing high cadence
when you're a low cadence person, or a low cadence person when you're a high cadence
person, don't do it because there's no real right answer.
You know what we should get is like a counter teddy for the amount of times that I say cadence
down here, like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
Cadence.
As fluffy as an un-answer as that was, I hope that it gives you at least a little bit of
context to understand about where most of the field in triathlons are as far as cadence
goes, and where you are and what it means to your body whether you're low and mashing
or high and not putting out nearly as much power as you could be.
Give it a shot.
Tell me how it works in the comments below and, as always, happy and hard training, triathletes,
and good luck in your next triathlon.