aka The Power and The Grace
One of the strange things that we have in cycling is that it is rare to be taught to pedal, unless we've been coached or have been schooled within a good cycling club.
Quite often we see that people have very poor technique, and is easy to observe by looking to see if they are stamping on the downstroke, which not only is jarring their legs, but wasting huge amounts of energy for little return. You will not only spend longer days in the saddle, but will fatigue your muscles, and put unnecessary strain on your knees. Expect to be spending somewhere in the region of five to nine hours riding inn endurance event, so the more efficient you can make the rotation of the cranks the more power you can put through the back wheel the easier it's going to be.
We are going to break down pedaling into four phase, the top of the stroke (we will call this the setup phase), the downward (or power) stroke, the bottom of the stroke (called the pull back phase) and the upstroke (the lift phase).
Let’s start at the top of the stroke when the pedal is in the 12 o’clock position. In this position is isn’t possible to put any downward force on the pedal, so you need to get past this “flat spot” as fast as possible.
A simple technique you should try is that just before your foot reaches this point, engage your core by pulling in your navel. By doing this we help engage the biggest muscles in our body, the glutes (commonly called your behind or butt), plus your hamstrings (the legs running down the back of your legs from your glutes to the back of the knee and push your legs over this flat spot.
As you move to the downstroke engage your quads (these are the big muscles running down the front of your legs from the hips to the knee) as these are crucial for creating the downward force, hence the power. By engaging the Glutes just before the top of the stroke we fully engage the quads muscles earlier through the power section of the stroke rather than midway (which is what happens when you stamp). Think of it as producing power when the crank is in the 1 o’clock position rather than the 3 o’clock position (ie half way through the downstroke). As you reach the bottom on the stroke, you have a second flat spot. In your mind’s eye, think that you have a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, and you want to dislodge it by sweeping the foot back as if you are wiping off the gum, this engages the hamstrings and calf muscles and lightens the leg so that it is not a dead weight that you are pushing against with the other leg on its power stroke. But do not need to pull up with the hamstring, just use it to lighten the leg. As an aside, firing the hamstrings relaxes their opposing muscle group, the quads, so your quads get a well deserved breather and can relax on the upstroke.
Put this together, practise the technique on each ride, think about the four parts of the stroke one leg at a time, go into a higher gear than you normally would, spin faster and think about the top and bottom of each stroke,think about engaging your muscle groups, use your core to stabilise your body. We call this doing “pedal drills”.
After a few weeks of practise your pedalling will become smooth and more efficient, you will become a lot more economical and basically you will go faster with less strain, as you are engaging more of your muscles, you will not fatigue your quads quite so much so you can keep you pace for a long period of time.
Keep checking yourself regularly during the ride because it is quite normal for your pedalling technique to deteriorate when you are tired, so after a long ride, several hours of riding, check yourself, try to avoid stamping by changing up a gear and smooth you pedalling out.
Remember gum on the bottom of the foot that you want to sweep it off at the bottom of the stroke and again at the top of the stroke think about sliding your foot forward as if stepping over an egg to engage the muscles earlier and get a more powerful downstroke.
I can tell you that at first it will seem weird, mainly because you are starting to engage muscles that you possibly have not been using before, your glutes and hamstrings....bear with it, expect it to take a few weeks at the very minimum, but a correct and efficient pedal technique will bring you dividends especially on the longer hills and rolling countryside.
In the next blog we will look at the Use of Gears to help you maintain speed and momentum.