The Secrets Of Perfect Pedalling Technique: Is Smoother REALLY Better?

[Music] foreign graceful pedaling style is something many of us aspire to you may even like to call it suppress for likes of wiggings on qatil Boss the names are all banded about when we discuss the perfect penalty style but does such a thing exist Greg lemond another famous Peddler used to describe scraping his foot through the bottom of the pedal stroke as a way of generating power and some coaches have also encouraged this but it does such a technique help can we learn to improve our peddling style but most importantly will it make us any faster we took a dive into the science to find out [Music] the first person we talked to on our journey to peddling Perfection with sports scientist Dr Louis pashfield who's worked with British cycling over a number of Olympic cycles and is now a professor over in Canada you may recognize Louis from some of our previous gtn videos when he appeared as a genius he did actually say that theoretically there was a perfect pedaling technique [Music] from a mechanical point of view this would involve pushing forward when the crank is up pushing down when it's at three o'clock pulling back when it's at six o'clock and then pulling up on its return however in practice this isn't actually how people pedal Louis says that with coaching and instruction you can learn to apply power a little more evenly but generating a useful pulling up force is really hard to do and at best you might only make a three percent Improvement in mechanical efficiency if you're pedal in the way I've just described Louis says that the problem is our bodies are really good at repeated contractions our muscles work great when they're doing those repeated contractors and they have that rest period well they're not great at extended isometric contractions that's when there's no rest period imagine trying to hold a score for a long period of time as an example oh that's enough for me oh Jesus [Music] if you change your peddling technique in a bids become more mechanically effective you're likely going to extend that period of muscle contraction and reduce the period of recovery in each pedal cycle so you're gonna fatigue quicker according to Louis all of this means that the gains in pursuing mechanical efficiency are not really worth pursuing however there are a few exceptions [Music] one of these moments are maximal effort experience of 10 to 30 seconds in duration that's what you want to put out as much power as possible without worrying about fatiguing because you're about to do your recovery time once you finish the effort that's what it's called a Sprint to the Finish Line although it's not just sprinting though where you want to be as mechanically efficient as possible it's also standing starts and really steep hills when you want to try and put out as much power as you can in a short space of time foreign [Music] ERS actually peddle when compared to your average Rider well according to Dr pasfield the differences are actually pretty subtle so it's mainly the fact that pros and Elite Riders would make the most of that downward phase of the pedal cycle really stomping all the way to six o'clock coinciding that force with the maximal forces exerted when the pedal is moving downwards rather than worry about any dead spots or pulling up on the pedal's return another area where it paid off to be more mechanically efficient is mountain biking riding on terrain like you see behind me even rougher actually and here you want to maintain as much traction with the ground as possible so you're looking to have that real smooth pedaling start rather than that stomp in action which does cause your wheel to slip only to lose traction as a result and it's an interesting point because it asks the question maybe that's why we see the likes of peacock Van Der Paul Van art come across to the road dominate in the fashion they do but also have that really smooth pedaling style which is so characteristic of those Riders how does bike fits impact our peddling style though we know that the way we fit our bikes plays a huge role in our ability to put down the power when it's needed but can we adjust things like our saddle height to potentially achieve the perfect peddling style and technique to find out I thought I'd speak to Phil Burt who's been head of physiotherapy at British cycling for 12 years to cycling an ergonomic system we actually consulted Phil when we built El Alto the 36 inch wheel bike we built as part of a documentary over on GCM plus which is still available to watch Reinventing the wheel aside from working with super big giants fillers actually helped the likes of Bradley Wiggins and Sir Chris Hoy fit their bikes to Perfection so he was the best person to ask and I started off by asking him what his views were on the perfect pedaling stroke and whether it even existed oh the ultimate question god um it probably existed in a theoretical world yes in terms of physics and mechanics but um I don't think it really exists in the real world because really peddling is an outcome of a human being transferring muscle power to the pedal and of course all human beings are different and they achieve that in many different ways I think a good thing to make it uh an analogy with here is that um what I call um preferred movement pathway and if you talk to a really clever ergonomicists and biomechanisms they sometimes talk about if me and you tried to jump over a box we'll achieve that task in different ways you know you'll do it in a slightly different way and that way it'll be a subject of your height injury history muscle strength what you've trained at what you're good at you know so many different factors puddling is no different to that the task is the pedal is move the pedal and because human beings also different we achieve that in many different ways some interesting Studies have been done where they look at the most mechanically efficient way of pedaling unfortunately which basically means using all your muscle groups to pedal is actually the gross most efficient inefficient way of peddling so gross efficiency goes down so you can see it so in short no I think there is a perfect pedal stroke but it's different for everybody so do you think it's worth ignoring the fact that we need to potentially work on our pedaling technique is there a way of trying to you know improve your peddling technique to make it more inefficient doing things like single legged intervals or maybe going over there riding on the cross bike or the mountain bike trying you know get a smoother pedaling technique or should we just go with what we're naturally you know riding at right well I think you mentioned two really good points there um I I don't believe personally that at 90 to 100 revolutions per minute you can consciously think about changing your pedaling technique so you know verbal cue somebody's saying cool through the bottom I don't think you can actually that makes them much better because the central nervous system in the human being is controlling that how you're generating that muscle power and how you're achieving that task and to override that it's a big big thing however you mentioned that um I think doing different types of cycling what we do know from the evidence is that if you were to pick out um the mechanically and gross efficient most best efficient peeling stroke Often by mechanism they study Advanced cycling biomechanics will often refer to mountain bikers as maybe being the best because they tend to produce power for longer throughout the whole pedal stroke so down to the bottom and some of the backstroke as well and the uh the fear the thinking is with that is because you're going up very very steep um incline as well so you have to keep that traction on the back wheel that Force going otherwise you're going to slip that that that training and that conditioning makes them a better pedals but let's get back to the muscle groups involved in the pedaling technique um so so what are they first and foremost and do we rely on different muscles during different intervals to like different intensity levels or gradients things like that does that change your major muscle groups and cycling are the power generators and the upper lower name so I probably need to actually quad and you do the two biggest strongest muscles in the body per se and they're the ones that generate the power below the knee which those muscle groups in the calf ankle and throat their job is to transfer that power to the pedal um so they're the major ones and some people talk about pulling up on the leg that's in the pull-up stroke you know using your hip flexor but the Elio service the hip flexor is it's a tiny muscle compared to the those extensors the quads and the glutes on the other side plus of course the other leg on the downstroke of a leg on the other side what you're pulling up is starting to extend so it's really all about extension you know so when you're fitting a rider are you looking at their body type you know their height or you know certain attributes and deciding how best they're going to fit on their bike and then translate that to kind of getting their best peddling technique possible what I generally find is most people are I've done uh are sitting a little bit low normally and a bit too far and maybe a little bit too far back and I think that comes down to um fear of putting the saddle too high and someone maybe like what we're conditioned to do what me and you're doing now sitting down at a desk quite lately you know whereas actual cycling the most efficient position for peddling quite often is a bit higher and further forward so we can get that that big hip extension muscles involved involved and invariably you know you find you can actually increase someone's power quite easily by optimizing their saddle position it's all about where you have the salad position in terms of those um what is a cyber pedaling technique then what's the best way to improve your power and efficiency on the bike just for your average Rider who wants to go out and look to make some improvements yeah so I would Advocate two things really one uh would be make sure you're in the optimal position reducing power I I'll stick my neck out here and say I think most people are normally sitting too low and too far back to opt to reduce power yeah when you do that though you have to make sure the rest of the fit accommodates that so quite often crankland from the front cockpit setup might be the limiting factors in achieving that you know um you could do it really easy set up on a turbo you can literally do you know repeated Sprint efforts and just keep putting your satellite up and work out where the most powerful position is you know cool super instant thanks so much for your time um and thank you for enlightening us all oh no on the door is a peddling thanks very much cheers [Music] he went on to say that it's not the end of the world if you don't have a perfect 50 50 balance between each leg so if one leg's stronger than the other actually in his view anything up to 60 40 so 60 one late 40 power on the other is fine in his opinion as long as it doesn't cause discomfort think of it like footballers choosing one leg over the other when they're taking a penalty or kicking the ball and actually just riding more is a perfect way to cure any potential imbalances you may have from leg to leg I also learn a bit more from my chat with Phil so pedals are really important to your pedaling style particularly the floats you use so that's how much rotation you're allowing yourself when you're clipped in to those pedals you want to allow enough loads to allow your legs to move naturally but allow too much rotation and you're potentially introducing inefficiencies to the pedaling rotation which is going to set you back and not give you as much power as potentially you'd be looking for it was also properly interesting to learn from Phil that the most efficient Peddlers are actually paralympic athletes with amputations below the knee all the main power that's generated in the pedal cycle comes above the knee below the knee that's all about transferring that power to the pedaling stroke so a well-engineered orthotic limb will have little to no loss in efficiency what did Phil think was the best way for anyone to make some improvements to their pedaling technique and their power transfer well the actor recommended a really decent stiff pair of cycling shoes as the best investment you could potentially make to improve your pedaling style reason for this that they play a key role in the mechanics of the pedals jokes they're rolled in that power transfer that comes down through your leg so the rear if you feel the ball of your foot and to that contact point of the pedal but aside from that and a decent bike fit the other thing Phil mentioned to try a bit of mountain biking and Sonic across seems like a no-brainer really going out on your mountain bike in the winter doing something different having a whole load of fun at the same time but also improving your Technique yeah yeah yeah [Music] I think I'm gonna have to start taking up mountain biking but better not tell gmbn that one big thanks though to both Phil and Louis for their time and sharing valuable information into the world of peddling it's such a simple yet curiously interesting and fascinating part to our ability to ride a bike so thank you both to your time I found it so interesting and if you did at home please give this video a big thumbs up and let us know in the comment section if you're a stomper or a Smooth Operator right thanks for watching all we'll see in the next video

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 349,785

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Id: IJN0GmdqtDk

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2022