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Pedaling Technique and Drills

Rich Strauss at Trifuel brings us some advice on pedaling technique, and some drills to help increase your power to the pedals.

Getting watts to the pedals is all that’s important. Pulling up may not help as much as we think:

1. The bike goes faster because you apply more watts to rear wheel,
period. The rear wheel doesn’t care in what manner that power is
generated at or applied to the pedals. What matters is what that power
is when it reaches the wheel.2. Your feet are attached to the pedals, attached to straight
cranks, attached to circular chain rings and a round axle or bottom
bracket. You have no choice other than to pedal in a circle. All you
are really in control of is what muscles you fire when as your legs
spin through this circular trajectory.

3. Your legs have been engineered to apply the most power most
efficiently by pushing against the ground (running, jumping, walking),
not by pulling up (activating the hip flexor). Contrary to product
claims, there has been no evidence to suggest that the “way” to pedal a
bike is by applying power in pretty little circles.

4. If you are thinking about this or that area of the pedal stroke
and firing/relaxing different muscles at different times, but the power
at the rear wheel is the same or less, you haven’t accomplished
anything. If you are doing all of this AND applying more watts, then we
can talk, but my next question is how long can you sustain this?
Another point in here is that nothing is free. If you’re applying more
watts to the bike, that work has to come from somewhere. It is not
gained by efficiency, energy savings, etc. You must do more work in
order to output more work. Period.

To pedal for maximum power:

11-2pm: Imagine you are “rolling a barrel” under your foot.
At 11pm you begin to push forward across the top of the pedal
stroke/clock face until your foot is in the 2pm position.

2-5pm: The power phase of the pedal stroke. You’re pushing
relatively straight down on the pedals, in the manner your legs have
been design to apply force most efficiently. Most beginner cyclists
pedal straight up and down, like pistons, applying power to the pedals
from 2-5pm. I feel they are missing the opportunity to apply that leg
strength across more hours of the clock face.

5-8pm: Imagine you are “scraping mud” from the bottom of your
shoe. We transition from pedaling down to following through, activating
the hamstring and pulling our foot rearward.

8-11pm: When your right leg is at 8pm your left leg is at the
beginning of the power phase, 2pm. We want 100% of the power applied by
the left leg to be transferred to the rear wheel and move the bike
forward. However, if your right leg, at 8pm, is “dead” on the pedal,
then a percentage of your left leg power is not applied to the rear
wheel but instead is used to lift the right leg. Now, this lifting
effect is probably less than you think, as your right leg, spinning at
90+ rpm, does have a significant amount of momentum to “throw” it over
the top of the pedal stroke.

Instead, from 8-11pm we want to “un-weight” the pedal, applying just
enough lifting force to make our foot weigh zero on the pedal, so 100%
of the work performed by the opposite leg is used to propel the bike
forward. Notice that I’m not counseling you to activate the hip flexor
and apply power on the upward phase of the pedal stroke.

Some drills we talked about before will help increase your strength and power to the pedals.

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