Quoted message said:Frank Krygowski said:My point is: every sport has accumulated generations of wisdom,
which came from generations of trial and error. And people have
known for at least 100 years that spinning bike cranks at, say, 80
to 100 rpm works better in the long run. That is, you'll be able to
ride faster and further on any given ride, and you're knees will
probably last longer.
The riders with whom I started bicycling do not follow your maxim and
rode well without the dread knee failure from not spinning. The spin
advocates ignore that it is not low pedal RPM that hurts their knees
but rather high torque which is not directly speed related.
As I stated, I don't always use the higher cadences. When putting out
less power, I might use a lower cadence. In other words, I tend to
avoid high torque, at least for long periods of riding.
But saying "high torque ... is not directly speed related" may confuse
some readers. For a given power output, torque and cadence (pedaling
speed) _are_ related. A rider on a given road at a given road speed has
a certain power output. He can produce that power by choosing a higher
gear, applying more torque, or a lower gear, applying less torque and
higher cadence.
I think many novices tend to choose a higher gear than optimum. As a
consequence, they apply more force than optimum with each pedal stroke.
And because muscles can exert higher force much less often than lower
force, these riders tire out sooner.
Quoted message said:Those of
us who started bicycling in early youth generally don't have knee
problems. At least those with whom I rode, most of whom retired
before age 50, were not suffering from bad knees.
Perhaps not. As with all things medical, there are individual
differences. And some of the posters here may, indeed, do well with low
cadences.
However, that's not to say that they wouldn't do better with a slightly
higher cadence. The fact is, without reading or hearing about this
matter, many (or most) new riders would never know to even experiment
with a slightly lower gear. They wouldn't know if it helped them or not.
I recall my earliest experiences with a 10 speed. I'd borrowed one to
try out, and I was very skeptical of the need for so many gears. To
"prove" they were useless, I rode it "all the way home" (seven miles) in
its highest gear (probably 52-14) including some fairly steep climbs. I
later bragged to my engineering buddies that indeed, there was no need
for all those (lower) gears.
It literally never dawned on me that people were actually riding these
things further than seven miles! Clearly, I could not have done even 25
miles in that gear; but by using all the gears appropriately, I could
have. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates the principle.
BTW, my understanding is that one of the things Chris Carmichael did for
Lance Armstrong was to convince him to use lower gears. Supposedly it
helped.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Now, there's no law that says anyone _must_ do this. You can swing
a club or throw a ball as you like, too. But when you read about
older guys who enjoy riding distances and hills that burn you out,
you might wonder if they actually know something you don't.
It's as good as an intimidated law. The derision riders get for
admitting lower than "acceptable" cadences insure that these riders
remain in the closet, and that isn't an insignificant number from what
I observe in the hills around here.
:-) You're saying you don't see many low cadence riders doing mountain
grades, and you think it's because of intimidation?
The explanation favored by Occam would be that, if they use low cadence,
most people can't do mountain grades!
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Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
