Uphill Struggle

[dwhitty]

My riding partner thrives on hills. He has had his bike in for repair due to his abuse of his gears on hills.
I tend to use smaller gears at an higher cadence on the hills.
I really struggle on short steep hills, but am ok on long steady climbs.
I understand it is about slow and fast twitch muscles, but is there a way I can improve my hill climbs?
Is it just a case of practice, practice and more practice?

 

[alienator]

Climb more.

 

[jhuskey]

Yes, climb more but you have to push yourself. Next time try to maintain the same cadence in a higher gear.
You may get winded the first time but that is where the practice comes in.
I don't know what your weight to muscle ratio is but weight is always a factor when you drag it up ahill.

 

[64Paramount]

Yup, climb more and push yourself.

When I'm trying to improve my hill climbing I've got a route I ride that's only 7 miles long. But, it has 4 killer hills. (killer for me that is!)

In the Spring when I'm starting to ride again I can barely ride that route once.

By the Fall I can do that route 3 times back to back, and last year I was averaging 16mph on those 3 back to back laps.

I started doing that because I was kind of in a rut and then I read on here about doing interval training to improve your riding.

I doubt if I'm doing it exactly the way the folks intended, but it really improved my times on my regular 45 mile routes that I ride. Both of those routes only have one really killer hill and I can just chew them up and spit them out.