No

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

It's good enough for pros on the mountains. Especially Nibali and he is ok.

If your talking TT, then no for me too.

For short term power....do whatever you need to...but for longer term power the prevailing school of thought is that upper body motion will tire you out faster with less gain than just having a quiet upper body will.

Rocking can be a symptom of something with the bike fit or the body. Being stable is important for power output over a longer period of time, as well as avoiding injury. If you are moving a lot, your muscles are working to stabilize that movement. That takes energy that isn't being used to make you go down the road faster and will increase your fatigue rate. Pains such as saddle discomforts or saddle sores, low-back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, etc., can all be tied back to some level of instability somewhere in the bike/body system.

Stabilizing the body is a big part of what makes a good bike fit good. If you are not stable on the saddle, pedals, and aerobars, you are not as efficient as you could be. There is the work that can be done on the bike to accommodate you (and there are a lot of options - fit, saddle choice, crank arm length, cleat adjustments, etc.), and there is the work you can do off the bike to create a stronger/more stable/more balanced core. I see a lot of athletes, particularly long-course triathletes, who are an unstable mess. Triathlon training plans that have people trying to cram 12-20 hours of training into a life that is busy with work, family, and other obligations. The simple things that can really help improve overall stability and prevent injury get neglected.

Sorry, I think I went off on a rant there... To answer your question, yeah, you can do that for a short period of time, but it will cost you.

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

What about Sebastian Kienle then? He really "rocks" (pun intended) on the bike?

I would have to watch some video of him to know for sure - but if his spine/pelvis are moving, then no, he's not as efficient as he could be. He's a monster, for sure!

Of course, there is always going to be energy expenditures in things that are not purely propelling us on the bike. For example, I think we take for granted the simple things like staying upright on the bike - even at speed, there is still stabilization that needs to occur. Finding where we are doing more than we have to is where we can gain some efficiency. We all have our limits!

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

I assume you are talking about a road bike and not a TT bike?

Steady state power the answer is no. Sprints, high power climbs, jumping on the pedals to get going - yes. The rocking comes from the torque being put on the frame by pushing the pedal down. The bike will tilt to that side and "rock" back and forth as you pedal. It can't really be prevented under those circumstances - its a matter of physics.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

i was going to say that Kienle rocks on the bike and so did Tyler Hamilton when he TT'd. But let's think this through. Milesthedog and I were discussing this in another thread. When Kienle is in his TT position it's like 98% of his weight is between the arm pads and the single downstroke pedal. He seems to generate more pedal force this way while remaining aero. It seems that rather than sitting on the saddle and pushing the pedal down, he is stepping up on one pedal while counter steering with the opposing arm cup to keep his bike straight (very similar to what you do standing and out of the saddle). Everyone is going to say sit and push down and no rocking but you get guys like Kienle, Hamilton, Mike Pigg, who defy it. Pigg literally would not need the saddle and would do a ton of aero out of the saddle accelerations (obviously requiring no seat). For short bursts out of a corner to get up to speed, I have used that.

Forgive the aero sins, this was 2006 out of the hairpin at demi Esprit...I was literally making up 5-10 seconds per lap on a 20 lap course on a friend of mine riding the same speed doing this.

For TT position, sure sign you need to go forward.

Techncally, no, rocking usually means you're relying hard on non-optimal bike muscles to keep up the effort. That said, plenty of really, really strong cyclists rock a fair amount, for lots of time. Not all of the top cyclists are super smooth statue-like models of aerodynamic efficiency.

You will notice though that as you get significantly stronger on the bike, you should be rocking a lot less for any given power compared to before. You may still rock as you push harder, but it'll be at higher power output than before.

Good runners who don't have much bike background tend to rock a lot because they have some very strong muscles for cycling mixed with other ones that haven't been trained as exstensively for cycling due to their lack of experience, so they often rock to compensate as the effort goes up.

I echo what other have said look at bike fit-

But the other thing that may affect this is trying to push too large of a gear.

Training can help this- train yourself to remain relaxed and as still as possible under a hard effort.
If you just let yourself rock all over the place, you always will.

I think the reason runners transferring to cycling inherently rock side to side is because their brains are wired to have head move subtly from leg to leg when applying force with a subtle movement of the lumbar spine. Good runners have to do that. Bad runners 'sit' in between their legs.

Look where Alyson Felix's head position is here...that's basically what good runners inherently do when they first transfer to biking...basically it is conducive to pounding on the downstroke and literally lifting your butt off the saddle and not worrying about a smooth circular motion:

I see your point, and sort of agree, but I think by far the bigger issue is that good runners who are new to the bike (or just a lot weaker on the bike) will have excellent conditioning for 'most' of the bike-specific muscles, but be weak in certain smaller muscles or at least weaker in the more closed angle of the bike position since they haven't trained it.

As a result, the runner will be trying to compensate for that weakness by rocking, standing, or whatever they need to do to keep the power up.

This happened exactly to me when I started on the bike from a running background. With zero bike training, I could ride 20mph in an Oly bike right off the get go, even with no aero equipment and no sense of bike pacing. I could climb all the steep hills that cyclists warned me about possibly having to walk if I didn't pace it. But I definitely rocked a lot - it was really noticeable, and I actually got some weird chafing in my inner thigh/leg areas from it at one point.

Fast forward 2 years where I spent a lot more time on the bike - faster speeds, more power, but a LOT less rocking. In fact, that's the #1 thing I notice when I get into 'bike shape' for myself - my pedal smoothness goes up a lot, and I'm rock solid even on super steep climbs of 15%+. Whereas early in the season, there's tons of extra motion, mainly to compensate for my lack of bike-specific power.