A quicker cadence is more efficient? Are you sure? How are you measuring this efficiency, surely not through kettlebell squats.
Lets say, someone racing a flat IM at 70% of FTP and a 70.3 at 80%… what would be the most efficient pedal cadence should be for those efforts?
Yes, muscular endurance can be developed at your race cadence, and should be mostly performed at your planned race cadence, but there are other aspects of fitness you can target by changing cadence for some intervals, especially in the base phase of your training. You may notice while doing low cadence drills that your heart rate is lower. This is because the legs are producing more force and the load is shouldered more by your muscles as opposed to your heart and lungs. Switching to high cadence drills then switches the load over to the heart and lungs. You are working, burning calories, producing power, but in a very different way.
The definition of fitness from the new oxford dictionary is “the quality of being suitable to fulfil a particular role or task.†Transfer that into our discussion and you can be fit, generally speaking (ie. Healthy, strong, whatever), but is that “fitness†specific to being able to perform the task at hand? Low cadence drills are not some magic thing to make you stronger, but they can be a part of the plan to help you be a better athlete by training Your muscles to be able to crank out power, to resist fatigue, etc. if you find yourself at the end of a long hard workout not being able to crank out the same power you were at the beginning, and year not really “winded†then low cadence may help you.
On that note, if you are strapped for time and can’t spend 2 hours on the bike during the week but want to get more out of yourself, low cadence can help increase the training stimuli and tax your muscles more so you get more bang for your buck.
As far as transferring gym strength to the bike, squatting a heavy load is not going to make you faster. Again. See the def. of fitness above. You are increasing the max force your muscles can produce but then that doesn’t directly lead to higher power output. You need to train the muscles to produce the force in the pedaling motion. A quick cadence is efficient because it doesn’t load the muscles very much. Think of lifting a kettle bell 90 times a minute… you can’t do that with a very heavy weight. Lower the cadence and you load the muscles with my “weight†and teach them to put force into the pedals. Eventually that can lead to a higher power output at higher cadences as you would see on race day.
I’m well aware of what single legged drills do. You didn’t answer my questions, so I ask them again.
- “the low cadence drills, same as high cadence drills, are good to developing other aspects of fitness”**… Can you explain this more? I think its important to understand ones definition of Fitness. Im confused on how low cadence drills can develop fitness. Would like for you to elaborate on this. **
**2) “**Transferring your strength from the gym to on the bike. Better utilizing glycogen. Resisting muscular fatigue.” Are you referencing the low cadence drills here? Low cadence drills help transfer gym strength to bike strength? Can you explain this more?
Single leg drills are not about strength. They are about form. They are about smoothing out the pedal stroke so that you don’t have any dead spots. Those dead spots are hard to notice when pedaling with both legs as the opposite leg makes up the difference. Going to a single leg makes the dead spot glaringly obvious.