Did you also move your seat when you changed your crank length?
I felt better immediately, but my stroke felt off… like my ring turned from a circle to an oval. But the faster cadence and stuff felt good right away.
Took a few weeks to not feel weird with the size of my stroke.
yes, also moved the seat when changed the crank lenght.
Hopefully it doesn’t take me long to adapt to the stroke, only couple of rides so far, and the second ride felt better than the first.
Any update?
I gave 165mm crank length on my TT bike 18 months before giving up 2 weeks ago.
I have 172.5mm on my roadie and in that time, my power on that bike has increased about 25W for 20min…and my TT power has stayed the same…or gone backwards a bit (and any climbing was terrible…felt terrible and really poor power).
I can have my aerobars just as low with 172.5mm on my TT bike as 165mm and have tested as aero with both crank lengths.
I already was a bit of a spinner (typically cadence of >100rpm on undulating TT courses) and being ~60kg, do not have high torque. I figure I did not have much room to increase my cadence and did not have the ability to increase my torque enough for similar cadence.
I went from just off medals at state titles in TTs to well and truly middle of the pack.
Personally I immediately gained about 3-4watts going from 175s to 165s on my TT bike. About two weeks later I had gained 10watts. That’s not always the case but for me it was a drastic improvement in fit and comfort.
For me, it took forever. Which is to say, I never adapted.
I started off at 172.5. Tried 165 twice. Didn’t work. Settled for 170 for a few years on my tri bike. But on the whole, I never felt quite as good as 172.5. Finally I went to a new groupset on my tri bike and have gone back to 172.5 I’m back to stay.
Interesting… seems like there are more anecdotes online re: people who don’t adapt to shorter cranks vs. people succeed with them.
That having been said, I’m going to try switching from 165s to 155s. But if I don’t adapt very quickly, then I’ll go back to the 165s (or try 160s). When I switched from 170s to 165s I never noticed the difference.
I went back to 177.5s after trying 170s. Most of the tts I do are rolling and I just didn’t like the feel of the shorter crank. I also seemed to get a touch slower this year and I think it was because of the raised saddle height with the shorter crank. First race back on the 177.5s yesterday and I felt more comfortable on them, no change in power output. Had a decent result but never did the course so I don’t have a metric to compare to. I am a lanky 6’2’’ and have a lower cadence around 80rpm.
Fully adapted now, power is very similar on my tt bike as before, but the difference is I’m a lot more comfortable, think that could bring some gains over 112miles, also at the same power I’m noticing lower HR.
At the beginning I was 5-10 rpms higher on my cadence, but after weeks past I started to move to my previous cadence which made me feel better.
Some people mentioned that when going to shorter cranks there’s a need for changing to easier gears, however I haven’t felt that need at all even for a big change from 172.5 to 150mm.
There were some recommendations of moving the saddle back, but what actually worked for me was moving the saddle a bit forward, I felt stronger that way.
Something funny is that when I started the change, it was a bit harder to pedal with the 150mm cranks, now after some weeks of getting used to it I rode my road bike with 172.5mm and it was very very hard, my hips hurt and it was a real challenge to pedal. So now I need to change it in my road bike as well.