Not sure ST wants me to link to team TBB’s site, so I’ll just say Brett Sutton just wrote an opinion piece on high vs low cadence… saying most (if not all) triathletes will put out more power for a longer time, and then run better afterward, at lower cadence than the commonly prescribed 90+rpm. He says 60 to 70rpm. I’m very interested in what our resident experts have to say about that… Bjorn? Jordan?
i’m more of a grinder than a spinner, and back in the 90’s started consciously trying to increase my cadence on the advice of tri gurus. i think ~90 was supposed to be the sweet spot. maybe’s that too high, but man - 60 is slow!
-mike
that’s kind of a false choice: 65 versus 90. the average cadence in an IM race, by the winner, is generally in the neighborhood of 82 to 85. cadence increases or decreases with effort. so, you’d ride a 40k time trial with a cadence of, say, 95. you’d ride raam with a cadence of, say, 65. the hour record since before the time of merckx has been set with a cadence of less than 100rpm just once.
maybe brett knows something the entire rest of the cycling world doesn’t know. but i doubt it.
i suspect there’s room for divergence from the mean. maybe type I fiber types prefer lower cadences because they can handle the increased torque load, type II is better able to handle the increased aerobic load. i don’t know. but divergence form the mean is one thing. ignoring the mean is another thing. i always think you play with fire if you unilaterally decide stray from what the great majority of great athletes in a given sport do. unless your peers are bill koch, brian oldfield, dick fosbury, or david berkoff, be vary wary of straying from orthodox technique.
I think you can post a link, just not cut & paste an entire article. Where did you see this article (in the blog section?)? If I recall correctly, in previous interview, Brett Sutton preached something along the lines of a high cadence is good in some situations for some people (e.g. Caroline Steffan in a TT) but a high cadence could make it tough to have a good run. However, he did qualify the response by saying that everyone has their own range. From this I took away the advice of try something other than conventional wisdom as conventional wisdom often comes from other sports. Personally, I prefer a higher cadence (95ish for Olympic/90 for IM). Given that I come from a rugby background and have large quads, a lower cadence may be worth trying out in training for a while to see if it will help my ability to run off the bike. My marathon PR is just under 3:10 with ~8 weeks of pure run training but my IM PR is just under 3:40 (that’s a guess as the run courses in IM are often inaccurate). Obviously, other factors play a part but cadence could certainly be an important one.
the reality is, Brett had huge success implementing a slower cadence with many of the female athlete he as coach. Many of those went on to have the best performances of there racing career using this method. I haven seen as high of a success with men.
Yes, it s possible to keep a lower hr on the bike by using a lower cadence, but no everyone would be able to ride like that. At 146lbs when at top fitness, i never been able to mold into his low cadence philosophy. I always did better at much higher rpm.
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I think there are individual differences and obviously it’s also dependent on the duration and intensity of the event. My guess is that absolute power might have something to do with it as well since there is a point when the force requirements becomes too high to sustain and you have to compensate with a higher cadence.
Reading stuff like this these days is amusing to me because I was declared an idiot more times than I remember because I used to ride at 70-75rpm at long distance events many years ago. But since then I’ve seen some of the same people swear by it since it started getting more “mainstream” because of Brett a while ago… Either way is my experience when I changed to a higher cadence that it didn’t really affect anything except for at intensities approaching ftp and beyond. Cadence have a relatively small impact on performance compared to other factors imo.
so jon/bjorn - do you reckon that riders with more muscular legs are more suited to lower cadence, generally? i’ve loved riding bikes since i was a few years old (and have really big legs) and i think i just sort of settled into my natural ‘rhythm’ long before i bought a cadence sensor. . .
-mike
Not sure but there are probably other factors that have a bigger influence such as muscle fiber composition. The type of cycling we do, even if the cadence is low, is not really strength limited anyway.
An additional complication: I would assert that the optimal cadence for the same triathlete (when he is trained, optimized, and peaked for) racing olympic distance (non-draft) vs half-IM vs IM will also self select different cadences. In my experience, athletes typically self select lower cadences for the shorter distance events vs the longer distance events.
I agree with your comments. Genetics and body make up have me with large legs and I have always done better with a lower cadence over a higher cadence. I have tried higher cadence but it has never really worked for me. For me it is right between 70-80 which I find my sweet spot. My lower body is built like a track cyclist while my upper body is like it belongs to someone else.
As others have said, I think cadence is largely personal. Coming from a road background, I probably have a higher cadence than most triathletes (~90 rpm), but certainly not fast by road racing standards.
Personally, my “sweet spot” seems to be in the 85-90 range. I can (and have) spent seasons working on higher cadence and had decent success with it. When road racing, my race cadence tends to go up (95+).
I am starting to experiment a bit with cadence and power. using a lower cadence seems to help maintain a more even power output…
but 60-70 rpm? I’ll pass…
I knew this would interest you, I’ve been here long enough to know you’ve been criticized for this heavily in the past. Its interesting to me, playing with the differences in perceived efforts and the ability to run afterwards. I personally tend to spin 85-90 in lower effort 200-250 watt situations, and 95-100rpm when I go up into the 250-350 watt areas. I can maintain the former for Ironman distance, and I race halfs and olympics at much higher cadence. But it hasn’t been purposeful, just going with what my legs feel is right.
I agree with you. When I was road racing, during criteriums, I would generally average 100-102 rpm, so slowing things down for triathlon is different. I think you’ll have to work yourself down, just like you worked yourself up. Just drop your cadence by a few rpm every couple of weeks. Again though, I agree with you, I think I’m going to pass on 60-70 rpm and stick to the low 80s.
I think it’s a fallacy that 90 is the prescribed cadence for long distance triathlon. I believe two things, roughly - that cadence doesn’t matter too much, but - insofar as it does matter - pick a “natural” cadence and a cadence that is somewhat proportional to effort level.
I.e., I ride an Ironman at a slightly lower cadence than a 70.3. And I ride that slightly slower than an all out time trial.
However, pursuant to Dan’s comment, it’s also - in MY opinion, though maybe not as much Dan’s - that cadence and absolute power are related. The cadence consistency for the hour record is not only because it’s an hour. It’s ALSO because it’s ~400-500w. Hopefully Jim Martin might chime in on this, but basically, cadence and absolute pedal force are likely more correlated than “relative” effort. I.e., my cadence for an hour record attempt would be lower than Graeme Obree’s, because I don’t put out as much power.
So, along those lines, I think it’s probably true that women should pedal a lower cadence than men for two reasons - they put out less power and they ride at an even lower relative effort because they are on the bike longer as a result of putting out less power. I.e., since 112mi takes them longer, they have to back off their power even more.
Personally, I’ve found that my best Ironman bike rides come with a cadence of around 80rpm. I ride about 85rpm for 70.3 This seems to be relatively consistent with other pros I talk to.
The most notable exception that I know of is Chris Lieto, who does ride a very high cadence. Not saying anything about that as being causal, just saying Chris rides a high cadence.
I also think it’s interesting that Brett would talk about power output, since he’s never really used a powermeter (AFAIK). And, even with discussion of cadence, many of his athletes don’t even use a bike computer, so it’s more like “low” cadence than a specific cadence. I’ve seen plenty of snippets of Chrissie Wellington riding in Hawaii at a cadence of ~90. So even Brett’s own athletes aren’t actually always consistent with their cadence, as you might expect with athletes that very often have no computer.
I think Sutton’s basic advice, however, that the best cadence for triathlon is lower than the typical cadence of a road race of similar duration is correct. Just because guys ride the TdF at a relatively high cadence, that doesn’t mean that a higher cadence is good or even non-harmful for triathlon.
My general advice is to train at a variety of cadences and, on race day, to ride the cadence you feel comfortable with. What that means is that YOU pick your cadence. What I don’t like is when folks let their drivetrain pick their cadence for them. I.e., if you want to ride 70rpm, that’s fine. Just don’t do it because you’ve run out of gearing…
the reality is, Brett had huge success implementing a slower cadence with many of the female athlete he as coach. Many of those went on to have the best performances of there racing career using this method. I haven seen as high of a success with men.
Yes, it s possible to keep a lower hr on the bike by using a lower cadence, but no everyone would be able to ride like that. At 146lbs when at top fitness, i never been able to mold into his low cadence philosophy. I always did better at much higher rpm.
Insightful
Not sure ST wants me to link to team TBB’s site, so I’ll just say Brett Sutton just wrote an opinion piece on high vs low cadence… saying most (if not all) triathletes will put out more power for a longer time, and then run better afterward, at lower cadence than the commonly prescribed 90+rpm. He says 60 to 70rpm. I’m very interested in what our resident experts have to say about that… Bjorn? Jordan?
that’s an interesting stance. I’ve always thought that a higher cadence over IM distance would be better, since a higher cadence should be less taxing on the muscular system but more taxing on the cardio system. During an IM, I feel as if I have a lot of “heart rate upside” i.e. while riding at 75% FTP my heart rate is really low (like 130). In order to ride at a higher HR I could either push harder or increase cadence, and my thinking was that a higher cadence would create less leg fatigue, at the expense of more cardio fatigue. My run performance suffers from muscular fatigue, not cardio. I’m sure many of you are the same (i.e. on the run you don’t have the leg power to push your heart rate anywhere near what it’s capable of). I would imagine that a lower cadence would fatigue your muscles even more. For example in an open marathon I can keep my HR around 168 for the entire race. In an IM I struggle to get it above 140.
I think Sutton’s basic advice, however, that the best cadence for triathlon is lower than the typical cadence of a road race of similar duration is correct. Just because guys ride the TdF at a relatively high cadence, that doesn’t mean that a higher cadence is good or even non-harmful for triathlon.
I think this is pretty spot-on.
Personally, I’ve found that my best Ironman bike rides come with a cadence of around 80rpm. I ride about 85rpm for 70.3 This seems to be relatively consistent with other pros I talk to.
Out of curiosity, do your bike cadences correlate to your subsequent run cadences respective to the different distances at all? In my case, I find that after doing a trainer ride at 90 rpm, a 180 spm run comes very naturally.
" My general advice is to train at a variety of cadences and, on race day, to ride the cadence you feel comfortable with. What that means is that YOU pick your cadence. What I don’t like is when folks let their drivetrain pick their cadence for them. I.e., if you want to ride 70rpm, that’s fine. Just don’t do it because you’ve run out of gearing… "
great advice.
I thought Lance has lower back issues and the higher cadence puts less stress on the lower back.
Isn’t that part of the reason he likes to spin?