Tuesday, December 23, 2008

"When I Say Spin, You Best Spin, Muthafucka"

Pardon the allusion to the classic new wave track "Dance Mother Fucker Dance" by The Violent Femmes (though it's more of the rock-a-billy genre).

Spinning is a time-honored practice in bicycle racing. Coaches will demand your base miles all be done in the small chainring. This is mostly to ensure you don't damage anything from trying to push a hard gear when you don't have the base miles, but it also means you have to turn a high cadence to go fast. Developing leg speed is a crucial aspect of bike racing.

They will advocate riding rollers at a high cadence to smooth out your pedal stroke and keep you riding smooth straight lines. This can be accomplished with stationary trainer, but it's easy to get sloppy at a high spin on a stationary trainer, and it doesn't really do anything for your fitness if you don't have to worry about keep the bike up. No, spinning classes don't help with spinning the pedals on a road bike, unless you're starting from scratch. Even the Great Eddy Merckx loathed stationary trainers for anything other than warming up. His famous quip on the subject was 'all you learn from riding a wind trainer is how to pedal squares'. They didn't have magnetic or fluid trainers in his day, but the concept is the same. Sitting on a stationary trainer (as opposed to rollers) allows you, and almost coerces you, pump your legs up and down, not pedal circles. (OK, I know it isn't exactly what he said, but it's the gist, and he did use the term 'pedal squares'. If you're anal enough to worry about the exact phrase over the intent, then I suggest you shut the fuck up and get on a set of rollers).

This brings me to the actual subject of this post: Fixed Gear Training.

I'm not talking about track racing, I'm talking about riding a fixed gear bike with a ratio in the low to mid 2s for a few hours at a time on the road.

My Friend and fellow blogger Exemplar Solobreak has a post on power training, where he referenced the idea of mashing a big gear over varied terrain as a training tool.

But, That's something to be saved for later, _after_ you develop your base miles.

It's winter. When the roads are clear, I love riding a fixed gear. Last year was tough since it snowed so early and we had snow on the ground from the day after thanksgiving through the end of march. This year does'nt look much better for winter miles so far, but you know what they say about new england weather, all this snow could be gone next week (though I find it highly unlikely)

So, let's talk about riding one gear, no coasting, trying to keep a cadence of about 100 rpm on flat ground, while keeping your HR in the low aerobic range, about 80%, for two to three hours.

This teaches you several things:
1) Spinning a cadence on a fixed gear makes you pedal a circle. If you have a bad pedal stroke, keeping the bike smooth and steady as you zip along at a higher cadence - say 120 - will bounce you all over the road.
2) It prevents you from taking it too easy. If you want to get home, you have to push the gear. No coasting, no shifting up/down on the hills,
3) It teaches you to be attentive - while I personally would _never_ go out on the open road without two working brakes, it's a good learning experience for keeping your pace steady, especially when riding with a group.

Of course, the right gear for your area is essential. in flat areas, like where Solo lives, you can get away with a heavier gear, possible something pushing a 3.0 ratio. Where I live, we have a lot more rolling hills with some short steep climbs. I've been using a 42/16 for almost 20 years (2.625:1). I can ride most of the local hills and still keep my cadence over 70, and they aren't long enough to horribly stress my knees.

This brings us to another aspect of fixed-gear training. Depending on the route, I can pick out hilly route to work on power, or longer flat routes to just work on base miles. Of course, the hilly routes are much shorter in duration, and the beauty of the smaller gear is that I can get an effective warm-up/cool-down by spinning to and from the hills I want to work out on.

Conversely, on some of the _downhills_, in isn't uncommon to spin up to 160 rpm. This brings me to a question I'd like to ask from anyone who may skim past this blog that has any knowledge on the issue. The question is 'spinning vs. being spun'.

A coach that I hooked up with a few years ago was not a fan of fixed gear training. He felt that it didn't really teach you to spin a high cadence smoothly, since usually the high cadences one experiences on a fixed gear occur on the down hills. He said, there is a big difference between spinning and being spun. I think I see his point, but I think it's relative minor. I think the benefits of fixed gear training vastly outweigh any detriment from 'being spun' on a downhill, and I also think there is a benefit to letting the bike push your leg speed up past the 160 rpm range. I think that pushing your legs in a circle at that speed is something that _must_ be done consciously, and therefore it _does_ teach you how to spin your legs smoothly.

Did you notice how many times I wrote "I think" in that last paragraph? Hell, I'm not a coach, and I'm quite mediocre as a bike racer, so it doesn't really matter what I _think_.

Tell me what _you_ think. Any professional coaches that may wander this way are especially welcome.

5 comments:

gewilli said...

i *think* i found lots of benefit in the spinning by doing all those miles with just a 40t front ring.

trying to max out the speed with a 40x12 post sprinting with the guys who have big rings is a good way to work on the spinning without being spun.

head out on a group ride with your limit screwed down on the small ring and attack the downhills and see if you can stay away or keep up.

i haven't been doing it as long as most of you old fogies but it seemed very effective and based on max speed and rough gear calcs i was able to apply power and sustain 150-160 rpms with a freewheel with those 180 mm cranks.

definitely agree that one should wait to do the solo/negacoach big gear grind until a solid base has been established...

but then what do i know ;-) i just read too much

solobreak said...

Gewilli, 180 mm may be the longest crank readily available to you, but relative to your leg length (no matter how you choose to measure it), you are riding shorter cranks than just about anyone. If your inseam is 91 cm, 91/18 = 5.05. Contrast that to a rider with a 76 cm inseam. Even on 165 cranks there inseam is only 4.6 times the crank length.

Short cranks are "easier" to spin at a higher cadence, but of course with less leverage you need either more force on the pedal or higher rpm to make the same power. As an unusually tall person, this puts you at a disadvantage in low rpm situations rather than high rpm situations, in a sense.

Fixed gears - meh. Maybe I always run my chains too loose, but I don't believe you can "be spun" on a fixed gear anymore than you can on a freewheeling bike. If you aren't keeping up with the pedals an putting force into the crank direction, you just start bouncing all over the place. I don't think anyone is foolish enough to consider this an effective way to develop a good pedal stroke. What they do "force" you to do is ride one gear all the time. When I rode one, I found myself backing off at the crests of hills so as to not build up too much speed into the downhill on the other side. To me, that is not a good thing. Finishing the hill and accelerating down the other side is better training IMHO. But what I really dislike about riding a fixed on the road is the inability to stop and stretch on the bike. For me that's a bigger part of comfort, not to mention injury prevention, than any need for "easy base" or whatever.

If I've not gone on long enough already (but hell, there's plenty of room in the comments on this blog...), I'm starting to see potential benefits of doing some single speed mountain biking. I think it provides many opportunities to perform not only the types of "drills" that zencycle it touting the fixed gear for, but also the explosive "power stomp" drag race start efforts noted in Coggan's paper. Mountain biking in general (especially around here in the tight, rolling, rocky stuff) involves a lot of these kinds of short explosive efforts from low rpm interspersed with bouts of coasting or spinning. Doing it with one gear just intensifies the effect.

Don't take this to mean I'm in the camp that says fixed gears are a waste of time. Anything that gets you out on the bike in January is a good thing. They are easier to keep clean and sometimes a change of pace is good for it's own sake.

Now my head hurts.

zencycle said...

Blogger gewilli said...

"i *think* i found lots of benefit in the spinning by doing all those miles with just a 40t front ring."

'The proof is in the pudding'

"trying to max out the speed with a 40x12 post sprinting with the guys who have big rings is a good way to work on the spinning without being spun....head out on a group ride with your limit screwed down on the small ring and attack the downhills and see if you can stay away or keep up"

This is where fixed gear proponents would disagree. The point of the fixed gear is to make you spin. The ability to shift - even staying in the small ring - defeats he purpose. While you have to spin to keep up on the flats, you can still coast the downhills. But, it's better than being tempted to pop it in the big ring in the early season for sure.

zencycle said...

Blogger solobreak said...

"Fixed gears - meh. Maybe I always run my chains too loose, but I don't believe you can "be spun" on a fixed gear anymore than you can on a freewheeling bike. If you aren't keeping up with the pedals an putting force into the crank direction, you just start bouncing all over the place. I don't think anyone is foolish enough to consider this an effective way to develop a good pedal stroke."

Exactly - this is my point. If you don't have a smooth spin, you'll be all over the place. Getting 'spun' on a downhill will reveal a bad pedal stroke, and you can use gravity to maintain your speed while you concentrate on pedaling smoothly.

" What they do "force" you to do is ride one gear all the time. When I rode one, I found myself backing off at the crests of hills so as to not build up too much speed into the downhill on the other side. To me, that is not a good thing."

So don't do that.

"Finishing the hill and accelerating down the other side is better training IMHO."

Well, better for race training I'll agree. But not better for developing a smooth pedal stroke.

"But what I really dislike about riding a fixed on the road is the inability to stop and stretch on the bike. For me that's a bigger part of comfort, not to mention injury prevention, than any need for "easy base" or whatever."

I'll have to whole heartedly agree with you here. Going out for a 3 hour fixed gear ride can be more detrimental than beneficial if you don't already have a good fitness base, and it you already have the base, you don't need to be riding a fixed gear for three hours.

"If I've not gone on long enough already (but hell, there's plenty of room in the comments on this blog...)"

I knew that was coming....

"Don't take this to mean I'm in the camp that says fixed gears are a waste of time. Anything that gets you out on the bike in January is a good thing. They are easier to keep clean and sometimes a change of pace is good for it's own sake."

Agreed - Much like running doesn't translate well into riding, it's good to change things up and keep it interesting.

"Now my head hurts"

You sure that isn't from going out for a few after work last night?

solobreak said...

The sudden surge in "serious" cycling posts in my corner of the internets boggles my mind. There's always this huge flurry of activity once the competitive season is over. Everyone is a champion in January I guess. That, and yes the late nights, makes my head hurt...

Now that I have brakes on the Rossin, I guess in theory I could easily ride fixed on the road. I don't own a fixed clincher though, only the tubular I ride at the track. I've been thinking about building up a wheel using a White eccentric hub, but I'm leaning toward making it a 26 inch. Or I could just do nothing...

Good luck at the Millenium Mile. I don't think that I'm going to make it. Raynham is still a possiblity, but it will just be a training run if I do.