What is cycling cadence, and how it can help you lose weight
Cycling cadence is the speed at which you can make your feet move the crank, calculated in terms of rotations per minute (rpm). The right use of cycling cadence will result in weight loss, which is what we are about here on this blog, and the wrong use will have no effect at all.
When I was a lad, I would power up and down Windmill Hill in North London, and would pity the old folks (erm, those who had hit 40..I am there myself now…) who were going at a reasonable pace but their legs were going too fast. In my ignorance I imagined myself as the hard man power house who could manage the big gears.
Now, with a bit more wisdom I realise that that was stupid. Most of the guys I passed on my 10 minute trip to college had most likely been in the saddle for half an hour and had another 30 minutes to do. They could sustain their effort over a long period, I was only looking for a few minutes. And when you are cycling to lose weight there is one golden rule:
Losing weight isn’t about how tough you are, or the effort, but how long you put the effort in for!
When you put massive effort into each peddle stroke the result is that you a) get a lot of muscle, which is heavy and will make it harder to get up hills b) you burn what is in your gut and glucose in your muscle rather than what is stored as fat on your body. Cadence cycling burns the fat.
When you burn the glucose, you get that lead feeling in your legs where you can’t make another pedal stroke. You tire out that much quicker. However doing light pedal strokes will mean you can go so much further, and its hours in the saddle that burn the fat.
To lose weight/fat your effort must be sustained over a long period, and this is where cycling at a high cadence comes in.
I am not saying that you should be taking it easy, far from it, but I have found that the ideal cadence is somewhere in the 70-90 rpm (pros are up into the 120, but without clips at the moment on a mountain bike rather than being able to exploit road bike cycling tech, I haven’t got a chance!). It’s important to still make an effort because its working aerobically that will burn the fat. An-Aerobics (where you are fighting for air) builds stamina but doesn’t nothing for the fat burning, and will tire you out quicker.
I calculated it like this.
I wanted to work at a little over an easy pace. That is, I wanted to be breathing deeply, but to be able to hold a breathless conversation over a period of time. I talk to myself. Failing that, sing!
On the flat, I adjusted my gears so that I could rotate my pedals as fast as I felt comfortable at – which I defined as as fast as possible without my feet losing contact with the pedals and a so that I wasn’t bouncing up and down in the saddle (try pedalling as fast as you can and you will see what I mean) – and have that breathless feeling.
I counted how many times one crank went through the bottom-most point of the cycle in 30 seconds, and doubled it.
This is the speed and breathlessness I then use wherever possible, including hill climbing. It also means that after a hill climb I can recover much quicker.
It’s worth mentioning that you can use a cycling computer to work out your cadence, but the calculation will work out at exactly the same thing. If however you are training hard, and you want to push your cadence up by about 10% on your normal speed, then knowing your rpm from your cycling computer cadence device will help you to stay on target. Prices start from around £32 for the cateye strada cadence cycle computer.
Some terms
Cadence work has it’s own language.
- Spinning – a high cadence of 70 or more
- Grinding – a slow cadence
- Mashing – downward stroke.
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[...] Not only that, but I really fancied seeing if I could match Lance Armstrong’s 120rpm cadence. [...]
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