Here’s a topic I haven’t written about in all these years of doing this. I’m going to discuss using the gears on your bike and some suggestions on the optimal cadence you should be aiming for as you ride. So unless you have a single speed, and a few of you may, you have several to many gears on your bike.
When I got my first multi-speed bike, it was a true 10-speed, with two chainrings up front and five on the freewheel in back for a combination of 10 different gears to chose from. Now bikes come with a lot more, with anywhere from one to three chainrings and up to 12 gears on the rear cassette. So what do you do with all these choices? Well let me tell you.
Sidenote on vocabulary
You may hear people talk about a ‘low gear’, ‘small gear’ or an ‘easy gear’, and likewise a ‘high gear’, ‘big gear’ or ‘hard gear’. I tend to stay away from speaking about ‘small’ or ‘big’ gears because I find people can get confused. In your easiest (smallest) gear, your chain is on the smallest chainring but the largest gear on your cassette in the rear. In your hardest (biggest) gear, your chain is on the biggest chainring but the smallest gear on your cassette. See why this can be confusing? So from now on I will refer to these as your low (easier) and high (harder) gears as that should make more intuitive sense.
Why there are gears and why you should use them
First reason – you carry these gears around with you, so you might as well use them otherwise they are dead weight. More useful reason – gears are on your bike so you can change the amount of resistance you feel when you pedal. In your lowest gear, your pedaling feels easier. In your highest gear, pedaling feels hard. So why wouldn’t you always use your lowest gear if it is easiest? Well, there’s a tradeoff, called speed. In your lowest gear, you don’t go as fast, unless you pedal really, really fast. So then if you want to go fast, wouldn’t you always want to use your highest gear? Well, there’s a tradeoff again, because your legs would get tired. So what’s the optimum gear to use? Glad you asked.
Selecting the best gear to use
As you can start to see, there’s tradeoffs. You can use a lower gear to make it feel easier to pedal but you go slower. Or you can use a higher gear and go faster but your legs will fatigue more quickly.
Quick foray into muscle physiology: When you push a high (hard) gear, you elicit some of your fast twitch muscle fibers because that’s what these fibers do – they help generate higher force than slow twitch fibers. However, they tire quite easily and quickly so you can’t keep mashing (yes that’s a cycling term) a high gear for very long. By selecting a lower gear, you avoid over-using these fast twitch fibers, and can save them for when you really need them, like climbing that next hill.
So the trick is to select a gear that allows you to go fast yet avoids tiring your legs. For most people, their optimum range is a cadence (pedaling speed) between 80 and upper 90’s revolutions per minute (RPM). You may have heard people speaking about ’90 RPM’. That’s a commonly used cadence by proficient cyclists. Everyone has a slightly different preferred cadence, and I believe that has to do with their muscle fiber makeup, as well as how much they work on training a higher cadence. As you figure out what your preferred cadence is, you can then select the appropriate gear that allows you to spin at this cadence. If that sounds really fast to you, work and practice spinning faster until it becomes second nature, which it will with enough practice.
A word on cadence
You may be curious now about what cadence you are currently pedaling and how to measure it. There are a number of brands of cadence sensors that you can add to your bike and connect to your bike computer. If you happen to have a power meter on your bike, these will also measure cadence. Some bikes even come with built-in cadence sensors. If you don’t have one and don’t want to get one, you can simply count the number of times one leg goes around in 15 seconds and multiply by four.
One thing that is very common among beginning cyclists is they tend to pedal way too slowly, often around 60 RPM. As mentioned above, this results in them applying too much force and tiring too quickly. Why do beginners pedal too slowly? One theory I’ve heard, and it sounds logical, is this. People did not evolve to ride bikes but we evolved to walk on two legs. People’s typical walking pace is 60 steps per minute (with each leg). So when they hop on a bike and start pedaling the natural tendency is to pedal at this same pace. I don’t know if it is true but it is true that beginners usually pedal too slowly to be most efficient.
How to use gears while you are riding
So let’s assume you know what your preferred cadence is and it’s somewhere between 80 and 95. This is the cadence you should use when riding on a level road. If there is a headwind (e.g. resistance), you will want to shift into a lower gear to allow yourself to continue pedaling at your desired cadence. With a tailwind you can shift up to a higher gear and still keep your desired cadence.
The same is true for hills, and this is where gears come in really handy. On an uphill, you will need to shift to a lower gear. On really steep hills, you may not even be able to maintain your desired cadence even if you are in your lowest gear but that’s okay. Your cadence may drop to 70 RPM or even 60, but keep shifting down to lower gears to keep the legs churning, until you run out of gears.
If you run out of gears
If you do run out of low gears, two things can happen, either your cadence will drop below 80, 70 or even lower, or you will have to stop and walk. No shame in that, as long as you’ve run through all your gears. But don’t get in the situation where you have to stop before going all the way down to your lowest gear. And here’s a pointer about that – make sure you start shifting down to lower gears before you start riding up a hill. If you wait, your cadence may drop too low (e.g. 40 RPM) at which point it’s hard to keep pedaling and it can also be hard to shift gears when your chain is under so much tension.
If you are new to riding a bike with gears, ask for advice on how your shifters work and go out and practice shifting to figure out which lever controls which derailleur – front or rear, and which direction to move the levers to shift up and down.
Now that you know this, go out for a “spin”.
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David Ertl is a USA Cycling Advanced Certified Coach. He coaches individual cyclists through the Peaks Coaching Group www.peakscoachinggroup.com/davidertl. Ertlalso provides cycling training plans and ebooks at his website: www.CyclesportCoaching.com. You can contact Coach Ertl at: [email protected].
