19 What Is Your Pedaling Style And Technique?

Readers, let's talk pedaling in this post. It would be great to have all your input as comments.

Basically, what I'm wondering is what each of your pedaling techniques are like. What do you think of when you pedal? Is there a rhythm you follow? Do you count in your mind? Do you sync it with your favorite musical tune that's stuck in your head? Technically, do you believe there is something in your pedaling style that makes it efficient? Did someone teach you this style, telling you that its better? Do you follow a book? Or do you plainly just don't give a damn?

David Kina is a Cat 3 road racer from East Aurora, NY. He's also good friend of mine and wrote me a small thesis on his pedaling style, which you can read below. My response comes after his writeup and it gets really interesting towards the end!!

Oh...and don't forget to share your feelings and thoughts on your personal pedaling style!!

HOW DAVE PEDALS - THE EDDIE BORYSEWICZ TECHNIQUE

Ron,

Here is a topic that I think would be great for your blog because I want to learn about other rider's pedaling techniques. Perhaps you could have some physics analysis to add to this topic? I want to know what other racers do because my riding may not be fast but there are many faster riders who may have better hints.

When I first started racing in 2005 I was known for time trialing, breaking away, and chasing in a pursuit or time trial style (I still do favor this type of riding as I broke away in a local training crit and won last year, and I was congratulated on my pursuit abilities at a track). In 2005, I used some pedaling technique advice from an old school coach Eddie Borysewicz. He said in his book to do a soft pedal revolution per leg every 5 pedal strokes. So pedal stroke 1 right leg, 2 left, 3 right, 4 left, 5 rest right, 1 left, 2 right, 3 left, 4 right, 5 rest left. 5 is an odd number of pedal strokes so a racer rests the right leg every 10 pedal strokes and the left leg gets to rest every other 10 pedal strokes. This coach (along with a coaching book of yours that I read in Tim's van in 2007 on the way to Philly also advises using a rhythmic resting technique) says that this amount of rest adds up.

Borysewicz gives some reasoning behind this according to bio-mechanics.The tension of muscles from pedaling causes blood to be restricted to muscles. Hence, relieving that tension for every 5th pedal stroke allows more blood flow to the resting leg.

Borysewicz also said that Jaques Anquetil and other professionals used this technique.

From left - 'Eddie B' and Greg Lemond (Photo Courtesy : Mitchell Clinton)

From my experiences, this pedaling can be tough to learn. I can only count some much to 5 before I start getting bored and need to listen to some music or think about other stuff. So this rhythm needs to become automatic. I have had success with this in the past. The best music that matches this rhythm is Take Five by the Dave Brubeck quartet (shown at the end of post) since the meter is in 5/4.

I have told another racing friend that I used this technique and they did not seem to quite understand that a constant rpm would be used. They asked other racers that have been around for awhile and did not seem to get any indication that this is a popular thing to do. Perhaps this does not seem practical because the 5th pedal strokes are basically like "dead zones" in a pedal stroke and all the rave is to eliminate those?

Note that I don't use this on any uphill where I would be going slower than about 15-20 miles per hour. I do follow this technique only at speeds faster than 20 mph on flats.


- DAVE KINA

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Dave Kina's musical recommendation to follow Eddie B's pedaling technique

MY RESPONSE :

DEAR DAVE,

Bicycle pedaling motion is an example of what is known in physics as periodic or simple harmonic motion (SHM).


If your preferred cadence is 97 revolutions per minute, you pedal 97/60 = 1.61 revolutions / sec.

Frequency (f) is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. Here, your frequency = 1.61 revolutions /sec.

Time period (T) is the duration (in seconds) of one cycle in a repeating event, so it is the reciprocal of frequency. T = 1/1.61 = 0.62 seconds / revolution.

Suppose you followed Eddie B's technique of pedaling by starting out with the left leg, then your left leg rests on every odd stroke divisible by 5 and your right leg rests on every even stroke divisible by 10 (if you started with right, just turn this rule around).

97 RPM (of a single crank) has 194 total pedal strokes (of both cranks). So after 194 pedal strokes and 1 min duration :

Total Time Of Rest To Left Leg = (1+[(185-5)/10]) x 0.62 secs = 11.78 seconds
Total Time Of Rest To Right Leg = (190/10) x 0.62 secs = 11.78 seconds

NOTE : We added a "1" to the equation for the left leg because the left leg rests once in the first 5 pedal strokes. From then on, it rests for every 10th stroke. 185 is the last multiple of 5 before 194 where a left leg rested. We subtract 5 from it because we already accounted for the first 5 pedal strokes by adding the "1" in the beginning.

You can find out the total time of rest for any nth pedal stroke by writing a small and neat computer program through some logic. Writing that logic is upto the programmer to make the best use of computer resources to yield an answer in the shortest time. That discussion is for another time.

Getting back to the problem, if you rode a 25 mile flat course (40K) at an average speed of 25 miles/hour, your time taken to complete it is 1 hour = 60 minutes. Total pedal strokes = 194 x 60 = 11640.

Total Time Of Rest To Left Leg = 11.78 seconds rest/minute x 60 minutes = 706.8 seconds/hr
Total Time Of Rest To Right Leg = 11.78 seconds rest/ minute x 60 minutes = 706.8 seconds/hr

All in all, you rest each leg 706.8 seconds/hr or 11.78 minutes/hr in the 40K TT. That's a total of 23.56 minutes/hr of leg rest!! If this is the case, Eddie B is a genius. But you'll have to perform this like a flawless robot to get it exactly right.

I doubt any human can achieve this ideally, since the body cannot calibrate alternating "rest" to this exactness for 1 hour. I don't believe the human muscle, the human brain and the various motor neurons in the nervous system can allow for this.

If one were to study your muscle activation patterns using Electromyography (EMG), would your resting leg on every 10th stroke be "really" resting? Will the muscle cells of the resting leg give out zero action potential readings during circular movement? Or is this 'resting leg' technique just a perception of rest? If the resting leg muscles are really being activated as shown by EMG, that would mean that calcium ions are interacting with the myofibrils of the muscle fiber to induce contraction via sliding filament mechanism. This process uses ATP which is the cellular energy currency in the human body. This would then mean that the muscle is not in a state of energy balance at all as it is producing net ATP to give this "oomph" to the muscle. Hence it is not technically at "rest". [See : Exercise Physiology : Basis Of Human Movement In Health and Disease by Stanley P. Brown, Wayne C. Miller and Jane M. Eason]

Something to think about....

Eddie also mentioned that Jacques Anquetil used this technique. Let's say I'm not ready to believe it for now. :)




ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

What Muscles Are You Using To Pedal?
Cycling Biomechanics : CONI Manual
Myth And Science In Cycling : Crank Length And Pedaling Technique (University of Utah)

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