So every week I try to do a least one day of each  type  of  training endurance, intervals, sprints, efficiency/skills training etc.  Most rides are endurance or recovery rides and I’ll have my intensity day either be a race, or a strength session on or off the bike. My favorite is racing or hard group ride for my high intensity day, I get a bunch of hard intervals of various lengths in and some sprints and jumps. The powerfile for races is always very spiky and interval like, something hard to replicate in training, that’s why racing is important training I think. Nothing motivates me more to push myself to a new level of intensity then a good old fashion drag race on the bike!

So yesterday my goal was to do a combined efficiency/endurance day and try spinning at 100rpm+ for my 44 mile 2 hr ride I’ve been doing a lot lately. I wasn’t sure if I could do it esp. since there are a few hill climbs on the way and even in my smallest gear at 100RPM I’m butting out almost 500watts. I usually end up doing 400w something on these couple climbs that take about 7 minutes and my RPM will drop a bit down to 90 something rpm.  So I get to the halfway point in my ride to refill my water bottles and I see that my average speed is almost 21mph average! Normally I do 18-19MPH average even when I’m trying to hammer the whole way. Not only was my average speed higher then ever, it felt easy to do because I wasn’t going anarobic at any point expect maybe for a couple minutes on the one big hill climb.  Only downside was that my butt was noticeably more chaffed, when you pedal that fast for that long you need some seriously good shorts, seat and cham lube or something ahaha.

What I noticed is that by spinning this fast my legs had more momentum, my legs never felt like they where getting bogged down and I was starting to smash. I notice too that my pedal form is better when I spin at high cadence, and when the effort becomes more muscular then cardiovascular I start pedaling in an inefficient mashing style that ignores the hip flexors and lifting and kicking over the top leg muscles. I also noticed that at first it can feel wierd pedaling fater then normal but after a while my legs get use to it and adjust and like it better. The biggest thing I noticed is that I would average a bit slower speed on the flats as I spin and my power would be a little low, normally I would put it in a harder gear and get the speed and power up and the cadence down. But this time I stuck with the 100RPM goal, interestingly every time I’d hit a hill I had a lot more snap and power in my legs and I would spin over it in a fairly big hill and keep my momentum up where before I’d try smashing up it to power over it and my legs would be fried after doing it and I would have to slow way down and let my legs recover.
So I learned that I should  “Rest and recovery and spin on the easy parts, and put in 120% effort on the slow hard parts the hills to keep your speed up” You have the most to gain by doing really well on the inclines. and relaxing a bit more on the flats.

So here is a list of benefits I’ve noticed first hand from riding at higher RPMs

1. Reserve leg strength and power for hills and sprints where you need it most to power over them and keep momentum up.
2. Higher RPM makes it easier to have all of your leg muscle groups join in the circular process of pedaling, you’re more efficient at high rpm
3. It’s easier and surprising at how much more power you can put out spinning faster, or how a high wattage can feel much easier at high RPMs
4. The cardio system seems to have more capacity and ability to endure then leg muscles, shifting as much of the burden as possible away from the muscular system can be very helpful for some cyclist I believe.
5. Spinning helps you use the lifting muscles in your legs more to help on the upstroke and kick across the top.
6. Spinning at a higher RPM helps you pedal easier when you’re going on flats or downhill and recovery, and lets you recover for the next jump or hill climb when you need that leg strength most. Even though it feels very easy and you could pedal harder gears, don’t because it shifts more strain to the leg muscles and takes away their snap for the next hill that is usually just around the corner.  And when that hill or jump comes up you’ll be able to spin a big gear and have the snap you need.
   Even though it’s temping to pedal harder or spin a bigger gear on the flats, it’s best to just spin and let your body rest for a couple minutes before the next roller or hill climb.
7. Spinning at easy and moderate sections of the rides gets your leg motor units use to firing in a certain sequence that’s more powerful, I notice when I spin on a ride that when I need to jump I tend to do it at faster RPM then usual and it’s easier to do. If I was riding on the flats or downhill sections of the ride in a bigger gear lower RPM, my leg muscles/nerves seem to get use to that pattern and changing RPM dramatically to climb or sprint feels very awkward.  So another benefit of spinning is that your legs are use to the timing the firing pattern and you can spin a moderate gear with lots of power much easier then if you would have been mashing previously.  I usually feel a bit weird at first when I spin at 100RPM or higher, once I warm up after 30 minutes or so my legs start to feel a lot smoother and settle into the cadence.
8. I also notice that I’m less tired when I do a ride at higher RPM, if I try to hammer on rides at lower RPM I feel wasted at the end of ride from using the muscles more then the heart and lungs.
9. I notice that higher RPMs make the same wattage feel easier, less anaerobic, less intense and riding fast more enjoyable.
10. I notice too that I loose more body fat riding more aerobically at higher RPMs
11. Since I’m not as tired esp. my legs which often are the thing that determine how much rest I need, I can ride more often and require less rest days which means faster improvement faster weight loss and more miles in the bank.
12. Spinning helps you use more of your legs muscle groups and distribute the load more so they’re less fatigued.
13. Spinning at higher RPM I believe teaches you to pedal more efficiently.
14. Spinning makes you ride more efficient and change gears more often, a really good habit for when you hit the hills. If you’re mashing in general, then when you hit the hills you’re probably beyond smashing and grinding slowly away at 50-70RPM which is less then ideal cadence even for mashers I think.
15. There’s a certain type of momentum you carry up a hill when you spin up and you’re “on top” of the gear vs. fighting to turn over the pedals. I don’t know how to explain this, but going up a hill at 95 or 100RPM vs. a harder gear at my typical 70 something RPM grind, feels like you’re going faster up the hill and able to have less resistance on the up stroke and kick across the top of the pedal stroke, as soon as you slow down everything starts to feel much less efficient. So I think it’s probably critical to keep RPMs up on hills and stay in your power band and optimal muscle firing pattern etc.
16. Spinning also helps you train  your aerobic system more as you can stress and target it more efficiently. If you mash too much and let the effort be mostly muscular your legs may give out before your heart and lungs.
17. I have a theory too nothing I can prove easily, but I believe that when you overuse a muscle or group of muscles in your body your heart rate and pattern spike and make you feel very winded and light headed, not because of the stress on the cardio system but because a hard muscular effort triggers body to be flooded with the byproducts of anarobic energy production and you feel really wasted. For example try doing a bunch of pull ups or squats, you’ll be winded and light headed by the time you max out but in a different way then if you where to run a mile at your fastest pace. I think the body bonks when you overload the muscular system, it makes the cardio system to get overwhelmed and over react or something. So if you are pushing your cardio system cycling up a hard hill and then let your RPMs fall to 70RPM and your mashing and and your legs are getting worked really hard then I think it triggers something that quickly puts you in the read zone. If you would simply just spin an easier gear, yes you might breath harder and your heart might feel like it’s working really hard, but surprsingly you can keep pushing the legs don’t bonk out and your heart rate is high but you don’t get that nasty totally wasted feeling and light headed over-reaction like you feel when do a hard muscular effort in the gym. To trigger that effect cycling means slowling way way down to recover. I wish I could explain this better and in scientific terms, but if you lift weights you know the incredablly winded feeling I’m talking about that seems more like an adreal over reaction of the heart and lungs then the real cardio load you’re going through.

    I think cycling hard should feel like running hard, not like doing squats or something, you’ll have that blown up weight lifting cardio reaction before you know it if you try smashing up a hill vs. spinning.

A final word on cadence and riding at a higher RPM

For all the great things I mentioned above, everyone is built different and some people might have weaker legs but better cardio system where a higher cadence works well for them. Where someone else might be built in a way that they can do more by riding a harder gear at a slower rpm to produce the same power, spinning doesn’t work for them, probably because they’re more fast twitch muscle fiber and they need to feel a certain amount of tension in their legs for all the motor units to be trigger to contract efficiently. But it takes months to get efficient at high rpms, at first it will feel very wrong, and your heart rate will be through the roof but over time your heart rate will drop sometimes by 20bpm at the same wattage I’ve read and then spinning feels much more doable. So give spinning a try you may find it really works for you.