cadence and power

Me again! Another rainy, cloudy, dull day. I've got a Tim's at my side, laptop in it's place (that would be my lap) and another topic I wanted to put to the screen and that would be the relationship between cadence and power.

I've already talked about this once, so rather than rehash it all, I suggest you go here http://imfit-youniquecycles.blogspot.com/2009/09/importance-of-cadence.html and read the primer before carrying on with the addendum...


All done? Excellent.

Hopefully you walked away from that little read with the understanding that in this coaches view, fast cadence good, slow cadence bad!

I still believe that when it comes to long distance events and race day, but today I want to talk about when slow cadence is good.

I'll presume that we agree that a slow cadence requires more force to be applied to the pedals in order to create a given wattage. While the depletion of muscle glycogen that occurs during this high force application is bad for race day, it can be highly useful when done in small doses during training in order to increase the amount of force your legs are capable of creating.

At some point in any well structured training plan there comes a time when you need to grind it out for short periods or intervals at a maximal force application in order to stimulate the muscles to grow and sustain higher force outputs over longer periods of time. Hill repeats, flat road power sprints, slightly longer time trial type intervals all allow the body to adapt and get stronger. The net result is an increase in the amount of force you can apply to the pedals at a given cadence at no additional cost to heart rate or metabolic efficiency.
If you were putting out 200w at 90rpm, you'll remember that equalled 2.22Nm. If you can increase your sustainable force application by 15% to 2.55Nm that will equal an increase in power to 230w at the same cadence.

So, like the old adage that sometimes you need to walk before you run. Sometimes you need to pedal slow before you can pedal fast.