To waggle or not to waggle?

[al78]

When hillclimbing, I mean, and when climbing a big ol' bad boy of a hill.

Do you prefer to get up out of the saddle and do the whole routine of standing on the pedals with the bike waggling from side to side, or do you stay sitting down, change down a few gears and just power through with your thighs?

Personally, I stay sat down and try to keep a good cadence going, without doing any waggling. I've never been sure which is the most efficient way to hillclimb though! I feel that it should be the non-waggling way because to my mind waggling just expends energy in a useless fashion.

I prefer to stay seated and spin up the hill, and I have made sure that I have the appropriate gearing on my bikes to enable me to do this on all the hills I encounter on a daily basis.

Standing on the pedals is less energy efficient than sitting and spinning in an appropriate gear, and is more stressful both to the bike and your joints.

http://sheldonbrown.com/standing.html

 

[Sambu]

If it's so bad that I have to get out of the saddle, I just dismount. I can manage most hills without even resorting to my granny ring though, so maybe I'm just lazy

that is lazy!

 

[Rebel Ian]

Standing on the pedals is less energy efficient than sitting and spinning in an appropriate gear, and is more stressful both to the bike and your joints.

Yes but I find I use different muscles sitting versus standing hence alternating between the two.

 

[asterix]

Agreed.

There's no doubt in my mind that getting out of the saddle is a perfectly good strategy in certain circumstances. Ditto getting off and walking! I have never managed to cycle up Rosedale Chimney Bank (partly because I have always done about 60 hilly miles before I get to it. Traditionally I buy an ice cream in Rosedale and then enjoy it as walk up the bank. The trick is to finish it before getting to the really tough bit where both hands are needed to push the bike up).

 

[GrasB]

I prefer to stay seated and spin up the hill, and I have made sure that I have the appropriate gearing on my bikes to enable me to do this on all the hills I encounter on a daily basis.

Standing on the pedals is less energy efficient than sitting and spinning in an appropriate gear, and is more stressful both to the bike and your joints.

http://sheldonbrown.com/standing.html

This is one area where Sheldon loses the plot in a serious way!

Unless you're an extremely disciplined rider you will put more power in when climbing & you'll start to drift into anaerobic power production, once you've gone acidic it's only a matter of time before any bio-mechanial efficiency is completely wiped out by bio-chemical inefficiency. So you either slow down/stop or change the muscle groups producing the power to groups which aren't lactating & thus your climbing style. Generally this means if you're in the saddle standing up or if you're standing up dropping into the saddle, you can get more technical than this & break down the styles further but those are the 2 main styles.

Transferring this to the real world, when I was last in Italy climbing, so solo rides, if I just stayed in the saddle my HR would slowly rise & rise up to about 195bpm before I'd start to go into anaerobic inefficiency & need to slow down. For the same, or slightly higher, output if I alternated between sitting & standing I could keep my HR down to about 170-180bpm, the result was I could climb faster for longer. This applies not only when pushing hard but also on a relaxed ride.

To give you an idea how slowly you'd be going if you keep a consistent effort on a hill... say you're riding a long at a nice sedate 13mph on a city or trekking bike & you continue at that effort level as you ride up a 2.5% gradient you'll be doing about 7mph. As it gets steeper & gets to 5% you'll be doing about 4.5mph. With a 700x35c tyre 11-28 cassette you'll be looking at a cadence in the low 50rpm range for a 30/39/50 triple, if you go for a trekking 24/36/46 you'll be looking at 65rpm. Most of back roads over the rollers around cambridge have gradients in the 5% area & I wouldn't call this area exactly lumpy.

 

[Sambu]

that's what we call a knowledge bomb!

 

[coffeejo]

 

[downfader]

Some stuff that made my head hurt..!

Wow

 

[asterix]

Well this is my interpretation:

This is one area where Sheldon loses the plot in a serious way!

Fine.

Unless you're an extremely disciplined rider you will put more power in when climbing & you'll start to drift into anaerobic power production, once you've gone acidic it's only a matter of time before any bio-mechanial efficiency is completely wiped out by bio-chemical inefficiency. So you either slow down/stop or change the muscle groups producing the power to groups which aren't lactating & thus your climbing style. Generally this means if you're in the saddle standing up or if you're standing up dropping into the saddle, you can get more technical than this & break down the styles further but those are the 2 main styles.

When you get knackered sitting down try standing up for a bit and vice versa.. Otherwise just take a break.


Transferring this to the real world, when I was last in Italy climbing, so solo rides, if I just stayed in the saddle my HR would slowly rise & rise up to about 195bpm before I'd start to go into anaerobic inefficiency & need to slow down. For the same, or slightly higher, output if I alternated between sitting & standing I could keep my HR down to about 170-180bpm, the result was I could climb faster for longer. This applies not only when pushing hard but also on a relaxed ride.

As para above but with some empirical data.

To give you an idea how slowly you'd be going if you keep a consistent effort on a hill... say you're riding a long at a nice sedate 13mph on a city or trekking bike & you continue at that effort level as you ride up a 2.5% gradient you'll be doing about 7mph. As it gets steeper & gets to 5% you'll be doing about 4.5mph. With a 700x35c tyre 11-28 cassette you'll be looking at a cadence in the low 50rpm range for a 30/39/50 triple, if you go for a trekking 24/36/46 you'll be looking at 65rpm. Most of back roads over the rollers around cambridge have gradients in the 5% area & I wouldn't call this area exactly lumpy.

You need more effort to go up hill or you'll slow down. If you change down, you'll need to pedal faster to go as fast. Cambridgeshire really is pretty flat.

I think I agree..

 

[biking_fox]

On my current bike I don't, but I did used to on my more sporty road bike. I don't think I've changed much in the last year or two,, so I'm sure bike geometry has something to do with it. This biekis lower geared so I do have more spin options than I did on the sporty one.

 

[GrasB]

Well this is my interpretation

Which is a nice non-technical summery except for:

You need more effort to go up hill or you'll slow down. If you change down, you'll need to pedal faster to go as fast.

I was more saying if you don't put more effort in you quickly find that you're at very low cadences, even on mild inclines with lowish gearing. With the same trekking gearing as before you're looking at under 30rpm for a 10% gradient, even on an 22/36 you're looking at sub 50rpm cadence.

 

[Tynan]

I don;t see enough hills worth toss to ever practice riding out of the saddle, I tried it once going up Ditchling and nearly fell off at the change of resistance from the pedals, I've plodded up some fairly unpleasant hills in the saddle using a double but I hate it, I always want to give out of the saddle a good go

 

[fimm]

I "honk" quite often, but then I'm on a road bike with a standard chainset so I don't have very low gears. I read a suggestion somewhere that a really exaggerated side-to-side motion makes you look bigger and might discourage stupid overtakes, so I use that as a tactic sometimes. Otherwise I think you should keep yourself and the bike as still as possible (apart from the forward motion of course!) whether in or out of the saddle.

Edited to add: I also usually get out of the saddle to pull away from traffic lights on the Brompton. I think that is just habit!

 

[david1701]

so how do you waggle with a front sus then, I tried this on the way home (alternating honking and spinning) and found that all I did was push up and down the sus, I tried leaning forward to stop it bouncing up but that made everything shockingly unstable.

Should I leave honking to the road bike then?

 

[GrasB]

so how do you waggle with a front sus then, I tried this on the way home (alternating honking and spinning) and found that all I did was push up and down the sus, I tried leaning forward to stop it bouncing up but that made everything shockingly unstable.

Should I leave honking to the road bike then?

There's a bit of a technique to honking on a sus MTB be it HT or XC. I find the best way is to try & keep the pedal in the same place & roll the bike into my foot if that makes sense.