Pedaling Power

I keep banging on about how changing the way you pedal can improve performance. 

This is because it's worked so well for me, I just regret not doing something earlier and would encourage others to give it a go. The more so since there is no downside. To the contrary I have regained form amazingly quickly after a big break in training and I don't think its coincidence that since restarting a key focus has been pedaling differently.

It's not that I haven't worked on pedaling before, way back my first training guide was Joe Friel's "Bible" and that includes what he calls "speed skills" in his program and I have been doing these in some form or other most always. The problem was that it's difficult to know exactly if you are pedaling right or wrong. (This btw is also an issue with studies into pedaling.)

Using a Wattbike changed that. It has a display that gives a real time view on how you are pedaling (see here for a description).  It also helps demonstrate the changes I have made. 

Three pictures tell the story. First is the "before" polar view below. Its from an hour long 2x20 under/over session when I was in lifetime best peak form.

"Before pedal stroke"

It shows a couple of things:

• I  actually had 2 pedal actions. At low its intensity pretty circular. However when the intensity increases the pedal stroke changes into something quite different becoming distorted and more elliptical. Also right and left legs work differently.
• There are wide fluctuations in power each stroke, especially right leg which peaks near 600W each revolution (to generate at most 320W)

Despite this I was achieving good results with this action. The actual power delivered to the wheel was nice and steady. I could also keep it going high enough and long enough to get some impressive results both in terms of power profile and events. 


I took a couple of years off cycling. When I started again in June the crap weather in the UK meant I did lots of training on a Wattbike so I decided to take the opportunity to see if changing how I pedaled had any effect. It did.

Second picture shows polar view of my action now.(90 minute session including steady power hour, average and peak power same/greater than first picture)

It's pretty clearly different from the first picture.

• First thing to note is this is now my habitual action. It took a while to adapt and while I was doing that I would always have the polar display running. Now however I don't use it much and just focus on maintaining target intensity. 
• There is just one action now, all the same "peanut" shape for all intensities.
• The shape is much smoother with highs and lows during each stroke much reduced. Actual output power during this session was higher than the first picture but the peak power per stroke is much less.
• Left and right are more balanced, if anything now the left leg is contributing more to overall power (something to check out...)    

All this is well and good but what the picture doesn't show is what really matters.

First off, my riding feels completely different. It's hard to put into words but it feels much smoother, more "connected" and "centred" like much more of my body is involved in pedaling. I remember a very good rider describing how he managed to do a sub 20 10TT pre aero and he talked about just focusing on generating all his power from his stomach. I never understood that before but it make sense now. Put simply riding hard feels easier and more fun.

Most important of all though is actual power generated and this has been the most surprising thing. Since picking up from a zero fitness base I have done around 100 hours of training over a couple of months. I never expected in this time to get close to the power I could put out at peak form. So I was surprised to find that over the last couple of weeks  I was posting some good figures. 

I've been training with a power meter since 2007 and over the years have got pretty used to associating power on the computer with how hard it feels to ride. When I started again ofc I was finding this was way off, it felt really tough to generate 20 mins of power I used to comfortably ride all day. 

More recently though things have been going the other way. When glancing down to check power I'm getting surprises and see myself putting out 20W-40W more than I thought I was doing. 

Most of the sessions were on the Wattbike so at first I thought it was a problem with the power reading. However also been doing rides on 2 different Powertaps and both give the same result.  

Best example of how good I feel  was the session below (it's the same as the polar view above). Most everyone who does a lot of training experiences a few "breakthrough" workouts when they wildly exceed their expectations and have to recalibrate their training zones.  This was one of them for me. In the past I have rarely maintained 300W over a full hour and when I did it was hard work.  

This workout I averaged 300W for a full hour and it felt great.  Power was steady throughout, nice negative split and plenty left at the end. HR pretty much flat til I ramped things up for fun as the end came in sight. 

It wasn't exactly an easy workout, just very controlled. It felt exactly the same in terms of intensity  as the way I tackle long mountain climbs. But the power is as least 20W up. 

What's more I didn't peak for this session. To the contrary I was pretty tired, the day before I had spent 6 hours heavy lifting helping my daughter move flat. Prior to that I had done 3 days consecutive training, last being a knackering VO2. Also over the last few weeks I have been concentrating on shedding flab, losing 1-2 pounds per week.

The session while a great example is not exceptional.  I'm now riding pretty much at lifetime best form. This has come as a complete surprise and the only distinguishing feature I can put it down to is my change the way I pedal. 

This seems like a bit of a claim, time will tell once I start doing some peaking for an event. The real acid test will be next time I go mountaineering, when I will set 300W+ as target power. 

Still while slightly incredible it does make a bit of sense. As mentioned my pedal action has changed now, in fact its actually quite hard to go back and try to replicate the pattern in the first picture. In order to do this I have to push hard with my quads, that pretty much dominates the whole of the stroke. It would seem sensible that the way I pedal now will be better because it uses more muscles to generate power. No doubt the quads still do a lot of work but they don't have to push to quite the extremes which reduces stress and consequent fatigue.