How to Climb Hills on a Bike

Beating Yourself: How to climb and make PRs

• Why do you need to climb faster?
  • More time is won or lost on a climb than anywhere else
  • Small changes have a big effect
    • 5% faster in a 1 min sprint == 3 seconds
    • 5% faster in a 20 min climb == 1 minute
  • You’re (probably) moving slow while climbing, so a smaller percentage of your power is going to fighting air resistance. A given increment in power has a greater effect on your speed at 5mph than at 25mph.
• At a very simplistic level, climbing is all about power to weight ratio. Lose weight or gain power and you’ll be a faster climber. End of story.
  • But that leaves out a lot of subtlety
  • Losing weight is tedious and unpleasant, and you risk developing an eating disorder (a real and serious problem for all cyclists).
  • Gaining power is difficult and slow (at least once you’re past novice level).
  • That said, if you ride consistently and with purpose you’ll gain some power and probably lose some weight, so don’t slack off.
  • OK, but how do I get faster up hills now?
• Climbing is about efficiency – make better use of what you’ve already got.
  • Don’t waste power on monkey-motion
    • If you’re seated, your upper body should be mostly still.
    • When standing your upper body should stay roughly the same distance above the seat & bars.
    • The bike should go in a nice steady straight line
    • Don’t bounce in the saddle, move your body up and down, weave back and forth, etc.
    • Keep your upper body loose, don’t tense up. Tense muscles waste energy.
  • Concentrate on your pedal stroke and body position
    • Keep a smooth round stroke, don’t “pedal squares”
    • Heels back, shoulders down, tailbone to the rear, stomach in, back straight
    • Keep your chest open so you can breathe
    • If you get tired, shift to an easier gear; don’t let your form go to pieces
    • If you’re concentrating on your form you’re not concentrating on the suffering
  • Use your muscles correctly
    • Use your glutes as the primary motor to pull the thighs down
    • Hamstrings to pull the heels back at the bottom of the stroke
• Avoid injury
  • Forces are higher when climbing so there’s more potential for injury. Don’t get sloppy.
  • Overuse injuries build up slowly
    • Often with only minor symptoms that are easy to shrug off
    • You reach a tipping point, after which your body is angry at you
    • Once it gets to that point it may take weeks or months to recover
  • Get a professional fitting if you’ve never had one or haven’t had one in several years
    • You may be putting unnecessary stress on your joints & tendons
• Climbing specific training
  • Improve your core strength
    • Many cyclists are very weak here and can make serious gains quickly
    • Especially important for out of the saddle climbing
    • Pushups, planks, crawling, loaded carry, etc.
    • This GCN video is excellent.
  • Stability & bodyweight exercises for the lower body
    • You need to strengthen all the little muscles that keep the big muscles lined up
    • This is less important than doing core, since cycling already works the lower body
    • Single leg squats, lunges, butt raises, deadlifts (but only if you learn proper form!)
    • It’s worth spending some time with a personal trainer to learn proper form.
• Your power meter is probably holding you back
  • “Oh no, I’m going over my FTP, I better dial back” is a great strategy for not getting a PR.
  • If you’re going for a PR or a hilltop finish don’t look at your power, just go hard.
• The internal battle with yourself
  • Learn to go as hard as you can for as long as you can.
    • Then go harder
  • Go so hard that you have to get off the bike and lay down at the top
  • If you’re not snotting and crying by the end of the climb you’re not going hard enough
  • “Threshold” doesn’t mean “the threshold of discomfort”, it means “I regret coming on this ride. I regret buying this bike. Hell, I’m even starting to regret being born.”
  • Sprint the end of every climb. Even if it’s lame or barely a sprint.
    • Empty the tank.
    • If you had a lot left you didn’t go hard enough.
  • But maybe don’t go so hard that you ride off a cliff or into an oncoming car
• Sitting vs Standing
  • You get more power standing
  • But sitting is more efficient (10% more)
  • Stay in the saddle as much as you can
  • Stand up periodically
    • Works different muscles
    • Allows partial recovery of some muscles
  • Sitting
    • If your butt is on the saddle it should be firmly on the saddle
      • Don’t keep any weight on your feet
      • Pull your butt down on the upstroke
      • Try riding with your butt 1/4" above the seat and you’ll see.
      • This applies to all riding, not just hills
    • Hands on bar tops
    • Pull back on the bars
    • Sit up so you can breathe better
      • Unless your “air speed” is more than 15 mph
    • Sit towards the back of the saddle
    • Most riders prefer to climb at a somewhat lower cadence than they ride on the flat, but you’ll want to experiment.
      • 80 rpm is a good starting point, but anywhere between 55 and 105 might be right for you
      • Slowly grinding a big gear doesn’t get you more power, it just wrecks your knees
  • Standing
    • The point of standing is to recruit your core and arm muscles, not to just throw your weight on the pedals.
    • Hands on the hoods
    • Move the bike side-to-side
      • Bars go left when the right foot goes down
      • A few inches either direction, nothing dramatic
    • Keep you butt the same distance from the ground the whole time
      • Yeah, you can get more force on the pedals if you move your whole body up & down
      • But you’re basically jumping up and down in place, which is burning power on nothing.
    • Shift 1-2 cogs smaller right before you stand
      • This will keep you at about the same speed
      • Cadence will generally be lower when standing
      • Give an extra shove on the pedals just before you stand so the rider behind doesn’t run into your rear wheel
• Dealing with discomfort
  • Fuel and water
    • Don’t get dehydrated
    • You may need to eat on a really long climb
    • Better to eat a little something before the climb
    • Having some kind of calorie-water in your bottle is good because it’s easier to get into your stomach when you’re redlined
  • Heat and sweat
    • Prepare before the climb
    • Take off your glasses
    • Unzip / undress before the climb starts
    • In winter, don’t let your clothes get sweat soaked
      • You’ll freeze on the descent
      • Better to be a bit cold at the start of the climb
  • What to do if you run out of steam
    • Zig-zag across the road. Aka “paperboying”
      • Makes the hill “less steep”, allows you to spin
      • Make sure you don’t block other riders or get pasted by a car
    • Stand up and pedal as slow as possible
      • Actually throw your weight onto the pedals
      • Pause half a second after every pedal stroke
      • I call this “walking” (with big air quotes)

Beating Other Riders: Strategy & tactics

• “You don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than your friend.”
  • Sometimes you don’t want or need to get up as fast as possible, you just want to be faster than your competitors.
  • Or you need to conserve energy for later.
  • Most of this is basic race strategy, which other people are far more qualified to speak to.
• The psychological battle with competitors
  • There are two broad strategies for psyching people out.
  • Hide your pain
    • Smile & chat. Make it look easy, make them feel hopeless.
    • This is a lot easier to do when you’re passing someone as opposed to riding next to them for a long time.
    • You’re hoping they’ll be too dispirited to try and chase you down.
  • Sandbagging
    • Hold back, let them catch you, complain about the suffering
    • If they’re not obviously much stronger slow down a bit, let them pull slightly ahead.
    • Start hammering when you get close enough to the top that you’re sure you can hold the pace.
• Know thyself
  • You can’t have a good strategy if you don’t know what you’re actually capable of.
  • You’ll want to get a feeling for how your body handles climbing.
    • How fast can you recover after a climb?
    • What’s kinds of hills are you good at? What’s your kills you?
      • Long & steady
      • Short & punchy
      • Stairsteps
      • Rollers
    • What grades suit you and which are relatively harder for you than for other riders?
      • Some people are great at shallow climbs, some excel when it gets steep.
      • Below 5% I’m OK, from 5% to 10% I’m great, 10%-15% I suffer, >15% I start passing people again.
  • Are you a fast & confident descender?
    • If not you you need to climb well to avoid getting dropped
      • But you should work on your descending skills anyways, so that you’re capable of getting down the hill safely despite being cross-eyed from going hard on the climb.
    • If so you can potentially make a breakaway stick by cresting early
    • Remember that it’s hard to catch a bigger rider on a straight-ish descent because wind resistance favors them.
  • Based on the above you can choose where to conserve and where to attack.

More resources

• http://www.cptips.com/climb.htm
• http://www.howtobefit.com/climbing-tactics.htm