Top Tips for better climbing?

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Comments

  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,467
    Sell one of your kidneys. This could save you nearly 200g of extraneous body weight and you can use the money to buy light stuff for your bike and save even more. :wink:
  • sampras38
    sampras38 Posts: 1,917
    I don't think I can add anything that hasn't already been said, you just need to climb more hills. I wasn't very good at all when I first got into it but now seem to prefer the hills to the flat. Just come back from a week in the Alps and got up the Joux Plane in 1 hour and the Colombiere in a fairly decent time. Couldn't have done that 2 years ago.
  • sampras38
    sampras38 Posts: 1,917
    sampras38 wrote:
    I don't think I can add anything that hasn't already been said, you just need to climb more hills. I wasn't very good at all when I first got into it but now seem to prefer the hills to the flat. Just come back from a week in the Alps and got up the Joux Plane in 1 hour and the Colombiere in a fairly decent time. Couldn't have done that 2 years ago. I can now get up all the Box Hill climbs with relative ease and love the climbing.
  • alex16zx
    alex16zx Posts: 153
    On the psychology side, as weird as it seems, I personify the hill in my mind and then launch a tirade at it all the way up the hill in my mind. 'I'm not going to let you beat me, you f******* b******, you're just a stupid little hill and I'm a big strong cyclist'. etc. Works for me! Can only imagine the looks I would get if I was saying it out loud. Then again breath is so precious when climbing I wouldn't waste it on talking :lol:
  • daveclow
    daveclow Posts: 164
    Nuggs wrote:
    I don't think there's any better exercise than practicing on hills.

    Find a big hill, ride up it. Roll back down and recover, ride up it again. Repeat until you can't see properly...


    hahahah +1
  • Woodchip
    Woodchip Posts: 205
    I tend to concentrate on my breathing. Deep breathe in, long breathe out, repeat until the top. For some reason that helps me fly up the hills (might also help having "just" come across from MTB - broken elbow means that the constant undulation of offroading has made me hang up my 26x2.5 tyres for a pair of 700x23 tyres). Means you can still see properly at the top as well. lol
    I have nothing more to say on the matter.
  • sampras38
    sampras38 Posts: 1,917
    I tend to stay seated most of the time and grip the top of the bars as lightly as possible, even on the really nasty gradients. I'll occasionally get out of the saddle to maybe get over a sharp bit but overall I'm usually seated.

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