climbing technique?

blakef111

hey guys, i've been riding a road bike on off for a year now and have been mountainbiking throughout the last 3 years, have you any techniques for climbing? i tend to stick it in a low gear (very rarely drop it down to the 2nd ring unless its very steep or i'm very tired) and i tend to be sitting down aswell, but at the top i always find myself panting and feeling really exhausted, i think of myself as quite fit, i have very small % body fat and do tend to ride a good few times a week, so i think it might be wrong technique anything i'm doing wrong? (that you can tell from here)
thanks
blake

Tonymufc

So you're climbing in the big ring then. I tend to use 39/25-23 and spin over most of the stuff I go over. I find it easier to remain seated, only standing up to give my muscles a rest. I suppose another factor would be the gradient of the hill you're climbing. For the really steep stuff I can't help but to get up and stand on the pedals. It might be just a case of horses for courses mate.

sods_law

Is usually better to drop gears and spin a little more. There is a line between spinning so fast that your heart rate races up, and pushing so hard that your bursting your quads. Find a happy medium and go for it. I tend to stand more on hills than sit. I use hills to rest my sit down muscles, and alternate between sitting and standing.

Other than that... hills hurt... full stop.

specializedone

If you sit down, turn your wrists down and drop your heels. This will slightly change the angle that you strike the pedal over the top and give you a bit more power. You should find your chest drops a bit towards the bars as well and improves traction.
I nearly always lock out my front suspension too to stop the front bobbing up and down too much.

I find this works well and rests some other muscles too.

If you stand up remember to click up a gear or two on the rear cassette otherwise you will spin too fast and lose speed which is the last thing you want!

will3

It's all in the mind

There are no hills.
FACT

freehub

will3 wrote:

It's all in the mind

There are no hills.
FACT

Just gravity and ascents?

I'd not think going up everything except really steep hills in the big ring is good, but then again what would you class as really steep? I switch from my 50 ring to the 34 when it gets around 8%

mask of sanity

The most difficult aspect of hill climbing is the mental side! If you believe you can do it then you'll find it so much easier! I've got this hill that I have a massive mental block for so struggle quite a lot on it, yet its a simple hill made difficult because I dread going up it.

I would say that for a short sharp hill you're better off out of the saddle and powering up it, yet a long gradual climb should be easier in the saddle at a high(ish) cadence (maybe 100), with maybe a few out of the saddle bursts to alternate muscles a bit. This is especially useful if you notice your pace starts to drop as well.

Using the bars should help as well, but make sure to have a very relaxed grip on them. When I'm using them I only put my finger tips on them so that I can control the front wheel, not gripping them at all!

Finally, seek them out rather then avoid them. The more you do them the more you can refine your technique and find various positions that work in given situations.

patchy

specializedone wrote:

I turn your wrists down

I'm being dense, and am not sure what you mean by this - could you explain a little more please

bristolpete

hi there,

I was posing the same questions a few weeks back so I decided to hit hills full on.

As others have said, high cadence, spin as much as you need to, breath slowly and controlled and sometimes if you are on a quiet hill look at your wheel not the hill as it may beat you. I have come on leaps and bounds by doing repeated hill sessions of which Carmicheal advises if the hill takes 4 minutes, rest for the same about and repeat. Also, feather the handle bars, dont grip them. As ever, it will never be as easy as we like, but I have started to beat the hills and am looking forward to my next ride with no worries on board....

But I did upgrade my rear cassette to 12/27 as I needed to.

fnegroni

I tend to use my calves more on the uphills than I do on the flats.
It's like an emphasized ankling movement.

Bhima

Know your limits so you can control your effort.

Go absolutely crazy and attack a hill so you intentionally go into the red zone - to the point where you need to stop for 5 minutes to recover. (Harder than you think, you have to ramp up your effort slowly over about a minute up to your max power and then hold that for a few seconds). If you do this (totally die on the climb on purpose) a few times, you get better at "knowing" exactly where this danger zone is. This means you get better at percieving how far away from it you are at any given moment, so you can properly pace yourself.

As you develop this extra sense of knowing your pain limits, climbing gets easier. TTs are similar. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but after doing loads of climbing work, you just seem to be able to visualize where your red-zone is and you get better at avoiding it by riding in "recovery mode" for a bit, even though you're still climbing.

The best climbers sometimes use this to their advantage in the big races - they'll go at an easy pace, then attack with a few accelerations just within their limits, which will push others into the red, whereas they'll be able to drop back to "normal" pace for recovery and keep going, leaving everyone, who has totally blown up, behind.

freehub

Taking 5mins to recover after a hill is not a good way to ride. Unless you are close to home and doing hilly intervals.

Bhima

freehub wrote:

Taking 5mins to recover after a hill is not a good way to ride. Unless you are close to home and doing hilly intervals.

Yeah, totally, I'm not saying you should do this every time, but it's good to push yourself right to the edge every now and again, so you know where "the edge" is, if you see what i'm getting at.

Maybe it's a load of bollox, but it's a method that works for me.

The whole mental side of climbing is really interesting though. If you get it wrong, it doesn't matter how strong you are, you can start going backwards. You see it all the time in the TdF.