Am I wrong here?

downfader

I know theres a few good hill climbers on here so I hope you dont mind me asking. I watched a Livestrong vid on youtube today and a comment someone had written completely threw me. I was sure that when scaling hills out of the saddle that it was more efficient to steady the bike.

When I ride uphill I dont rock or wobble, yet I seem to quite casually overtake others or maintain my speed. :? Heres the vid in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgTFENouM7w

Anyone got any good links to the Liqugas guy from last years TDF? I dont remember him wobbling and he was King of the Mountains. :?

freehub

I'd say I'm an okish hill climber and usually in the top 3 out of a group to get to the top, sometimes first quite abit of the time, and I find different ways work for different times.

Depending on how steep I find I can get up better when off the saddle. I've never really thought about if the bike should be steady or not, does not really make much difference for me though.

When I go up a drag like the cat and fiddle, it'd be 50/19 gear or something, out of the saddle, wiggling the bike side to side, low RPM for me.

takethehighroad

For me it depends how steep the climb is as to how steady the bike is when out the saddle.

I mean if you look at Contador, when he attacks out of the saddle his bike is rocking all over the place, but it's pretty effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibVr481vCIk&feature=fvst

In this link at the top of Verbier in last year's Tour you can see it clearly. This is a good vid for showing attacking climbing in general

downfader

TakeTheHighRoad wrote:

For me it depends how steep the climb is as to how steady the bike is when out the saddle.

I mean if you look at Contador, when he attacks out of the saddle his bike is rocking all over the place, but it's pretty effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibVr481vCIk&feature=fvst

In this link at the top of Verbier in last year's Tour you can see it clearly. This is a good vid for showing attacking climbing in general

Cheers guys. So Contador is a wiggler.

redvee

I had a 3 mile climb to ascend today, not majorly step but I dropped to the inner ring at the start at shifted to a suitable sprocket on the rear and just road up the hill sat down at a relatively high cadence 60-70rpm whilst pulling somebody up the hill with me who was shifting up n down all the time. I shifted 4 times overall.