One footed pedalling?!?!

portland_bill

Nobody told me about that!!

I went to a spinning class on Tuesday night that the guy who runs my LBS runs. After my bike fit the week before he was telling me about it and how it's good to try and get/keep your fitness up through winter since we live in a rural area and the roads around ours are bad enough during the summer evenings. So he told me he'd lend me a Turbo Trainer for it and I duely turned up on the night for an hour of spinning followed by an hour of Pilates.

We got started and then he starts shouting "Left foot out" and everyone unclips their left feet and are pedalling away happy... There's me struggling to keep my loose foot on the turbo trainer and failing miserably at full circles with my fixed foot. Obviously the down stroke was fine, but the up stroke was about as smooth as the sharp side of a bow saw! :oops:

It's not something I've even thought about before, let alone encountered and just wondered if anyone can give any advice on smoothing my circles out a bit?

Is it just down to pure practice or is there a technique?

I just watched a video of a guy on an article on here about rollers, riding rollers with no hands and just unclipping his feet like it's nothing, still with no hands! At my level, that looks mental!

Monty Dog

Try to keep in a lower gear and try not to let the cadence run away with you - work on the fluidity of your pedal stroke rather than pressing on the pedals - one-legged pedalling usually accentuates the 'dead-spot' in your stroke which the drill tries to minimise. BTW, recent studies show that 'pulling up' achieves little benefit - just best to work on getting the 'push' as smooth and as long as possible.

phy2sll2

Yeah, this is just practice and it doesn't take long to be able to do it smoothly. As per Monty's statement, I'm sceptical about the benefits.

I do it for a section of my commute anyway, just in case

cougie

I do that as a drill in my classes except I don't make people unclip their feet. You lose balance and you have the issue of a foot dangling around, with a pedal spinning into it.

I'd rather people stay in their clips - but just not USE the other leg. And then your position on the saddle wont be that different either.

jgsi

ALways thought it was a daft idea.. and should have stuck to my guns... why on earth do it.. unless you have the misfortune to be missing a leg.
Anyways just a few mins unclipped on a Spinerval warmup conjured up some knee discomfort the next day.
I can't fathom out any physiological training effect whatsoever.

cougie

I did find my left leg wasn't as developed as my right - I lead with that every time I set off. So after focussing on it - it feels stronger.

You can measure the difference if you have a power meter or watt bike.

Makes sense to me to work on your weaknesses but just stay clipped in and don't overdo the resistance.

pipipi

I certainly wouldn't want to take a foot out on a turbo trainer....

The spinning class that I go to most regularly does a piece with one foot. But that's on gym spin bikes that don't have back wheels or a top tube, and you can rest your non pedalling foot where the bottle cage would be on the Downtube. It was certainly wierd to begin with! I don't know if there's any proof for it being better for you, but personally I found useful to get smoother. I certainly feel more productive when both feet get clipped back in.

But apparently they do lots of wierd things at my class

portland_bill

Well to be fair I can see the benefit of doing it because it forces the fixed leg to work for more of the revolution, and if you can get both legs to do this surely your pedalling is going to become more efficient, only when both feet are clipped in I guess they're not likely to do this when they don't have to because the other foot is helping.

I don't know. I was just moaning because it was difficult and I felt like I was going to kick the bick over I was so un-smooth with my pedalling.

phy2sll2

If you're on the trainer, just put your foot on the trainer itself (i.e. where the support bar meets your wheel).

Once you're confident doing that, you can do the same on the road just folding your leg behind you.

pipipi

on the road! Blimey, there's no way I try that.

I don't mind trying some stuff where's it safe to fall off. And in the gym the bikes are very stable.

phy2sll2

If you can set off pedalling with one foot, surely you can ride with one foot?

pipipi

phy2sll2 wrote:

If you can set off pedalling with one foot, surely you can ride with one foot?

Okay fair point, but I wouldn't want to try that for 1 minute, and then swap sides. If you have a really quiet road as well, then maybe that's safer for you, but for me I wouldn't be/feel safe doing that.

It doesn't even sound safe doing that on a turbo trainer to me!

carbon337

Portland Bill - hello.

I was there too Breeze bikes - im Carl on the Bianchi (white red and black)

If you want i can speak to you next tuesday about your technique before we start.