Why do I need cadence

scott5

I'm interested in getting an understanding of why an average would need a ca dense senor. How important is it really to use such an item?

ai_1

You don't need one. You may or may not find it useful but it's certainly not essential. Having said that, I use one and miss it if it's not there. In general I think it's probably more useful for a beginner than an experienced cyclist. Many beginners ride with an excessively low cadence. And I'm not trying to start a debate over what's the best cadence range, most people will I think acknowledge that beginners often grind huge gears because they feel a smaller gear is slower rather than spinning their legs faster. Over time they'll sort this out anyway but a cadence sensor is a good way to speed up the process by referring to it having an idea of what's a reasonable range of sensible cadences, e.g. 75-110 not 40-60.

If you've been riding a while and don't feel the need for one, I wouldn't bother looking for a reason to buy one.

DeVlaeminck

Never had one other than on a turbo or a wattbike in the gym and never felt the need for one. Your cadence isn't of great importance and if you ride with others you'll soon notice if you are spinning radically faster or slower than the norm.

Alex_Simmons/RST

scott5 wrote:

I'm interested in getting an understanding of why an average would need a ca dense senor. How important is it really to use such an item?

It's as equally unimportant as having a crank torque meter.

markhewitt1978

You can get a good idea by counting your revolutions for 15 seconds. As said it's good to train yourself into getting a good cadence on the bike as it's easy for even experienced cyclists to think that pushing a harder gear at a lower RPM is going to be faster because it feels harder.

CRAIGO5000

It's completely necessary imo - especially if you've never had one. Once you've had one and reaped it's rewards, then you're golden.

They cost barely nothing but offer you so much. I suppose it's akin to saying you don't "need" your handlebars as you can ride with no hands. I can ride better with handlebars though.

markhewitt1978

CRAIGO5000 wrote:

It's completely necessary imo - especially if you've never had one. Once you've had one and reaped it's rewards, then you're golden.

They cost barely nothing but offer you so much. I suppose it's akin to saying you don't "need" your handlebars as you can ride with no hands. I can ride better with handlebars though.

I would say if you already have a bike computer which can have a cadence sensor added then something like a Wahoo RPM or Garmin cadence sensor is a common sense add on, as is a heart rate monitor IMO. But when you start needing the computer as part of the overall cost too it gets expensive.

dennisn

CRAIGO5000 wrote:

It's completely necessary imo - especially if you've never had one. Once you've had one and reaped it's rewards, then you're golden.

I've got a cadence sensor. Could you please expound upon all the rewards I'm supposed to be reaping. I want to be "golden".

CRAIGO5000

You've already got one so you'll already have an understanding of basic pedaling efficiency.

Even using your cadence sensor data along with your speed and perceived effort will begin to point a rider in the correct direction of pedaling efficiency. I've a friend who I ride with and he simply can't understand that grinding away for 99% of a ride isn't better. Define better I say? More powerful he'd say! He's probably correct, but he's also never improved on his speed work and is also completely shagged after every ride with sore legs. I often just shout "CADENCE" at him as he grinds away at 60rpm on the flat.

Anyway, Dennis. You're likely to have looked at that cadence data produced from several rides to gauge an area of sweet spot in pedaling efficiency. Given you've bought a cadence sensor, you'll likely own a HRM. This along with "elapsed time" up your favourite hill will give you a tonne of really useful info for near optimal riding for any situation. This data can help you understand your lactate threshold when grinding or hopefully spinning at your optimal cadence up hills. (Spin too fast, you bounce and lose power. Spin too slow, you produce too much lactate acid in your muscles - both are inefficient)

If you own a power meter too, then you'll learn even more. You can plot quadrant analysis charts to actually see where those watts of power are and where that extra 5-10watts is that you'll not even be aware of. Is it at 94rpm or were you comfortably putting out 10watts more at 98rpm? With that data plotted against your critical power curve, you can beast ANY hill in the correct gear and correct cadence all day long so long as you know roughly how long that climb may take you.

Golden?

drlodge

I found a cadence sensor useful in my early days, trying to stay around 90rpm and knowing how far below that I dropped on the hills. I removed the sensors a couple of years ago since I found I was no longer looking at cadence and the sensors cluttered up my bikes.

dennisn

CRAIGO5000 wrote:

You've already got one so you'll already have an understanding of basic pedaling efficiency.

Even using your cadence sensor data along with your speed and perceived effort will begin to point a rider in the correct direction of pedaling efficiency. I've a friend who I ride with and he simply can't understand that grinding away for 99% of a ride isn't better. Define better I say? More powerful he'd say! He's probably correct, but he's also never improved on his speed work and is also completely shagged after every ride with sore legs. I often just shout "CADENCE" at him as he grinds away at 60rpm on the flat.

Anyway, Dennis. You're likely to have looked at that cadence data produced from several rides to gauge an area of sweet spot in pedaling efficiency. Given you've bought a cadence sensor, you'll likely own a HRM. This along with "elapsed time" up your favourite hill will give you a tonne of really useful info for near optimal riding for any situation. This data can help you understand your lactate threshold when grinding or hopefully spinning at your optimal cadence up hills. (Spin too fast, you bounce and lose power. Spin too slow, you produce too much lactate acid in your muscles - both are inefficient)

If you own a power meter too, then you'll learn even more. You can plot quadrant analysis charts to actually see where those watts of power are and where that extra 5-10watts is that you'll not even be aware of. Is it at 94rpm or were you comfortably putting out 10watts more at 98rpm? With that data plotted against your critical power curve, you can beast ANY hill in the correct gear and correct cadence all day long so long as you know roughly how long that climb may take you.

Golden?

Not really. Can't remember anything my brain gained from watching the readout flash between 85 and 100.

CRAIGO5000

Kewl. Have a great weekend

napoleond

You don't need a cadence sensor at all. Utter red herring in my experience. I have it on my power meter but never look at it. I know what works for me through feel.
In a time trial I tend to grind at 70-80, road race/fast group rides it's either 0 or about 100. In the track nowt happens in a race under 120rpm. I only know this from looking at the files afterwards. I never think about it at the time.

iron-clover

I have one on my bike for curiosity when out on the road (I tend to find my natural rhythm with a fairly fast cadence (90-100rpm) anyway.
What I do find it useful for is looking at the cadences I use in road racing and more importantly TTs. I don't look at the info during the race, but it's useful to use afterwards when doing intervals targeting specific areas- e.g. for TT training I should keep my cadence 10rpm or so slower than that for race intervals as that's what I tend to do in real life. But when on the turbo I have a tenancy to automatically shift to the lower cadence TT mode, so the cadence sensor is useful here.

Alex_Simmons/RST

CRAIGO5000 wrote:

You've already got one so you'll already have an understanding of basic pedaling efficiency.

You do realise that pedalling at lower cadences is typically associated with higher efficiency?

Cadence is neither a measure nor an indicator of efficiency. Nor is it a measure or indicator of power, or of effort level or anything much per se, other than the rate that the cranks are rotating. But it doesn't much matter because for the most part, efficiency is a pink herring, while cadence is red herring.

What's worse is that we cannot control cadence - it's not an independent variable. What we can control is our effort level and the gear we choose to use. Cadence is an outcome of those things we can control and the resistance forces in play (hill gradient, air resistance etc).

wolfsbane2k

During the event? Only a number, but I have cadence and hrm displayed rather than speed and time due to aiming at fitness rather than distance, time or speed.
After the event (Bearing in mind I now only commute), I like knowing my cadence after the fact, as I can track my cadence against speed to calculate my gearing - and knowing that and my HRM gives me some physical "proof" that I'm getting fitter, slowly but surely.

cycleclinic

There is a cadence sensor as part of my power meter. I ignore it mostly. Some rides I purposely ride at a higher cadence 90 rpm+ but mostly I ride at a cadence that I feel comfortable at which is 65 to 80 rpm. Most of riding is on bikes with no cadence sensor. I frankly don't care what my cadence is. If I feel my legs fatiguing from an effort I might change gear or I might ease of a bit.

Cadence sesnors are need for power meters to work out power. I would not buy a separate one though.