Share the post "Climbing Better in the Mountains"
For many riders, summer means mountains and beautiful climbs. Racers, sportive riders or touring cyclists, here are some tips to help you climb better, primarily by doing specific training.
By Guillaume Judas – Photos: Flickr.com, David Polveroni
As summer holidays begin, there’s still time to prepare or improve your climbing skills for the mountains or other steep routes. Adding new passes to your palmarès is nice, but if you can climb them more efficiently and avoid difficulties, it’s even better. Mountain sportives offer the opportunity to compete against opponents or the clock. You may also want to ride for the simple pleasure and the feeling of conquering the difficulty. And many are motivated by improving their performance year after year. But you can’t cheat the mountain. Long and steep, a pass is often very physically demanding. Descents can be dangerous. Weather conditions can also be changeable and difficult. So, how to best approach the mountains by bike? By starting to improve your climbing abilities…
The climber’s physique
Small or tall, it doesn’t matter! A climber is primarily characterized by an above-average power-to-weight ratio. In other words, whether you weigh 50 or 80 kg, you can be a climber as long as the power you can sustain at a steady pace is high enough to efficiently carry your own weight. A high power-to-weight ratio often goes hand in hand with a relatively low body mass index, or at least a low body fat percentage. For professional cyclists, this is around 4 to 6%. For a sedentary person, it’s closer to 25%. With a body fat percentage around 10 to 12%, you should already be a good climber.
A climber predominantly has slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are the most economical and efficient for long-duration efforts. Morphologically, a climber tends to have long legs and a short torso. Thanks to this weight distribution, they carry less “unnecessary” weight when facing a climb. To sustain high-intensity efforts, their energy reserves are intact before major events. Finally, a climber makes the best use of pedaling technique. Their pedal stroke demonstrates torque and motor skills, which results partly from learning and partly from proprioceptive talent.
Becoming a better climber
Climbing hills is primarily a matter of physical condition. When a route is dotted with one or two-kilometer climbs, even if they are steep, a series of powerful efforts may be enough to conquer them. In a mountain pass, when a cyclist is pushing for 30 minutes to an hour, the problem is quite different. Given the necessary capacities mentioned above, you cannot change your morphology or your percentage of slow-twitch fibers, except after many months of specific training. However, to climb better, you can work on two essential points: your weight and your power output at the anaerobic threshold. When you start a diet, the main difficulty is to get rid of only fat mass, without losing muscle quality or depleting your glycogen reserves (the fuel for effort). To do this, you need to reduce fat and fast sugar intake outside of training, while eating enough essential nutrients for recovery and muscle regeneration. This type of diet is long and tedious because the results in terms of weight loss are not spectacular, unlike a hypocaloric diet. The latter represents a danger for athletes, as it is not very compatible with the needs of intense training.
The anaerobic threshold It is difficult to give a definition of the anaerobic threshold that satisfies everyone, as even some scientists do not always agree. Regardless of the intensity of the effort, the body produces lactic acid (waste products of effort whose recycling is costly for the body and leads to fatigue). However, this is also regularly neutralized or eliminated by aerobic metabolism (a level of activity that primarily uses oxygen as the main source of burning sugars that provide energy) if the pace is comfortable. By increasing the intensity of the exercise, lactic acid production increases up to a threshold where it exceeds the body’s elimination capacities. This is when we can speak of the anaerobic threshold. It is a high intensity that requires commitment, but which is just below true muscle pain and loss of breath control. Depending on the training level, this intensity can be maintained for 20 minutes to an hour, provided that sufficient sugar is consumed. In the case of successive climbs, it is of course necessary to manage this energy capital and adopt an intermediate pace, slightly below the threshold. But the higher this threshold, the more power reserve you have to ride for a long time at this critical intensity. |
By lowering your weight and maintaining the same power, the ratio between the two is improved, making climbs more efficient. Sharpening therefore involves long rides to burn off excess fat, monitoring intake, while retaining fuel to pedal efficiently, i.e., being able to train at intensity.
Raising the anaerobic threshold
The energy supplied at the threshold develops on two levels: duration and power. Improving physical condition through endurance rides already allows for stabilizing a good level of power at the threshold, with better glycogen combustion, better muscle efficiency, and good recognition of this critical intensity.
Rides with targeted exercises nevertheless allow for faster and better-controlled progress. The goal is to ride in series of stable efforts just below this anaerobic threshold, in order to push it back. With short series, power is targeted. With long series, it’s about maintaining a good level of this power for the entire target duration (for example, being able to sustain an hour at high intensity). It’s important to ride just below the threshold and not above it, as other energy systems are then engaged.
To accurately determine the anaerobic threshold, nothing beats a laboratory stress test. This provides information on watt values and heart rate. Those who only train with a heart rate monitor must imperatively combine it with their sensations, as from one ride to another, a difference of three or four beats for the same power output can be observed. The so-called “ventilatory” threshold is a good indication, as the intensity of this exercise is recognized by pronounced but controlled shortness of breath, and muscle tension that is present but not painful. Performing stable intensity series, especially if they are long, allows for progress not only in effort management, but also in the elimination of waste products from glycogen combustion, thus limiting leg pain and having more energy at the end of the event or ride on the big day. Threshold intensity is the preferred intensity in all endurance sports. Those who live at the foot of mountains are luckier. Just by climbing regularly, they naturally work on this target intensity. But it is entirely possible to prepare for climbing by living on flat terrain and riding into the wind.
A specific posture
Climbing implies a specific posture on the bike. It’s not just about riding with your hands on the tops of the bars or getting out of the saddle to crush the gradients. When tackling a slope, your bike is tilted backward, and your weight is distributed differently between the two wheels. The attack of the pedal stroke at the angle formed by the seat tube and the bottom bracket is modified. The grip on the brake hoods is also further back relative to the vertical of the front wheel.
Climbing therefore slightly shifts the top and bottom dead centers of the pedal stroke, while the torque applied to the cranks must be more constant because you cannot benefit from the inertia linked to speed to pedal smoothly. Seated and at a steady pace, the mountain position is naturally more forward on the saddle. The right reflex for better efficiency is to perform a more pronounced ankle roll than on the flat, remembering to lift the knee. Out of the saddle, you must maintain a flexible and unconstrained movement on the handlebars. In the mountains, you get out of the saddle primarily to relax your muscles and make them work in a different position. In good physical condition, this movement should be natural, fluid, and not cause a noticeable increase in heart rate.
Obviously, these automatisms are not acquired without getting used to accumulating elevation gain. Hence the interest of training camps in the mountains prior to the objective, or at least a progressive adaptation on the terrain by allowing enough time to gradually integrate all these specificities. If you live on flat terrain, you can target all the hills, even if it means doing circuits to accumulate climbs in a short period of time, to integrate the specific movement and find the right position. It is not necessarily necessary to push hard during these rides, as their only purpose is to improve climbing technique and pedaling motor skills, and simply in response to the terrain, you are working at the right intensity. These rides can in any case be perfectly complementary to the more physical sessions described above.
From rouleur to climber in a few weeks
Starting from a good basic physical condition, a trained cyclist does not need long months of work to prepare for the mountains. Four weeks of specific work are enough to feel more alert on long climbs. While losing fat mass is beneficial for performance upon returning from a mountain trip, regardless of the terrain, the targeted intensities during preparation allow you to significantly improve your endurance level. You then just need to readjust your training upon return to regain rhythm and understand that you can manage a season according to your objectives and the period, simply by understanding the necessary efforts according to the type of terrain.
Gearing in the mountains The power you are able to deliver during a climb (and even more so for several climbs on the same day) depends on your training level, not the gears used. Your climbing speed depends on the famous power-to-weight ratio, and nothing else. In the mountains, the correct pedaling cadence to adopt is between 70 and 85 revolutions per minute, depending on the individual, in order to find the right balance between strength and flexibility and optimize power production. From there, you need to calculate your gears based on your climbing speeds and optimal cadence to avoid premature fatigue. If on a 10% gradient you can ride at a speed of 12 km/h, you can opt for a 34×25 gear at 70 revolutions per minute. If your level allows you to ride at 15 km/h, a 39×23 is sufficient. But be careful when choosing your gearing: you might also have to face a tougher section, or even a bout of fatigue at the end of the ride. So, don’t be afraid to plan generously, with cassettes that go up to 28, 30 or 32 teeth, especially if you lack experience. |
=> SEE ALSO: All our Coaching articles
Share the post "Climbing Better in the Mountains"
