Climbing: Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a ...

© 2003 Andy Applegate

Almost every rider wants to further develop his or her climbing abilities. The riders who are already good at it want to improve so they can decimate their rivals on the climbs, and the riders who suffer on the way up want to improve in order to be part of the race on the other side. What makes a good climber? Let’s take a look some concepts that play a large part in the equation.

Power to weight
The numbers show that predicting climbing ability is simple by evaluating a rider’s power to weight ratio. This gives us two ways to improve climbing. The first is to increase power output, and the second is, you guessed it, reducing weight. All riders should strive to find their ideal racing weight, but care must be taken with any weight loss attempt. All too often a rider’s weight loss will be accompanied by a significant loss in power. Power output needs to be monitored closely during this process.

 You can monitor power output while climbing using a powermeter, or, you can get a good idea of improvement by performing uphill time trials on an unchanging course. A faster time up your TT hill will be a good indicator that power output is rising, or more specifically that your power-to-weight ratio is improving. Another good measure of improvement is simply how you feel on the climbs while riding or racing in a group. If you become more comfortable in the bunch going uphill at various speeds, you are probably headed in the right direction.

Threshold
What will help improve power output for climbing? The longer you can stay at or below lactate threshold on extended climbs, the more likely you will be to make it to the top with the front group. Improve power produced at lactate threshold and you will be well on the way to achieving this goal. See the workout descriptions for some training ideas.

Attacking
Pure climbers have the ability to attack at any instant when most other riders are at their limit on a climb. While much of this ability is natural, it can be improved by building some “hill attacks” into your training. Another good component to add to workouts is attacking over the top of the hills. Whether it is a long or short climb, attacking over the top and sustaining the effort can be a very successful tactic and a strength worth having.

Sag climbing
You may have heard the phrase ‘sag climbing’ bandied about at the races.  This is a technique in which you start a climb near the front of the field and climb slightly slower than the other riders, so that you go over the top further back, but still in contact with the group.  This is an effective tactic to conserve energy for later in the race or when you know the other riders will be climbing faster than you want to or can.

Steady pace
Some riders climb much better when they can go at their own steady pace.  You should practice responding to attacks; however, if you know covering an attack will cause you to ‘blow up,’ maintaining climbing pace at or near threshold will get you to the top close enough to rejoin the front on the other side.  Know your body and what to expect from it.

Relax
Try to conserve as much energy as possible while going uphill.  Strive to keep your upper body relaxed and still, letting your legs do the work.  Attempt to relax your facial muscles as well, as this is unnecessary tension and a waste of energy. A relaxed face seems to also promote relaxed shoulders, chest and arms.

Stand or sit
Try to develop the ability to both stand and sit for varying lengths of time while climbing.  Different riders will be more comfortable with one or the other. Usually, to attack or cover an acceleration you will need to stand, but practice climbing while seated more often.  In both instances work on keeping a round, smooth pedal stroke.  Avoid just pushing down.  Concentrate on lifting your knees, pushing across the top and pulling across the bottom of the pedal stroke.  While standing, continue to lift your knees, don’t let the upstroke leg be dead weight.  Small riders, those weighing less than two pounds per inch of height, may find climbing out of the saddle easier than do bigger riders. Riders with body weight relative to height above 2.3 pounds per inch of height need to sit more often. . Sit or stand as needed, but keep in mind that the price of standing is over 10 watts of wasted energy.

Cadence and gearing
Climbing cadence of the riders in the European peloton ranges from 60 to 100 plus RPM.  This is a very wide range and illustrates the fact that there are a variety of effective climbing styles.  The buzz of late has been the high cadence climbing styles of some of the high profile stars.  Using a higher cadence shifts stress from the muscular to the aerobic system.  This is a good concept, but not necessarily one that will work for everyone.  Riders should work on both their muscular strength (big gears), and on increasing cadence (small gears) while climbing.  By doing these workouts over a period of time, it should become clear what cadence and gearing you should use on any given climb for maximum performance. This will be the balance point between stress on the muscular and aerobic systems that is correct for each individual rider.

The mental game
Now let’s get into some less conventional ideas to help climbing: mental focus and visualization.  Developing a bulletproof mental focus can be essential to helping achieve your best results, and is especially useful while climbing.  Being able to block out all distractions other than the task at hand should be worked on at all times.  This includes banishing any negative thoughts from your mind during workouts or races. Make your mind an ally when attempting to defy gravity; never let it become an enemy. Never think, “I can’t”.  The moment you think this is the moment you will be off the back.  Many riders are dropped on the climbs because of negative thinking long before they reach their breaking point.  Don’t let this happen to you.

Begin working on mental focus training by clearing your mind entirely.  Keep your mind empty for as long as possible (this is not easy).  Once this skill is developed, try adding a single positive thought.  Attempt to keep this thought, and none other, in your head for as long as possible.  When you develop this control over thought, you will find that focusing on race specific objectives—like getting over a climb—come naturally.

Along with mental focus, use visualization to help you over the top.  Many people shrug off visualization as a waste of time or not worth the effort, but it works.  Here is an exercise:  Find a difficult hill with a grade of eight to ten percent that is three or more minutes long.  As you climb the hill, in your mind visualize a brick, a big heavy red brick.  Recover to the base of the hill, and do the climb again.  This time, fix an image of something light that floats on the breeze in your mind, such as a feather or butterfly. If you prefer an image of something more powerful, try a hawk or an eagle soaring on an updraft.  Concentrate on this image all the way to the top of the climb.  Now, realistically compare the perceived effort of the two climbs. 

 Most likely, the climb in which you visualized something light will have been a little less stressful, even if the actual time to the top was similar.  This type of visualization can go a long way to help you get over the climbs with or ahead of the front group.  Use this same sort of visualization before races. If you know the course, visualize yourself floating up the climbs with less effort than the other riders.  Practice this along with mental focus. These ideas may not make you faster up the climbs without the physical part of the training, but you should have an easier time getting through them.  Riders who already excel uphill can use these same concepts to further develop their climbing abilities.

 Sometimes, climbing is as much a mental game as it is a physical one.  Many riders with very good power-to-weight ratios are not good climbers, simply because they either don’t like it or have tricked themselves into believing that they are not good at it.  This can be overcome using the focus and visualization techniques described above.  Don’t allow a lack of self-confidence to stand in the way of your potential.  In most cases, everyone suffers on the climbs.  Chances are if you are hurting, so is everyone else, even if they don’t appear to be.

 Add some of these workouts to your training and practice some of the mental skills described above and you should see an improvement in your attempts to defy gravity.

The workouts: (side bar)

Big gear climbs

Ride several 1- to 2-minute climbs of varying grades. Shift one cog harder than you would normally use for any given climb. Cadence is 50 to 60 RPM; stay seated.  Keep heart rate below lactate threshold.

High cadence climbs

Climb for increasing amounts of time on a 3- to 6- percent grade, using your easiest gear. Start with an interval of 2 or 3 minutes. Strive for the highest cadence possible. Seated.

Hill cruise intervals

Climb a 6– to 8-minute hill (4 to 6 percent grade) 3 to 4 times at a heart rate from 5 beats above to 5 beats below lactate threshold.  Stay seated; 5-minute recoveries.

Extended climbing at LT

Ride 20 to 30 minutes on a steady grade at a heart rate 5 beats above to 5 beats below lactate threshold.

Hill Anaerobic Endurance Intervals

On a 6- to 8- percent hill, do 4 to 5 x 3 minutes above your lactate threshold with 3-minute recoveries. Practice these seated and standing.

Hill attacks

On a 6- to 8- percent hill do 6 to 7 x 2 minutes building to above lactate threshold.  At 30, 60 and 90 seconds “attack” for 10 pedal strokes (4-minute recoveries). Stand for the attacks, otherwise stay seated.

Andy Applegate is an elite-level road, cyclocross, and mountain bike racer. He heads a2 Coaching and is a USA Cycling- and Ultrafit-certified coach. He may be reached at aapplegate@ultrafit.com.

 This article originally published in VeloNews June 2003.