Crank it Up

A bit more of a coaching morning this morning.

Today's coaching session was helping some lucky souls spend time on the Kickr Snaps down at Front Runner Sports.

Due to a few uncontrollable circumstances (bike breakages) there weren't that many people down at the session this morning, which really was a sort of blessing in disguise. Busy sessions are good, but when the sessions are busy I tend to spend most of my time making sure the session runs smoothly. However, on quiet morning I was able spend a bit of time actually looking at cycling technique and helping in that area too.

It can seem a little counter-intuitive, but riding on a stationary trainer can actually be a great place to look at and work on technique. The look at bit makes sense because on a stationary bike you are of course stationary. This makes it very easy for somebody to have a look at you and see how you look when you ride. This is doubly useful because you are actually on your bike, so somebody can look at you and see how you ride your bike. This is one of the reasons we always do bike fitting on a trainer.

I have also found that a stationary trainer is great tool for working on pedaling smoothness. Because there is no coasting and no resting on a trainer it forces you to keep on pedaling. This in turn helps you develop a nice circular pedal stroke, rather than a stamp, stamp type of pedaling which comes when you focus too much on the drive phase. The nice thing about this benefit is that I find it comes about quite subconsciously, coming about simply by spending time on the trainer, rather than necessarily having to focus on it.

There are numerous other benefits to the the stationary trainer, most of which I have spoken about before. They are a great place to work on cadence as you can easily and repeatably focus and measure it. Also, I still think they are the single best tool available for driving cycling improvement. They aren't the only tool obviously, but they can be enormously useful when used correctly. Why you ask? Well simply because they are so focused and so easily controllable. Need to deliver 200 Watts, well your trainer can make you do that, with no respite, no rolling, no coasting and no traffic lights. There is simply nowhere to hide on a trainer and that is the secret to their success.

So all up a very effective session for those that made it down. A bit of hard work for sure, but that is kind of the point. The sort of work that people will benefit from in the long run.