Cadence Guidance

Training With Power
1

Hi Folks,

I’m looking for some guidance with Cadence, I’ve searched the forum / site but can’t see anything.

My ‘natural’ cadence is 87 and I’m currently following the Road Race intervals plan. I don’t look at cadence very often but know I can hold sweet spot 87 - 90 for however long the interval is (up to 45 minutes).

What I’m finding with the Vo2 (Zone 5 / Full Gas) intervals is that I can’t hold the power in a big enough gear for 3-5 minutes to complete the interval at my ‘normal’ cadence, that I need to drop down gears and spin at a higher cadence (100 - 110) to sucessfully complete the interval at the target power.

So I guess my question is should I be looking at increasing my ‘normal’ cadence to maintain a higher power or should I be looking to fight the Zone 5 intervals out at a higher gear, but a lower cadence to improve my strength ?

On a side note, my FTP tests are usually a cadence of 87 - 90, would the Power increase if I focussed more on a higher cadence?

I hope this makes sense, I may have confused myself just thinking about the correlation between cadence and power.

Thanks in advance - Martin

2

Don’t over think it. Use your normal cadence. Power is power. Being between 87 - 90 normal is pretty good cadence. It’s actually surprising that you use a higher cadence to produce more power at Vo2 max. A lot of times riders drop their cadence in search of more power. The higher cadence is said to be more efficient in that it saves your leg muscles. Actually if you look at your endurance rides you can see trends in when fatigue sets in when the cadence drops. It’s a good way to measure or gauge your fitness.

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3

Thanks for the advice Jake :+1: