How To Pedal Your Bike Properly
A Great Fatsby Note from Fatty: I’m happy to announce that as of this morning, The Great Fatsby: The Best of FatCyclist.com, Volume 2, is now available on the Kindle. Please go check it out. And then buy a copy, for crying out loud. It’s been years since I’ve won an award or been invited to a fancy dinner party as the guest of honor, and if I don’t get some kind of validation soon I’m going to crumble.
Please make me feel good about myself. Buy a copy of my book, or I’ll cry.
You don’t want me to cry, do you?
Oh, and if you pre-ordered the Kindle version of The Great Fatsby, check your email. You should have the code for downloading it in your inbox right now.
A Donation Note from Fatty: If you’re looking to make a donation to WBR, and would like to have a chance at winning some awesome bike gear by doing so, allow me to recommend you check out Jordan Rapp’s RappStar Charity Challenge. His contest works (more or less) like my contests, though he sets his minimum prize-worthy donation quite a bit higher: $134 (the cost of a bike).
And this is pretty exciting: The Great Fatsby is currently the #1 top-selling cycling book in Amazon.com’s Kindle list:
About which I proclaim: Huzzah! And also: go buy a copy!
How to Pedal Your Bike Properly
As a cycling expert, I am frequently asked what the best way is to be faster and win races. The answer, of course, is to always wear a matching cycling kit, have the most expensive and newest bike of anyone in the race, and—above all—to enter in the least-populated age / gender / equipment / experience level group you possibly can.
I, for example, am very excited about my chances in the 80+ novice singlespeed women division when I race this year. Indeed, I expect to crush the competition.
But believe it or not, there is actually more to being fast and winning races than just how you dress, what you ride, and finding racing category nobody else has found.
And that is: pedaling.
Oh, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “Well of course we have to pedal if we want to go fast!
[Unless we have an e-bike, in which case all we have to do is sorta-kinda make a pedaling motion at all! But let us dismiss e-bikes from our thoughts. They are too ridiculous, even for this blog.]
But pedaling isn’t enough. No, not at all. There is a proper way to pedal. An efficient and smooth way. A correct way. A way that is vastly different than the way you are doing it right now.
Fortunately for you, I will now instruct you in the proper technique to pedal your bicycle.
Pedal in Circles
The most important thing you can do when riding your bike is to remember: pedal in circles. Only when you pedal in circles will you achieve the speed and grace of a pro cyclist.
You can prove the truth of this statement by climbing onto your bike right now and pedaling. But do not pedal in a circle. Instead, pedal in a square. You’ll find, thanks to the fact that your feet are attached to a device that has both a fixed center and radius, that it is very difficult to pedal an actual square.
Now try a rhombus. It’s not easy, productive, or comfortable, is it?
Now try pedaling in a figure-8 motion. Still no good, right?
OK, now pedal in a circle. Suddenly, your bike moves forward. In fact, it moves forward with considerable ease. The difference is astonishing.
Well, it moves forwards as long as you pedal circles in the correct directions.
Yes, I said directions. Plural. Because the number of directions your feet must go in describing circles is as important as it is complex and counterintuitive.
Luckily for you, I am here to help you understand.
First of all, you must realize that you must turn your feet in opposite directions, simultaneously. I know, how strange is that? But you must trust me: the circle you describe with your right foot is clockwise, while the circle you describe with your left foot is counter-clockwise.
Here. I’ll illustrate:
You see what I mean? You’d think each of your feet would go around in the same direction, but the truth is demonstrably the opposite. This seems like madness. If you will follow this top-secret tip, though, you’ll find your bike goes so much faster.
Pedaling With Power
Of course, it’s not enough to merely make your bike go forward. You want to go forward fast. Toward this end, I have several secrets the pros use.
First, try the Wipe Your Foot Off technique. This means that as each foot reaches the bottom of the pedal stroke, you should perform the same action as you do when scraping gum off the bottom of your shoe. Specifically, this means you should follow this sequence with each turn of the cranks:
- Push down to nearly the bottom of the pedal stroke.
- Kick back, as if wiping your foot on the street / grass / carpet to get a piece of gum off your shoe (but hopefully not actually on the carpet, because that’s gross).
- Curse at the way some people spit gum out onto the street. Why would they do that? Why not just throw it away? Don’t they know someone’s going to step in it? Don’t they have any consideration at all?
- Go find a stick or something to try to scrape it off your shoe, because scraping it off on the curb didn’t do much good at all.
- Ask yourself why anyone even chews gum. It’s not like the gum keeps its flavor for more than twenty seconds anyways. And there’s probably nothing in the world that makes someone look cow-like as chewing gum does. Plus, it makes you hungry. Resolve to never chew gum yourself. Or if you do, to at least never just spit it out on the sidewalk.
- Repeat this process ninety times per second.
The second technique to use is to Pull Up With Your Foot. Did you know that when you pedal a bike, up to 50% of your effort can go toward just lifting the leg that’s going up? It very well might be true!
That’s wasted effort. And if there’s one thing you don’t want when you’re riding a bike for exercise, it’s to expend unnecessary effort.
So: with every stroke, as soon as your get to the bottom of the rotation, begin pulling up. By doing so, not only are you not forcing your other leg to lift it, but you’re actually sending additional power to the wheel.
Or maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re just unweighting the crank.
Or maybe you’re not even doing that, either. Everyone seems to disagree how much you’re accomplishing by trying to pull up on your pedals as well as push down on them.
But beware of the dead spot at the bottom of the stroke—the spot where you don’t have much power, and also it sounds kind of ominous.
Except there’s really nothing much you can do about that dead spot. It’s not like you can skip past it or anything. In fact, forget about this part altogether.
Just push down on the pedals really hard and really often on the pedals and you’ll probably be OK.
Advanced Techniques
There’s more to proper pedaling technique than pedaling fast and hard in the correct direction, however. Advanced cyclists also know and religiously adhere to these three top techniques:
- Bring your feet to a level position at the bottom of each stroke, then stretch and flex your calves on the upstroke. This may or may not actually improve your cycling performance, but it is guaranteed to show your calves off to maximum advantage.
- Keep your legs together, so your knees graze your top tube with every up and downstroke. If you do this properly and consistently, you should wear through the bike’s finish before the end of the season.
- Remain seated when riding. This is the most effective way to pedal. Although it’s okay to stand during climbs. And sprints. And during hard efforts. Or when you want to switch up positions. Okay, never mind. Sit or stand, whichever you prefer. It’s all the same to me.
With strict adherence to these pedaling techniques, you’ll soon (over the course of seven or so years, generally) find that you have more power and speed on the bike than you could have ever imagined.
Or you could just get an e-bike. Those things make you go fast.
Comment by Clydesteve | 12.10.2014 | 5:38 pm
I actually do have a place where I have worn through the finish to the aluminum frame on one side.
I don’t graze on the other – it’s harder to do so when you are going clockwise. I only graze on the counter-clockwise side.
Comment by Andy@wdw | 12.10.2014 | 5:56 pm
Got it. Right foot clockwise. Left foot counter-clockwise. Scrape the gum. Lift the foot.
Wait, no. If I lift my foot while scraping the gum off, that will just make a huge mess as those gooey strings of gum stretch and stick to everything! I just bought these fancy new pedals! I don’t want a gummy mess all up in everything!
Forget this!
Comment by MattC | 12.10.2014 | 6:17 pm
Just download (uploaded?) my VERY FIRST digital book on my VERY FIRST Kindle! Yep…the Great Fatsby is all alone (so far) in my brand-spankin’ new Kindle 7 HD (a little “Merry Christmas to Matt”…about time I joined the 21st century).
Comment by NZ Ev | 12.10.2014 | 6:27 pm
I am so confused now. Hope I can get home on my bike commute as I am not sure I will be able to pedal properly . . . .
Comment by MattC | 12.10.2014 | 6:31 pm
And Fatty, you have finally explained my problem! I’ve been pedaling both feet in the SAME DIRECTION all these years! No WONDER I’m so freaking slow! (obviously that’s the reason, not that I’m old(er) and weak…nope…that can’t be it…must be the opposite direction circles).
OH…and SUPPOSEDLY, my Rotor Q-rings help to minimize the “dead spot” (I only have them on my mt bike..I guess my road bike doesn’t have dead spots).
However, I’m not totally convinced that there ever really was a “dead spot” that needed to be fixed, other than at the top of every hill after I’ve been chasing the rest of my club riders. When I finally reach the top (where they are all well-rested and are drinking moonshine that they actually brewed while I climbed) I am totally dead. So typically there’s LOTS of dead spots on my group rides.
But I digress…the Q-rings. The only thing I really know for sure about them is that with them I effectively lost 2 teeth on my granny-ring, and I NEED those 2 teeth back (for the LONG STEEP stuff), cuz I don’t have Fatty’s ginormous Quads.
AND one more thing: when pedaling in the big-ring you really feel some strange things happening w/ the oval rings. I only stick w/ them cuz they were expensive and I’d still have to buy new rings if I take them off.
Comment by Rokrider | 12.11.2014 | 1:23 am
Ninety times per second? Wow! Now that’s what you call a cadence.
Comment by Brian in VA | 12.11.2014 | 8:42 am
All these years of riding and I never knew my feet were going in opposite directions! So that’s why one pedal is reverse threaded, too, I suppose! My goodness, Fatty, you provide knowledge at levels I never knew existed. I’m so thankful I found this blog years ago!
Thanks!
P.S. Is this also true of hand propelled bikes? I don’t own one, I’m just wondering.
Comment by Welnic | 12.11.2014 | 11:33 am
I’m suspicious that when you show that each foot goes in the opposite directions you show two different cyclists. I think that one of those cyclist is a clockwise pedaler and the other is a counter-clockwise pedaler. I always pedal clockwise.
Comment by Liz M. | 12.11.2014 | 11:51 am
Oh, I was just reading about all this! Have you been catching up on back issues of Bicycling magazine on the airplane, too?
Comment by zeeeter | 12.11.2014 | 1:23 pm
Is it OK if I split the ninety times per second into forty-five per side?
I heard yesterday that there’s a recent theory that there is a parallel universe that was blasted off the singularity at the point of the big bang, where that universe’s time runs backwards.
That could well happen to me if I tried a 90 cadence for any length of time!
Comment by leroy | 12.11.2014 | 1:36 pm
I gave my dog the Kindle version of The Great Fatsby.
He was delighted.
He used the search function to skip straight to the fart jokes.
He says there are 5.
Comment by Skye | 12.11.2014 | 1:36 pm
This post reminded me that I had some Strawberry Watermelon Hubba Bubba bubble gum in my desk drawer, and now that I’m chewing it, I remember why it had been relegated to a drawer. However, I think my gum had flavor for at least two minutes, not just the 20 seconds you claim.
Comment by Triflefat | 12.11.2014 | 4:39 pm
Regarding that clockwise pedalling thing. Quite a few respondents appear to believe they pedal clockwise.
Are you sure the counter-clockwise thing is not just some weird new fixie craze?
Comment by MattC | 12.11.2014 | 10:05 pm
Oh, and one more thought: do the circles you pedal shift directions if you go from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere??
Comment by MikeL | 12.12.2014 | 11:33 am
I just wish I would have had this article and advice when I started cycling. It could have saved me so much pain and anguish.
Comment by MattC | 12.12.2014 | 12:05 pm
Really enjoying the book Fatty…Pain Pellets..I had COMPLETELY forgotten about those dang things. Your theory still seems sound…I think it could very well be Nobel-worthy.
Thanks, Matt! – FC
Comment by UpTheGrade, SR, CA | 12.12.2014 | 12:23 pm
I suspect you were in the granny-gear of your MTB when doing 90 revs per second – ’cause if it were your road bike in the big ring, you’d be doing about 200 miles per hour, which might be a stretch even for you.
I like the idea of e-bikes to go faster, and will recommend someone in my club rides one so I can draft off them and break all my strava records, and yours! (Hey, I wasn’t riding the e-bike ;-)
Looking forward to getting my hard copy of the Great Fatsby so I can have a good read during all this rain we are now getting in CA. What do you non-west-coasters do in this stuff?
Comment by bikemike | 12.12.2014 | 1:22 pm
Pedals are for weenies.
Comment by New Zealand Ev | 12.12.2014 | 2:18 pm
@MattC. I am not sure anymore what direction my pedals go in. I pedal they go in circles. I do know that the brake lever setups are different. The left brake lever controls the rear brake and the right one controls the front brake.
Comment by MattC | 12.12.2014 | 3:13 pm
@New Zealand Ev…that brake-setup is also used by motorcycles (the clutch is on the left, the rear brake is a right-foot-control, so the right grip is your front-brake)…I was a dirt biker way-back in another lifetime, and it took me some doing (and at least one trip over the bars) when I started Mt biking to get used to the backwards setup.
Comment by clydesteve | 12.13.2014 | 12:35 pm
@MattC – I was a dirt biker way back when as well. But the last time I dirt biked, I had been cycling for many, many years – I took my newly started dirt biking youngest son up to some trails, and borrowed the bike for a spin. for the first 300 yards, I was totally flamboozled, because I could not get the brakes & clutch to work properly. Only then did it dawn on my that motorcycles did it backwards to what I had become accustomed to.
Like my left foot going ccw, I guess.
Comment by David F | 12.14.2014 | 6:45 am
If I continually scrape the top tube on a carbon fibre bike… Will I get splinters on my knees?
Just kidding… I’ll never own a carbon fibre bike so I guess all your advice is useless coz I’ve got bugger all chance of catching those rich so and so’s on their fancy bikes!
Comment by David Lazar | 12.15.2014 | 9:50 am
Hey, Fatsby – I just started reading the Kindle version of your new book. I forgot how much fun it is to read you in book format! First of all, the humor. Second of all, the validation. I read the piece last night about techniques for negotiating more quality time with your bike. My wife asked what I was smiling about, and then claimed not to know you. Anyway, thanks for the great book; I’m trying to read it slowly and make it last a long time!
Thank you so much, Dave! – FC
Comment by Tom in Albany | 12.15.2014 | 10:20 am
I just checked (11:19 EDT 12/15/14) and you’re still number two!