I struggle to follow the cadence recommendations on TR or other workout sites. I’m more of a gravel bike mtn bike rider and my natural cadence is in the mid/high 70’'s. Almost all of the recommended cadences are 90+. My HR cannot stay in the zones that I am shooting for during these sessions. I’m in my mid 60’s so not sure if that may play a role. Thoughts?
Cadence is mostly self selected. If you fall well outside the recommended ranges of like 85-95 then it might be good to practice higher or lower cadences. But if you don’t have any fatigue issues with your lower self selected cadence then I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Even high 70s is pretty low, so I might suggest trying the higher cadences. But without any knee pain or any other obvious issues it’s not imperative.
Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about this in most contexts.
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Practice? I’m in my mid-sixties and my average cadence has gone up by around 15prm over the last three years - 75 to 90 - since I started training on a turbo.
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A bit younger but exactly my experience.
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there isn’t an easy answer, although from a performance point-of-view there are advantages to cycling at higher cadences. That said, it is highly individual. When I ride gravel and single track, what’s important for me is being able to pedal at a very broad range of cadences. One thing I’ve added recently is fast pedal warmups, done in the first 15 minutes of riding. That really helped me get more comfortable pedaling at high cadences. I’m on a 1x bike, and there are a bunch of situations where it really helps being able to wind up from 70s to 100s before shifting. Hope that helps.
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I come from the MTB world and do mostly road riding these days. In my experience, the self-selected cadence, at least initially, is lower. But mid to high 70s is very low. I’d train to bring up your cadence. It need not be 90+ rpm, but at least shoot for 80–85 rpm.
Over the years, my self-selected cadence grew from somewhere in the 80s to 90–105 rpm for flattish stuff. The self-selected cadence obviously depends on speed (and thus, on whether or not you are climbing).
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I’m 65 and also ride gravel and MTB. I found that doing a 15 minute warmup before even starting the workouts has helped me in increasing my cadence and mostly hitting the targets. My warmup tends to be pretty easy with a cadence of about 75to 80 rpm. Once I am warmed up riding at a higher cadence feels more natural.
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I am even lower than you, with my preffered cadence sitting around 70 and even 65s. I tried to lift it for a year, lost some power that year.
I’ve learned not to sweat it and let the cadence fall where it may. The only drawback as can see is during races: there’s simply not enough road resistance to chase attacks on the flats at these lower cadences (especially in the draft at higher speeds). So I have to go higher cadence for races. Other than that, no drawbacks I can see!
My trainer cadence certainly is what it used to be and I am only 48. Any long period of resistance seems to grind down to a level that meets the power target which tends to be around the high 60s to mid 70s. If I keep the cadence up I can’t sustain the power targets after 20mins or so. My cadences on road seem to be better when making an effort.
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50 year old singlespeeder here and I prefer mid to high 70’s as well. From what I’ve read and heard, it’s better not to think too much about it and just use your self selected cadence. That’s not to say that spinning a higher cadence every now and then would not be beneficial. It might.
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