Hi @Kiwi, welcome to the forum!
In your extreme example, the advice from @JGreengrass still stands (mind the pun).
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Thanks for the welcome. Admittedly I’ve signed up because of googling this issue.
I don’t think there’d be many people who could hold their body in midair with their arms at an angle from the handlebars. The pedals/resistance/force is going to support standing a lot more easily at 300w than 100w. So whilst techniques can help, the baseline issue is not enough resistance for beginners to be able stand to support their body weight.
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Ever stood on a seesaw?
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Care to elaborate? If you stand on a seesaw, you won’t be hovering off the ground. It’ll fall until the resistance of the ground supports your weight. Not sure how that applies?
I’d love to see those with more experience demonstrating standing at 100w power and 50 cadence to show how easily it is done.
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You can stand in the pedals, with little to no resistance - and even rotate them - without even holding onto the bars; but that takes a lot of control, leg and core strength, and balance. Doing so with support from your hand on the bar is much easier but obviously not always comfortable, especially if your weight is too far in front of the axle e.g hunched over the bars.
That said, I really don’t like standing at lower load -and it used to be really clunky - but, for me, the biggest single factor that improved things was core strength and stability. Others mileage may vary etc obviously.
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One thing I will recommend is riding Elements of Style every week until you have the techniques down pat. It’s really a great training film on all the aspects of spinning the crank smoothly
To clarify, ever stood on the middle of the seesaw and balanced?
Ah. I see where you’re coming from. Still not sure if it’s comparable because anyone can stand at the balancing point of a seesaw without issue. Whereas when you’re pushing down on a pedal, your opposing leg isn’t taking the weight as much as the resistance of the force (wattage) opposing it from the bike itself. More wattage = easier to stand. That is surely an indisputable fact?
Fair. I guess it’s a mixture of both then really. But again, more wattage will mean it is easier to stand regardless of core strength. But of course you’ll need more wattage as you gain overall strength anyway
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Yes resistance makes the balancing easier the same as it would be easier to balance on a seesaw if there were hydraulic dampers applying resistance to slow down the speed it rocked.
If you can’t stand at high cadence or with low resistance its shows that there is lots of room to improve your pedaling technique and importantly pedaling efficiency, that is free watts.
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Agree with this. Definitely think of it as opportunity to improve rather than “too hard.”
Amd to help that improvement, I say feel free to implement your own progression. Eg if the workout says to pedal standing for 60 seconds and you can only do 10 before the balance challenge tires you, do the ten and sit down. Then next time, try to get to 15, then thirty, etc etc.
If you do your best, and challenge yourself to improve, you will get better even before you’re able to complete the workout as written. Same concept as how someone who can’t do a pull up learns to do a pull up: you may need to start w something less than the task, then work up to the task
ETA: getting more agile and balanced on the pedals helps for more than just pedaling efficiency. Balancing on level pedals, and then levering them up or down to shift weight and carve turns, is a fundamental skill, maybe THE fundamental skill, of MTB. Getting more coordinated at standing should help your handling skills too.
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Isn’t it interesting that there aren’t workouts that specifically lower the resistance to help train standing technique so as to not rely on that resistance. Fact is, balance is one aspect but resistance is the determining factor that allows a cyclist to stand up on their pedals more easily. Beginners with lower wattage will find this more difficult regardless of their own strength because of the simple calculation of body weight to resistance (wattage). Even today I got a tip from Apple Health Fitness that states ‘As you stand, you want to keep adding resistance until you feel enough stability and support underneath your feet.’ In ERG mode the wattage is too low as a beginner to comfortably stand on the pedals. It really has little to do with strength aside from the fact that strength gains will eventually add more resistance inputted by the system.
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Doing Elements of Style is what brought me here in the first place. This session should specifically tell you to not do the exercise in ERG mode unless you’re above a certain baseline wattage. It should teach you to add enough resistance in level mode so that you can comfortably stand on your pedals which will then be more effective in training the muscles you need for standing. Training beginners to stand without resistance seems counterproductive and I would guess potentially leads to bad form/injuries.
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You really don’t need machine applied resistance, because as @JGreengrass has pointed out, you have a foot on the opposite pedal too.
Part of good bike control is controlling your balance on the bike and sometimes that involves applying opposite resistance on the pedals to keep the bike moving the way you need it to.
On the flat when you’re spinning you try to unload the rear pedal as much as possible, when riding technical sections not so much.
Good bike balance is across all contact points, hands, feet and potentially saddle. Yes, it would be hard with no resistance to just fully load your front foot and unload your rear, but you don’t have to do that.
More resistance certainly makes it easer to balance, but on a static trainer people should be able to pedal at pretty much any cadence they choose with zero resistance if you’ve got good body control.
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