Ride Smarter: Gearing, Cadence, and Cycling Efficiency Explained

Vanessa Ronksley: Hello friends, I'm Vanessa, your average traveler with elite level enthusiasm. And today we are talking about something that every cyclist uses, but not every cyclist fully understands. This includes myself. We are going to be talking about bike gearing. Whether you're completely confused by cassette numbers, you're not quite sure when you should shift, or you just know there are rides where your legs feel amazing, and other days where every hill feels personal. This episode is for you. Our guest today is Petrina Tulissi, who is a cycling coach based in Canada- and she actually lives just down the hill from me, but I've never met her in person. This is our first time meeting, so I'm extremely excited that she is here today to help us break down the basics of gearing, cadence, shifting, and how athletes can become smoother, smarter, and more efficient cyclists. I think that's what we all want. So we're going to be talking here today from everything about what the gears on your bike actually do, to how to shift properly, everything in between. How your cadence and gearing choices can impact fatigue, comfort, and performance. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world-class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warm-up.

Vanessa Ronksley: Well, Petrina, it is so wonderful to have you here on the TriDot Podcast. Thank you so much for being our guest of honor.

Petrina Tulissi: So great to be here, and thank you so much for having me for a topic I am super passionate about. This is going to be fun.

Vanessa Ronksley: This is going to be so much fun. Based on our previous conversations, I think we’re going to be giggling here and there too so I can’t wait for that. On our show, we like to start with a good warm up. Just like any good workout. You know, like to get the blood flowing, the neurons firing, all that good stuff. So the question I want to hear about from you is: what is the most humbled you have ever been on a bike?

Petrina Tulissi: This is such a great question, and I’m sure I have a better answer, but this is the first that came to mind. There is a climb called to Zoncolan climb in Italy that has been on my radar for a really long time (or was on my radar), and I had the opportunity to do it. And I’ve been riding for a really long time, and I’m like “I can get over and through anything”. I’ve got lost of skills, mental skills and physical skills. For those that don’t know the Zoncolan, it’s about a 10-kilometer climb, it averages over 20 percent in terms of grade. It’s like a wall. There was moments on that where I’m like “I don’t know if I can do this”. I went with a friend, and they were ahead of me and I had no way of communicating with them and I had to keep going even thought there were so many moments I wanted to quit. SO yeah, a moment where I went into it think, yeah I can do this. I know its’ going to be hard. But then once you’re on it, its like wow. And then watching the pros and people who really know what they’re doing, or do this for a living- they fly over it. It’s hard.

Vanessa Ronksley: That’s insane. So like, 10 kilometers, at 20 percent?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, and it showed it proved that you can ride under 4 kilometers per hour and stay upright. It took over an hour. Yeah.

Vanessa Ronksley: Oh my gosh. you're fast going up there if it only took an hour. That's insane. That would have taken me 8 hours, I think. But that's insane. Okay, so my answer for this one here is- it was probably when I was a really young kid. My family, we used to go on cycling trips in the San Juan Islands in the summers, and it was just so beautiful. All of the rides that we did- and I hate walking my bike up hills, especially when it's in public. And so, I think that this one time we went up a mountain. It was probably one of the first mountains that I had ever got to the top of on a bike. And it was very humbling because it was very hot outside, and I was maybe 11 or 12, and the road was busy, and I had to stop so many times just to be able to get enough water. We didn't know about electrolytes and fueling in those days so there were no snacks. It was just here's some water if you're thirsty. But just the fact of having to stop and then walk my bike up some of the areas. To me now, I'm sure it would not be challenging, but at the time it was very challenging both mentally and physically. And I was just embarrassed about having to walk my bike up the hill. But I do have to say, despite the fact that it was very humbling and it put me in my place, when I got to the top, that sense of pride and sense of accomplishment was so great that it inspired me to continue going up all of those hills. And maybe it was the start of why I love hill climbing so much. Who knows?

Petrina Tulissi: I love that. And the other thing too is you take these experiences and you learn from them and you can apply it to something else. So when you're having a hard day, you're like “Oh but this wasn't as hard right as when I had to stop and walk. At least I'm not walking”.

Vanessa Ronksley: Absolutely. Love it. So we like to throw this question out to the audience as well. So audience members, if you've had a humbling bike experience that you would love to share with us, please find us on any of our socials, and we can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Announcer: Let’s go.

Vanessa Ronksley: So Petrina, it is so great to have you here. I think that we really need to start off with a quick little background session on you. Because I don't even think I know very much about your background. So just give us a little bit of a brief history about who you are, and how you've come to love cycling so much, and where you're currently at with your cycling journey.

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, so I've loved cycling my whole life. And the Tour de France used to be on TV when I was little and I would watch it. And no one in my family is a cyclist, but there's something about the movement and the colors and the landscape that just I was in awe for 3 weeks every July. But I didn't know that you could race in Canada, because this is pre-internet days where you couldn’t Google search. And then in university I got into racing. I had a roommate who raced, and got me into it, and I just fell in love. It was just my passion. So I've been able to make a living at it. So I make a living as a coach. I started coaching in 1996, so I've been doing it for a long time. Currently I coach athletes, I do their programs from people that are new to the sport all the way up to those that are getting ready to get into the world tour. I have athletes from around the world. And then in the winter times I do Zoom sessions. So training people through a 5 month program, and then I also organize trips. So this year we'll be going to the World Championships. So if people want to join us for that, they're more than welcome to.

Vanessa Ronksley: The world championship of?

Petrina Tulissi: in Montreal. World Championship Road Cycling. My apologies. I know this is a TriDot podcast. But the World Road championships are gonna be in Montreal in September. So we'll be ready to go watch those. Yeah, that'll be super fun.

Vanessa Ronksley: No way. How do you qualify for something like that?

Petrina Tulissi: There's UCI points- there's a point system and then a national federation selects the team and yeah, it's a bit more complicated than gearing.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, right. I can't imagine that something's more complicated than gearing. Which is what we're hoping to dive into here. So I think that we need to talk about- we're shifting to bike. I there's gonna be a lot of puns about shifting here, I think, in this episode. So apologies in advance for the puns. So we are going to shift to this. I think we just need to know, what is all of the stuff that we have on our bike that's important, that has to do with right from the where the pedals insert into the cranks, all the way to the back end. What is all of that? Just explain to us so that we can start off at ground zero.

Petrina Tulissi: We’ll start with the gears. So your gears- on the front you have the chain rings. So you might have 1, you might have 2, you might have 3. And then in the back you have the cogs or the cassette. And there you might have up to 12, right? There's a variety of them. And then you have the chain that connects them. And it's the pedal that attaches to the crank. I'm oversimplifying this, but basically when you move those, that's what moves your chain. And then depending on if you have mechanical or electronic shifting, and I'll explain that in a second, but it's your shifters that get your chain to move between the gears. So if you have mechanical shifting, you have a cable that goes from your shifters all the way down into your derailers. The derailer is what moves the chain from each gear. If you have electronic, there might not be any cables. It's done electronically in a world I don't understand. But super fun, works, makes great sounds. So that's basically your shifting, it's your chain that's moving in between the cogs and the chain rings to either make it feel easier or feel harder.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, so we have the different parts. We've started off with the basics. Now there are a lot of different types of sizes of gears. Even if you look at different types of bikes- so you're looking at a road bike to a mountain bike, the size of the gear in the front might be different from one in the back. So can you talk to us a little bit about the sizes of the gears and what that means?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, so your chain rings on the front, the bigger they are, the harder it feels. And the bigness is visible. But they also have teeth. So if you look at your cogs or your chainrings, there's teeth on them. And you count each of those teeth to get a number. So if you hear someone say that they ride a 52, 36, or something like that, it means that there's 52 teeth or 36 teeth. Or if you have a cassette where it's like a 28, that means there's 28 teeth. So on the front gears- the chain rings- the bigger the gear, the harder. On the back, your cassette or your cogs, the bigger, the more teeth you have, or the bigger in appearance, the easier it is. So when someone says that you're moving up gears or moving down gears, that could be they're talking about the chain actually moving. So when they say moving up, they mean easier. Or you might have someone that's talking about gear inches, which is basically the combination of your chain ring and your cassette into a formula gives you a number that is the number of inches that your bike will travel in one pedal stroke. So the larger the gear inch- I know it gets super complicated. The larger the gear inch, the more your bike travels, the harder the gear. But that might be where they're using that as meaning easier/harder. So I'm gonna use the terms easier or harder just to keep it easy and easy to understand so we're all on the same page. But just know when you're talking to someone that says moving up or moving down, ask them what their definition is for that, because it can mean the opposite.

Vanessa Ronksley: Right. I think that I've started doing that with my athletes as well. We talk about easier or harder because to be honest, I have to go back and listen to what you said and write it down and make a little chart for myself to make sure that I understand. But I do also talk about moving to an easier or harder gear beause then everybody just understands that. It makes so much more sense.

Petrina Tulissi: Right. And then the other thing that is important to know is that- what does your right hand do and what does your left hand do? Right. So your right hand, more often than not, unless you're in the UK, it shifts the gears that are in the back, right? And your left hand shifts the gears that are in the front.

Vanessa Ronksley: Right. Unless you have a 1 by.

Petrina Tulissi: Unless you have a 1 by then your left hand just breaks. Yeah. And it's also important- I'm just thinking of all the… I've coached a lot of beginners. It's also important to know that your shifters are also your brakes, right? So when you're shifting, it's a sideways movement. When you're breaking, you're pulling back towards yourself. So it is important when you're shifting that you're not also breaking. I see people do that often.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, and why don't we want to do that?

Petrina Tulissi: We don't want to go slower. We only want to go faster.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay.

Petrina Tulissi: But it also just feels weird, right? So when you're putting the brakes on- if you have someone behind you, it's really dangerous, you're losing speed, you're losing your momentum. Cause we want to use- we're gonna talk throughout today about how gearing is meant to keep you moving forward, and being efficient, and using the least amount of energy. And the moment that you slow down or break, you have to compensate by going harder, and that's just wasted energy.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. Okay. That's all very good to know. So in terms of what our gears are actually doing, you've mentioned that it makes it either easier or harder for us. Is that how can you translate in that into effort level, how we would use this?

Petrina Tulissi: Yes. So I use the term “Goldilocks Rule” all the time. So if you're in a hard gear or a lower cadence, you're having to use your muscles quite a bit. And if you're in a high gear and a high cadence, or at least a high cadence for you, you're using- you get out of breath, right? It's more cardiovascular. So I like to think of gears as weights. So if you're putting harder gears in, it's like adding weight to your squats, right? So if you have a really heavy weight that you're squatting, or AKA, you're pushing a really hard gear and you're riding at a really low cadence, then you can only do so much of that before you fatigue. And then the other way, if you're doing… let's say we're squatting with just the bar, no weights on it, but we're going really, really fast. Our heart rate's gonna get super high. So when you're using your gears, it's always about finding the gear that's just right. And then you're like, well, how do I know which gear is right? So If you have a cadence that you know that you're comfortable at, right? So it's a cadence that's not too hard, not too easy, it feels just right. When you go about 5 RPM faster, then you want to go into a harder gear. And when you go 5 RPM slower, you go into an easier gear. So you kind of, for the most part of your riding- and there are times when you want to do a cadence outside of your comfort level- but for the most part, when you sort of leave that level that you're comfortable at or that you feel most efficient at. That's when you wanna change a gear. And where I see people losing efficiencies is they just stay in a gear. So if you're on a road that the terrain is changing all the time. So even though it looks like it's straight, it looks like it's flat, looks like it's the same elevation the whole way through, it's not. There's little nuances. And once you start to feel those nuances, you wanna change your gears, right? And you might change for 5 pedal strokes, and you might change back to where you were, right? But if you can use your gears a lot, it just helps with your efficiency and helps you moving forward and helps you save energy so you have it in those moments when you really need it, like climbing a hill or sprinting or something.

Vanessa Ronksley: Right. Okay. So there's so many things that you just alluded to that was getting my brain all firing here and wanting to ask a thousand different questions. Now you had mentioned that if you want to push more power, you have a bigger chain ring at the front. And I'm just wondering, how does that translate to something at the back? I have a very large cassette at the back. And someone was like ooing and awing at my bike and they're like, “Look how big that cassette is at the back”. And I'm like, but it's because it's easier. So can you just explain that that situation to people, like the difference in the size from the front to the back and how that affects us?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, and your nice big cog. You might even hear that called a dinner plate. So I'm gonna answer this in a little bit different way that you asked the question, but if we go back to gear inches- so gear inches again is the amount that your bike moves in one full pedal stroke, right? So if you start with your pedal vertical, or at the 12, and then you go one full pedal stroke until it's back to the 12 and you measure that distance- that's a gear inch. So even though you might have two gears on the front and you might have 12 gears in the back, the combination of your front gear and your back gear translates into gear inches that overlap. So even though you're like, Petrina, I have 12 in the back and two in the front, so I have 24 gears. It's like, well, yeah, you have 24 gears, but you might only have, let's say, 14 gear inches or gear ratios, right? So it is important that you understand that you can kind of accomplish the same thing whether you're on the small ring on the front or whether you're on the big ring in the front. That there's gears that are similar based on where your chain is on the back. So if your chain is on the smallest ring on the front, and if it's on the biggest cog in the back, then you're in your the easiest gear you've got. Granny gear, doesn't get any easier than- well, it depends on what you have in the back. So it sounds like you have a 32 cog, which means you have 32 teeth on your cog. Some people might only have a 25 cog, right? So it's smaller, which means that their easiest gear isn't as easy as your gear. And then it also depends on what you have on the front. So depending on where you ride, and the style of riding that you're doing, will kind of determine the gears that are best gonna help you. So if you're in a very hilly place, or if you have bad knees, or if you're a high cadence rider, then having those easier gears is beneficial. If you live somewhere flat, and you're a really strong, powerful rider and you ride at a lower cadence, then you are probably fine with those gears that are a little bit on the harder side. And then the other thing too is like, how do you know when you should change your gears on the front, right? So if you have 2- I'm gonna leave 3 out because that's more of a Turing thing and most people don't have that- so if you have 2 chain rings on the front, using them effectively and efficiently is super helpful. So if we go back to the cogs, or the cassette, or the gears on the back- and we break that into thirds. So let's say you have- we'll use a 12 gear, which means that you have 12 cogs in your cassette. So if you hear someone say I have a 10 speed, an 11 speed, a 12 speed, they're referring to the number of cogs that they have on their cassette. I'm gonna use 12 speed just because I can do the math easier on this one. So if we have 12 gears on our cassette, so there's 12 cogs in our cassette, and we break that into thirds, that means that you have 4 easy ones, 4 middle ones, and 4 hard ones. Right? So if we go back to the scenario where you're in your easiest gear on the front or your smallest chain ring, and you're in your easiest cog or the biggest, the one closest to your bike, where you're in your easiest gear. You have no more easy gears. So once you start to shift into harder gears, so you might shift 4 times, now you're getting to the middle of your cassette in the back, right? Somewhere before you get to the hardest cogs, or the hardest gears that you have, you do want to shift your front one. It's called cross-training. You want your chain to be as straight as possible whenever you're riding. So when you start to get into the- when you're in the middle of your cassette or your middle cogs, and you start to deviate from that middle, you need to make a decision about changing your front ones. And we've all done this, right? So let's say we're going back to where we started, we're in our easiest gear that we have. It gets harder. So we go harder, harder, harder, harder, harder. We've gone 12 shifts harder. So we have no more shifts. We're now in our hardest gear in the back, but we're still in our easiest in the front. Right? And then we're like, I need harder gears. So now you shift into your big chain ring or your harder gear on the front. And then what happens? It's like you've hit a wall and you've lost all of your speed and you're like, “my God, this is so hard”. And then the opposite happens. If you start in your hardest gear on the front, hardest in the back, and you go easy, easy, easy until you have no more easy ones in the back. And then you shift your front one. Now you're spinning and you've again lost all of your speed and all of your momentum. So it is important that you practice changing your front gears. And you want to change those front gears when you start to deviate from the middle. And then the other piece of that is whenever you shift your gears in the front or you shift with your left hand, you also need to be ready to shift with your right hand. So if we've gone from our big ring into our small ring, or we've gone from hard in the front to easy on the front, you want to be ready to do the reverse in the back. So we want to be ready to go 1 or 2 gears harder. So when you shift a gear, it should always feel kind of like you've done nothing. So if we go back to gear inches, you always wanna just deviate a little bit on the gear inches. So whenever you're changing a gear, it should just be a little bit of a difference.

Vanessa Ronksley: Right. Okay. That makes complete sense. And just to reiterate, when you have the scenario where you're on the big one in the front and the big one on the back, that's called cross chaining. Is that correct?

Petrina Tulissi: When you're in the hardest on the front and the hardest in the back, so yes, the biggest and the biggest, that's called cross training. And same as the reverse, right? So if you're on the easy on the front ,or smallest on the front, and hardest in the back or smallest on the back, then that's also called cross training. And what happens is that you're not as efficient in your movement. It's a lot of wear and tear on your chain as well. Right. But, the reason I'm harping on it a little bit is that you're just looking at losing energy and losing speed because your next gear choice is just such a big change in feeling.

Vanessa Ronksley: Right. So in terms of your cadence too, because you'll go from having a what you consider to be a- whatever cadence you're at, and if you then switch from the front to the back, you're going to either be mashing or you're going to be spinning uncontrollably.

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah. And either way you're losing 3 bike lanes. And then you have to make up for that. So what do we do in a race scenario? Well now we sprint. Well now it's we've lost all this energy in sprinting.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yes. Yeah. We refer to it often here on the podcast as “burning the matches”. So we want to minimize that as much as possible, especially on the bike, because if we're a triathlete, that is the point where you're in that discipline for the longest period of time. And if we continue to shift our gears improperly and burn those matches, that's going to seriously impact not only the rest of our bike, but also the run, right?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, and the difference between cycling and running too is that you have equipment to help you. So understanding how to get your bike to help you with momentum is also super important. So maybe this is where we transition into cadence, right? Where if you're riding at, I'm gonna argue if you're riding at 80 RPM or lower, then most likely you're using more of your muscles and you're muscling your bike, you're pushing on your bike. So if you can- cadence is trainable. So if you can start to train at a little bit of a higher cadence, and get comfortable at like 90 RPM, let's say, now all of a sudden you have some momentum working in your favor, you're not using your muscles as much, and that's just gonna save you for the run. So yeah, I encourage people to practice higher cadences. Yeah.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yes. I do have to throw in a little story here because I think it's kind of funny. I came from a strength training background and so when I came into the sport of triathlon, I was very strong and I had some cardiovascular abilities as well. I thought I was very fit and I had a family friend who asked me to do some testing at the university. She's like, you're a cyclist? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm a cyclist! Which actually means I commute to work or I ride around with my kids or something like that. And so she asked me to do this cycling, and she told me that very thing. She was like, just make sure that you don't go below a cadence of 80. And I didn't understand why. And so I ended up going through these very rigorous, VO2 Max-type tests. And they were testing my lactate and all these kinds of things, which I had no idea about at the time. And when I got to those hard, hard efforts, I really wanted to be pushing lower because I had strength. But it was exactly what you're saying. It's that momentum that you are losing as a result of the, just how the bike functions. And so I think it's really important to know that there is a difference between these cadences and how it affects our system and over the course, it's short course or long course, that low cadence can have a serious toll on the rest of our body. So tell us about a little bit more about cadence here and how we can, if we are one of those people who likes to spin at a lower cadence, how might we get better at utilizing a higher cadence? Yeah.

Petrina Tulissi: So in my group training sessions, which I now do on Zoom, we do a lot of high cadence work. And by high cadence I mean 120, 130, like 110, 120. They're not comfortable, people don't like it. And the pushback that I get is, but I'm comfortable at 80. It's like, well, you're just used to being at 80. Or the other thing I get is I don't feel connected to my pedals when I go faster. I pedal faster. We've all had that feeling where I'm pedaling air. And I'm, well, yeah, but wouldn't you rather pedal air than pedal mud? It's easier. Yeah. But cadence- and I'm gonna say this over and over and over again- cadence is trainable. And it's when I read those studies where it shows that all people were most efficient at 80, or most efficient at 60, or most efficient wherever. But they never trained them to see if they could also be efficient at a different RPM. RPM, cadence, same thing, right? Revolution per… my goodness, what is RPM?

Vanessa Ronksley: Minute.

Petrina Tulissi: Thank you! Acronym I've been using. So I would encourage everyone to practice cadences outside of their comfort level so that you at least have them in your toolbox for when you need them. So I'm gonna focus on the high cadence first. The high cadence stuff is really helpful when it comes to accelerations. If you can increase your cadence first before going into a harder gear, you're going to accelerate quicker. In this case, I'm not saying that you need to pedal at 130 RPM when you're accelerating. But if you're an 80 RPM person, if you can accelerate to 100 RPM and then change your gears, you're gonna get 3, 4 bike lengths on someone without even trying. While they're changing into a harder gear and catching up. So that's one. The other thing too is whenever you change a gear, if you increase your cadence a little bit, I just mean 3 to 4 RPM. If you increase your cadence just a little bit before you change that gear, that's also gonna save you energy and create forward momentum. It's like revving the engine when you drive a stick shift, which we all do- that's a joke for the age appropriate.

Vanessa Ronksley: I have one! I have a manual car.

Petrina Tulissi: Super fun. But if you can kind of rev that engine before you shift into the gear, it's helpful. The other reason that being comfortable at higher cadences is each cadence uses different muscle groups, right? So if you are doing a TriDot, if you're doing an IRONMAN, and you're out there all day, and running is all muscles, why not save those muscles on the bike? So if you're riding at an 80 rpm or lower. You're just fatiguing the same muscles that you're gonna use for running. So if you can get up to that 90 to 100 RPM, it's just helpful. It's just helpful. Right? And you'll start to feel that moment where it's like, the bike is helping me out. The bike and I are a team, right? You guys wanna be a team. It's like riding a horse. You wanna be a unit. So just getting the equipment to help you and be in your favor is super helpful. And then you're gonna have people, depending on their physiology, who are comfortable at 105 RPM or those that are comfortable at 88 RPM, right? But you wanna find- it's really finding that moment where your legs aren't working too hard and your lungs aren't working too hard. It's the Goldilocks Rule, it’s just right. But again, I'm gonna argue that you can train you can train both, right? So if you're like, but I get so out of breath when I go over 90 RPM, well then practice it and train it. And maybe you do 30 seconds 4 times every ride that you do. And in 2 weeks you'll be like, I'm now comfortable at this cadence. So then you up it a little bit, 5 RPM the next time. So start at 90, 95, 100, 105, 110. The other thing that is really helpful for high cadence stuff is that it wakes up your nervous system. So you can use it as a tool for a warm up. You can use it as a there's a tool for all kinds of things.

And then the other thing too- and just one more on this one- is there's situations where increasing your cadence is going to be more beneficial than changing your gear. So if you have, let's say, if you're doing an overpass that's like 10 pedal strokes, if you just increase your cadence on that versus changing your gears, you'll actually be a little bit quicker. So there's moments too where cadence is more efficient than changing gears.

Vanessa Ronksley: So you would increase, like make it easier or harder to get off the overpass to conserve that efficiency?

Petrina Tulissi: So if I was gonna use my gears, I would go into an easier gear. If I'm gonna use my cadence, I would just keep my cadence high. I see. So it's a little bit more effort, but it's only 10 pedal strokes. And that's just gonna help keep your momentum up and get you accelerating up and over the top of that crest.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yes. Okay. And that is actually something that I like to do. I'm not sure if this is appropriate practice or not, but you know that we live in a hilly area here. And when I'm riding out in the back roads, I do like to- when I'm coming up to the crest of that hill, I do like to increase my cadence and then shift to a harder gear because I know that when I get to that top of that hill, then I can continue to increase the difficulty because maybe a downhill's coming or a flat is coming. Is that wasting energy or is that making me faster?

Petrina Tulissi: It depends. I did have a red flag that went up. I'm like, you're doing it too soon. Changing gears is all about feeling, right? So as soon as it feels too hard or as soon as it feels too easy, you need to change a gear. Well, you don't need to, I highly suggest, right? So again, going back to I feel most comfortable at- when I'm riding on my own, I'm most comfortable at 88 RPM. When I'm riding with a group, I'm at 99 RPM. And the reason for that is at a higher cadence, I can micro adjust my speed to the group. If I need to react to what the group is doing, a higher cadence allows me to do that. I can micro move or micro adjust the pressure on the pedals, right? Going back to gear inches. The bigger the gear, the more coverage you get for one pedal stroke. Harder gear, you move farther. So if you're riding with someone and you're constantly catching them and then it you have to take off the pressure and then you're catching them, you're probably in too hard of gear. But regardless. Let's go back to this scenario of we're getting to the top of a hill. I'm at my 88 RPM because that's where I'm happy. You want to wait for the feeling of the road flattening out before you change into that gear. Right? So it's waiting for, it's listening to your legs versus your eyes for the most part. Right. So it's like, as soon as my cadence feels too easy, that's when I'm changing. So whether you're on a flat or a hill, going uphill, downhill, cresting, it's all the same. As soon as it feels too hard, you go easier. As soon as it feels too easy, you go harder. Right. And again, using that 10 RPM window. So if I'm happy at 88, that means between 83 and 93 I'm staying within that range. The other question for you, let's say you're in your easiest gears at the top of the hill, right? So it's a hill that's steep enough that you need to be in your easiest gear. When do you shift into your big ring?

Vanessa Ronksley: This question doesn't apply to me because I have a 1 by. But I would say based on our earlier conversation, if I did have a 2 by, I would go into- when I would shift from the easiest gear into the middle of the cassette, and then I would shift into the bigger ring on the front to make it hard. Is that correct?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah. And then when you shift into that bigger ring, also be ready to shift with your right hand, right? Right. And I see people do that all the time- I'm at the top of the hill and they go into their big ring and now they've lost their real momentum, right? So it's so much work to get going again. So when you're doing back to this scenario, when you get to the top of the hill, increase your cadence, then one gear harder, increase your cadence, one gear harder, increase your cadence, one gear harder. Right. And when you get to that 5th or 6th shift- again we're thinking of a 12 speed- then that's when you would shift into your big ring on the front and be ready to go one gear easier in the back. So again, every time you shift, it should feel like you've only changed things a little bit. And if you feel that you've changed things a lot, then your timing is off, or you haven't corrected quickly enough.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. And that is going to translate into putting out too much effort and potentially spiking your heart rate, spiking your power output, all of those things that we want to try and mitigate. So would you say that- you had talked about cadence. I know a lot of people would say, should you ease your pressure briefly on the pedal? To allow for a cleaner shift? Does that save your chain or does that help? Or are you losing a lot of power and momentum if you do that?

Petrina Tulissi: So it depends on if you have mechanical or electronic and the type of electronic or mechanical that you have. But, going back to wanting to increase your cadence a little bit first before doing that gear shift, because you are going to ease up a little bit when you shift those gears. And it's just human nature where it's like, you're focused on the shifting that you forget to pedal for a little bit, Yeah. Like I can't multitask, right? So it's like I can only do one thing at a time. But yeah, so that solves that. So just increase your cadence a little bit before you change the gears, and then that easing up on the pedals isn't affected because you've anticipated that by increasing your RPM. The other thing with this too is when you're going into really hard gears under load- so let's say that you're going up a hill and you're like, shoot, I didn't realize that this went from 3 percent to 12 percent. It turned into a wall, right? And you get stuck in your big chain ring because you didn't shift out of your big chain ring soon enough that's a situation where because your chain is under such load because you're having to push so hard to get up this steep grade, that's one where you do need to ease up on the chain or ease up on the pedals in order to get it to shift, right? And now you're like, but Petrina, I can't. I'm gonna fall overif I stop pedaling, right? So that's a situation where you sometimes are best just to stay in your big chain ring and stand up and just accept that, yeah, I made a mistake. I won't do that again. I'll shift sooner next time. Yeah, so when you're in a situation where you have a lot of torque or a lot of pressure on your chain, you do need to ease up quite a bit in order to actually get it to move, to give it enough slack so it has room to move into the other gear that you're asking it to. Which comes back to shifting in the middle, right? Because that cross chaining, anytime that you do cross chaining, you're putting a lot of pressure on that chain and you're preventing it from moving easily.

Vanessa Ronksley: And is that when you would be more likely to hear a clunk? If you hear a clunk when your gears are shifting, is that an indication that you're doing it at the complete wrong time?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah. And you might hear the clunk when there's- yeah, you shouldn't hear a clunk. You shouldn't hear any grinding either. You also shouldn't hear scraping, screaming. You shouldn't hear any of them

Vanessa Ronksley: Unless it's screaming 'cause you made an error in when you're supposed to be shifting. Right.

Petrina Tulissi: Or screaming because you're like man, I did it! And a good way to practice this is you can do this. I like doing this where there's a downhill and then an uphill because you can really feel it, but you can also do this on a flat. So if you're doing a downhill, then an uphill, you would be in your hardest gear, right? So big ring on the front, biggest cog- or sorry, smallest cog on the back. Yep. so you're going down the hill, you're in your hardest gear, right? And then the when the hill starts to either flatten out or when the road starts to flatten out, or starts to go uphill, and you start to feel those moments of, all of a sudden this gets harder- you go one gear. And it's really important when shifting that you go one gear at a time. You take a moment to feel it, assess, and then make a choice on the next one. So in this scenario, it gets harder, you go one shift, right? Harder again, 2nd shift, 3rd shift, 4th shift, 5th shift. On that 5th or 6th shift is when you're going into your easy ring on the front or your small ring on the front. Right. And then also going one gear harder on the back, potentially. And then you keep shifting from there. And when you get it just right, it feels like you haven't done anything. It's a beautiful feeling. And you can also practice this on flats. So I encourage people to practice, right? Because if you don't practice, then you just won't get better. So try that. So you're really understanding, okay, when I shift my small ring now and I shift in the back here and this is where I'm doing it- you'll feel when you get it right, because nothing's changed. You're right. Your momentum has continued to go. You should accelerate forward with every gear change, whether that's going easier or harder.

Vanessa Ronksley: I do actually love that feeling of when you're going down a hill and then you're coming up into another hill and you're in your hardest and then you just keep your cadence the same. You're just going along, your cadence is going, it feels a little bit too hard. Okay, I'm shifting. I'm gonna make that a little bit easier. And then you just go until you get to the end of your gearing and then you're like, here we go, game on. Let's pound out.

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, and then your choice is to stand up or to just keep putting pressure on the pedals and just- but trying to keep that cadence up and keeping that momentum is is gonna best help you up the hill by using the least amount of energy.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, that is wonderful. Now I have a scenario here. I do recommend- I'm not sure if you do this for your athletes as well, but when we have a bike course, I highly recommend that my athletes do a recon, a driving recon, the day before the race or whenever they arrive at the race site to notice all of the little details, like the potholes and the speed bumps and all of the things that might impact your ability to have a safe ride. But something that I noticed when I was riding in Nice, something that was really good to do in the car was to see where the hills were. And one thing that I found was really, really important to practice on the bike itself was when you're coming down a hill into a corner and then you turn and it goes up into a hill right away. Can you explain what the best method is? Like we're talking a pretty decent down and up in percent grade. How do you mitigate that type of situation? Because you're coming down, you're going into a corner. So you have to have your- you can't be pedaling on that sharp corner. How do you do that?

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah, and another way that you can analyze the course is technology is so great now. So you can go onto Google Maps, you can take that little yellow guy and you can plop him on the road and you can do the whole course that way too. So even before you get to the race, you can analyze the course, you get a sense of what the road conditions are like, how wide or how narrow, what the turns are like. And then you can also through other technology, like Ride with GPS or Garmin or Strava, any of those, you can also see the grades of the climbs, right? So you can see, I have this turn and then it goes into an 8% or 9% grade. For those that don't understand percentages of hills, the higher the number, the steeper the hill. But yeah, so that's one. That understanding what you're in for is really important. Back to your question, other scenarios that are similar to this are doing a corner that then the wind changes, or you're doing a 180 degree turn, or… there was another one that I thought of the other day. Anyway, but anything where its like, “the road is changing, I need to anticipate for that”. Those are scenarios where changing your gears before being affected by the wind, the incline, the speed change, and a turnaround are important. I could talk for hours on this one too. So understanding when to start and finish braking, and how to carry your speed through those moments, is also really important. But I would say if you know that you're doing a steep turn, or a strong turn into a steep hill, or a turn into a strong headwind, or even a 180 degree turnaround.. you want to exit those moments in the gear that's right for that situation, which means changing the gears before you enter into them. So you want to change the gear before you get to the turn. And if you can pre-ride- so for short course stuff, you can often pre-ride, long course you can't. Well, maybe you could- but if you can pre-ride it and spend some moments on those more technical elements, super important.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah. Okay. That makes total sense. Now you had talked about wind, which is something that I think more triathletes experience than hill changing potentially, because you can have a completely flat course. But on that flat course or on that hilly course, we can have wind situations. So what would you say in terms of gearing? How do we adjust to the wind as a headwind and potentially even as a tailwind? What do we do with our cadence and our gearing to get the best out of that?

Petrina Tulissi: So I'm gonna go back to what you mentioned watts earlier, right? I think most people are now training with watts, have watts, know that if - I'm at I'm happy at 250 watts and that's my 80 RPM and 250 watts, I'm happy here, right? I'm just gonna hold this. You can hold 250 watts in different gears at different cadences. So I would also encourage you to practice that in training because- yeah, this is maybe my pet peeve with watts, is that everyone understands that if I just go into a harder gear, I can get higher watts. But it's not sustainable, and it uses a lot of energy. You're fatiguing your muscles, you're fatiguing your anaerobic system, you're fatiguing your glycogen stores, right? All kinds of stuff. And if you're doing something that's like, any triathlon whether it's Olympic, half, full, right? Like the bike part, it's long. You wanna save all of your glycogen stores, all your anaerobic stores for the run. So I would encourage everyone in training to practice holding their race watts at different cadences so that you have that in your toolbox. So that you can ride in the headwind at 90 RPM and you're 250 watts. Or when the terrain gets- when you're getting close to the end and you increase it to 100 RPM, but you're still at 250 watts, right? But it's giving your muscles a break to get ready for the run. The other thing that people- I will answer your question. But the other thing that people don't realize too is that your- just because we call it an easy chain ring and a hard chain ring doesn't mean that your front gears should only be used when you see something that's easy or see something that's hard, right? So your small chain ring is effective outside of climbing hills. And I have a colleague who had a rule that if you weren't going 30 kilometers per hour, you weren't in your big chain ring. Small chain ring until you get over 30 kilometers per hour. And if you have something like that just in the back of your mind, practice it. You'll start to understand how many gear changes you make to be effective and efficient. So going back to the headwind one. It's like you're in a headwind, you're pushing really hard, it feels really difficult. Sometimes it's something as easy as going from your big ring into your small ring, 2 cogs harder. And then all of a sudden you've changed your gear inches just a little bit. Or changed your gearing just a little bit, but it's enough to help you get on top of your pedal stroke and to get that momentum back, and to still hold your race watts. So gearing is your friend, and you'll only understand it by playing with it and changing it lots, and moving things around. So even in a race scenario, it's like “this feels hard. What happens if I go one gear easier? What happens if I change into my small ring?” And then also understanding- and you can Google this. But your small ring, what gears are basically the same. So whether you're on your small ring or your big ring, what cogs do you need to be in in those gears that are basically the same gearing. And so many- I am a roadie, I have to pick on triathletes at some point in this podcast. But it's common for people to just stay in their big ring because they're like, I only need the small one for going uphill. But you're actually more effective and efficient if you're in your small ring. And I had a friend who was one of the fastest on the group rides, just mega fast, built like a billy goat. And they would do the ride at 105 RPM in their small ring the entire time. And they're the fastest one in the group. They're doing 40k an hour. So just know that big and small don't mean easy and hard. It's just that there's a time and a place. And play with it.

Vanessa Ronksley: I wish that I had talked to you when I was carting my children around and the one was in the seat on the back of the bike and the other was in the trailer. And I had this misconception that you just said- that the small ring is the easy one. I would never go into the small ring because I felt like it was a personal attack on my strength. And so I would be going up the hill and I would be mashing and I would be dying, and my quads would be burning. And I was like, “I will not go into the small ring because it makes me weak” or something. So I'm glad that you've cleared up. That is a massive misconception. And we need to use this technology that we have. It could make you a better cyclist- it will make you a better cyclist. So I love that. I love that so much.

Petrina Tulissi: The other one that I love is that you're going up a climb and you're seeing someone suffer and you're like, you have one more gear, you have another easy gear. And they're like, Yeah, I know, I'm saving it. I'm like, saving it for what? It doesn't expire. Just use it. You need it now, right? So just know that gears are your friend. Use them. And it's really important that you practice, because if you don't practice, then you won't understand how to best use them. For yourself. And by practice I mean using them a lot, trying different things, but also going outside your comfort zone so that that becomes your comfort zone.

Vanessa Ronksley: We talk about that so much, about the discomfort that you experience in your training will translate to all areas of being all areas of your life and being able to withstand that discomfort. And so I think that it's a really good reminder to think about this in terms of gearing as well, because I know for myself I've never thought about that specifically. But I'm just curious, when you're training these different gearing, when you're practicing your gearing, how would you practice that outside and how would you practice that inside?

Petrina Tulissi: Great question. So outside, there's so many different ways. So one of the- I'm just gonna tell a story because you just you're talking about discomfort and this just made me think of the story where I had an athlete who again, in my Zoom classes, we practice riding at 110, 120 RPM. And I don't expect people to spend a lot of time there. I just expect them to be able to get there in moments when they need it, right? Or moments where it could be effective. And one of those moments is because so many people have electronic gearing and either don't always remember to charge their batteries or the shifter leans on something and the battery drains. So I had an athlete who was doing a big event like a Gran Fondo and his battery died halfway through it. So being able to ride at 110 and 120 RPM is really helpful when you're stuck in one cure. So yeah. He was like, yeah, it was fine, it was fine because I could do it. But how to train this outside is A. just to do it, right? So again, I don't expect people to spend a lot of time at 120 RPM, but spending a little bit of time in those higher cadences, start with 5 RPM faster than what you're comfortable, right? And just make a goal of okay, I'm gonna do 5 times 30 seconds at this cadence. And then as soon as that becomes comfortable, you either change it to a minute or you go up another 5 RPM. So it's a little bit of work for every ride that's gonna have a big payout. And then you can do the same thing inside, right? So just riding in different RPMs, riding in different cadences, just to get used to being comfortable with it. In terms of understanding how and when to change a gear, outside it's based on feeling, right? So it's again if you can find a place that has a good downhill and then an uphill, and then you can just practice fine-tuning it and you'll know when you get it right because you just fly up that hill, right? It's like we said, you have this feeling of, my God, this is just so fast. I feel so strong, I'm so good. So just practicing it and then also remembering to use your gears a lot. So when you're outside, you can shift every 5 pedal strokes if you need to, right? As I used to do outdoor interval training and I there was a loop that we would do. And in that loop, there was, it didn't look like an elevation change, but it went from 0% to 2% for about, let's say, 10 meters. And that was enough with me just going one gear easier and the person beside me not, I would get a bike length on them. Again, it's small and it's tiny, but you could feel it. So even though you can't see it, really focus on what you're feeling on the bike and what the road is translating to your body through your bicycle so that you can just constantly change your gears. The other thing that's helpful is a lot of people don't even know what gear they're in. So just test yourself, right? I think I'm in the middle. You don't need to know exactly, but are you in the easy third, middle, or hardest third, right? And then you just take a peek when it's safe, and you can take your eyes off the road and you're not around people and there's no cars, just take a look. I think I'm in close to the hardest gear I've got. yeah, sure enough, that's where I am. Right. So you start to test yourself and then you can feel it. Or you just if you're a person that likes numbers and can just count it your whole ride, you’ll know where you are. Inside, in terms of training, you can use these for your intervals. So when you're- let's say you're doing 5 minutes at 150 watts, and then you need to increase it to 200 watts. So again, you would increase your cadence a little bit first and then change your gears and then see how you can use the least amount of energy for that increase in wattage or speed, or what the ask is. But play around with it that way. And do it all the ways, right? So you can do it where, what happens if I go into a harder gear first and then I try and accelerate? What happens if I go into an easy gear first and then try and accelerate? What happens if I spike it or stand up? Right. So try different approaches. And by trying all of those approaches- I call it throwing spaghetti against the wall. So you'll start to feel what works and what doesn't.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, I have a really random question, just because I love hearing different people's opinion on this. What is your thought on erg mode on the trainer inside?

Petrina Tulissi: Personally I like it because then I don't have to think.

Vanessa Ronksley: Haha yeah.

Petrina Tulissi: But yeah, any effort that is less than 1 minute, I would turn erg mode off. Because what happens is the tension just hits too- more often than not, the tension hits so quickly that's like hitting the wall and it's hard to get on top of it. And then the other thing with those efforts that are under a minute is- if you're off of erg mode, you can practice all this stuff, right? So you can see how to most effectively get to the ask. And then alsom let's say you're doing 10 times 30 30s, right? 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds rest. If you start to fatigue, being off of erg mode in those allows you to have that fatigue but still go and see if you can get through it, right? Or even you should get through it, right? Or it allows you to take an extra, I need a break on this one, I need to skip one, right? So yeah, I say under a minute, go off of erg mode, it just connects too hard. I also think that if you've listened to this conversation and you're like, I just go into 1 gear and ride when I'm outside. I would encourage you to also be off erg mode on the train or at least for some of your rides, so that you can actually practice how to use your gears and how to train different- you can train different RPMs on erg mode as well, but when you're off of erg mode, you actually feel how to use your gears and how to use your leg speed to get to the ask. Right. So yeah.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think that is super important. Especially there are a lot of people who train on the trainer due to weather conditions or safety. And so people tend to get comfortable on the trainer and fall into patterns. And so I think that it's really valuable to go off of erg mode, especially if you're coming up to a race. There's some athletes there who, their roads are just starting to be rideable at this point, and they have a race coming up. Or if you're doing an early season race and you're doing mostly trainer rides, I think that coming off of that erg mode to practice those various things is probably a good idea.

Petrina Tulissi: Super helpful, but where erg mode might actually be helpful is if you're training for something that's a sustained effort- I'm gonna go back to the 250 watts for let's say an hour, right? So let's say you're doing something, I'm just throwing stuff out there. But if you need to hold a certain wattage because you're training for a triathlon or a climb or whatever, a time trial, that's a situation where you can play around with cadence. Right. So it's like, okay, I'm on erg mode. It's forcing me to hold whatever the wattage is. But what happens if I hold it at 60 RPM? What happens, right? So five minutes at 60, five minutes at 70 rpm, five minutes at 80 rpm, five minutes at 90 rpm. So you can actually feel the differences. You're still going in this case, you're still going the same speed, right? I argue that watts and speed are not the same thing. You wanna be doing the average speed when you're outside. So understanding what that also means in terms of what- that's a whole other podcast. But for this one, it's like, yeah, what happens when you're holding different cadences at the wattage that you're trying to hold for your race? And then that will help you understand, okay. This one didn't feel comfortable, but I think if I train again 90 RPM or 100 RPM, if I train this for a little bit and then come back to the workout a month later and be like, yeah, no, now that is my most economical, most efficient zone. I thought I was 80, I trained 90 and now I can do 90 and that actually feels better.

Vanessa Ronksley: I love that. That idea of training indoors and keeping the power output the same, but altering your cadence and seeing what that feels like. I think that's an amazing idea and something to explore as those trainer rides in the winter can sometimes get boring. Well, here's something fun for you to try. Give it a go. That's wonderful.

Petrina Tulissi: Same with the gear change one too. If you're doing it where you're practicing your gear changes, when you're inside, you can stay hyper focused on your numbers. And you'll know when you've done it right because your numbers shouldn't change, right? So it's if let's say you're practicing changing between your big ring and your small ring, if you see your watts- or your let's go with speed on this one- if you see your speed change or your cadence change, then you weren't effective at that gear change. So it's another way you can sort of practice these things inside of- yeah.

Vanessa Ronksley: Love that. That's wonderful. So we're coming up to our last question here. So if listeners only take 1 thing away from this, this entire conversation that we've had and apply it to their next ride, what should it be?

Petrina Tulissi: I have to go with 2. I'm sorry. 1 is that cadence is trainable and that by being comfortable in a wide variety of cadences, you then have them in your toolbox for when you need them. So adding in a little bit of high cadence, whatever that means for you- and again my athletes are 120, 130s- that's one of them. But I think the main thing is just use your gears a lot. Change gears all the time. All the time.

[Transition Sound Effect]

Vanessa Ronksley:. All right, here we are, everybody. We are at the cooldown. We like to ask our audience members to submit questions so that we can ask our experts and you can get a fabulous answer. So here we have a question from Megan. And Megan is asking you, Petrina, “I'm interested in doing some hill repeat sessions and I'm wondering how to work that into my training”. So what do you think about that, Petrina? Hill repeats. Sounds kind of fun to me, but I'm sure it sounds like torture to everybody else, maybe.

Petrina Tulissi: Yeah. And this is, I hear this question in all kinds of different ways. So it's a great question. There's a whole bunch of answers. So one is, why do you want to get better at hills? If you want to do hill repeats because you're training for something that is long and sustained, I would argue that just- and this goes against everything I just said in this podcast- but going into those harder gears and riding at 60 RPM is going to build the strength, and then also getting into the gym to build strength, is gonna best help you on something that's long and sustained if that's what you're training for. If you want to do hill repeats because you're, I keep getting dropped on the hills, I keep getting dropped on the hills, I keep getting dropped on the hills, then maybe that's a gearing thing, maybe that's understanding when to stand up. Maybe that's working some of the anaerobic stuff. So you can apply that into the hill climbs by- going back to the 30 30s we talked about, right? You can do a climb where you do 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds easy, 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds easy. So that you start to get a feeling for what it feels like to ride faster on the climbs. If it's something where you're like, I just like doing them. I wanna do them, I wanna get the strength from it, I want to get the aerobic capacity from that- then I would look at all the stuff that you're doing in a week so that I think it's really common for master athletes and for triathletes to forget that you need rest and you need time to rebuild from the workouts in order to get the benefit of it. So if you're in the gym on Monday, and you're doing a hard run on Tuesday, and you want to do hill repeats on the bike on Wednesday, and then on Thursday you're doing a Fartlek something something, and then on Friday it's your day off by doing intervals in the pool- then I would suggest looking at the times that you're doing all those workouts, right? So even though you might be doing something every day, if you're doing something Tuesday night, and then something Wednesday morning, and then something not again until Thursday night, then that might be enough time for your body to just sort of regroup and be ready to go again. So look at the timing between all of your workouts to make sure that you can actually benefit from what it is that you're trying to benefit from. And then what's the purpose of doing the climbs that you can best mimic what you're trying to train?

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