How to Climb Steep Hills Easily

Climbing is a work against gravity, and most thrills and pains in cycling are caused by vertical terrain. In fact, your performance depends on the ratio between the power and weight. As a result, smaller riders are spending less power to climb than the bigger. Have you found that good climbers are always the small? Some exceptions existing spend much more power so their weight isn’t so important. Here I list a few tips which climbing better depends on for you.

Climb Steep Hills

Stand / Sit
You want to know which is better in climbing? In fact, the answer is not only. You need to stand to generate power when climbing short hills, which provides your riding with more oomph. In the case, your body weight is used to push down the pedals. However, there is one thing bad that your legs expend more energy to support your weight and the bike’s movement forward. On the other hand, you need to sit to let the saddle support your weight and your leg overcome gravity. Obviously, bigger cyclists would like to sit and the smaller would like to stand.

As a result, you’d better find a way best for you. For instance, be careful about the efficiency of each way. Mix them if you find it best for you to both stand and sit in climbing. Get clear the proportion of standing or sitting to make a fastest and the most efficient climbing.

Keep your rhythmClimb Steep Hills
When you pay attention to the rhythm, the speed that you use on pedals may help your climbing better than not do so. A good rule of thumb is to cycle in lower gears and a higher rhythm. Although in some race climbing, it’s better to ride in a single and fixed gear. In long climbing, you should spin smaller gears. It means that you should cycle in a stable rhythm, for instance, 90 rpm in a gear which makes you feel comfortable and easy.

What important is to keep your rhythm and the degree of your effort on the whole climbing. Adapt to the gradient by changing your gears. It means that you need to do some work to know the length and gradient of the hill before you actually go climbing. Make sure that you know how much effort you are able to expend and how much you can actually keep all the time for climbing. When standing to overcome the change of a gradient or relieve the ache of your muscles, remember to keep pressure on your pedaling and rise up a gear for keeping the rhythm.

Control your power outputClimb Steep Hills
Many cyclists don’t think that they can be trained to be good at hill climbing when not having many chances to climb. In fact, it’s a matter of power output, which can also be realized on flat roads with your mind. You can do it as someone who cycles in short and intense intervals with a speed of 30 seconds at over 30 MPH, does what many riders do and gets on his turbo trainer when dark. The key is to pay more attention to the intensity but not the hours or miles on the saddle.

To improve your power output, jump squats. Also, you can use a pair of dump-bells which weighs about 30% of the weight you can squat once. Stand with your feet in the width of your hip. Hold the bells at the length of your arm close to your thighs. And your palms should face each other.

When your chest out and shoulders back, draw your hips back and bend your knees to assume a position of squat, as a result, your legs are in an angle of 90-degree. Jump strongly and exhale the whole, which straighten out your body up and into the air. Keep arms by your side and lift the bells as rising. When descending, inhale, draw hips back, and bend knees to land gently back to the position where you start. Before going through next jump, stop just for a while to fire your muscles as fast as possible. You can get 5 to 8 jumps in a row. Focus on realizing the highest every time you jump. As gently as possible every time you land. It is showed that jump squats can improve your vertical leap height by 17% in eight weeks.

AttentionClimb Steep Hills
In fact, climbing is not just a matter physically but also psychologically. The key is to divide hills into sections. Regard the hill as several parts of your final success rather than being scared of its scale. Climb gradually and focus on each bend. You can count revs to prevent yourself from panicking, which makes you motivated and concentrate on the point.

It’s also recommended to concentrate on the future. However, it doesn’t mean you need to think about what will happen in far places. Consider what will happen just ten meters later but not 10 miles. The task load you faced with can torch a lot of your glycogen and makes it hard for you to keep calm. You can do some structured belly breathing. Hold the brake hoods with a wide grip, which opens your chest to intake air better. Breathe in with your nose to a count of three, then pause for a while, and you can exhale with your mouth to a count of four. It’s showed that longer breath slow the heart rate down to help you keep a normal pattern of breathing and reduce the nervousness.

Now I think it should be clear for you how to climb hills better. If there is any suggestion in your mind, would you please share with me here? Hope that you are better in climbing.