Grinding Through the Uphill
Ever feel like you’re grinding through the uphill?
When times feel rough, we’re probably going uphill—whether metaphorically in life, or in reality as on a bike.
The path uphill varies. Sometimes we’re on the right track—on the road to achieving great things—and know this path requires a lot of grit to get there. Sometimes we’re going uphill, unsure if we’re on the right track or whether we’ll finish. We may be struggling to understand what is happening, or why it is happening. Success may not be coming as easily as expected, which is, in part, causing the frustration and uphill battle. Or maybe we took the wrong path and now are paying the price. In every case, though, we’re growing through the uphill climb. So we grind.
I remember the first time we took our kids on a hilly bike ride. It’s a well-known ride called the Portola Loop here in Silicon Valley, with a total climb from our home of about 1,000 feet, with a few short, steeper climbs and a section of rolling hills. The entire loop is about 20 miles. Because the ride was new to them, they didn’t know how to pace their efforts or set their expectations. Panic smashing is what happens when you go too hard over the opening of a climb – only to grind to a near-halt half way up the ascent, having ‘gone into the red’. Well, there was some panic smashing that day on the first big hill, which ended up in some seriously exhausted kids.
After a couple of weekends doing the same ride, though, it became “too easy”. They had a better idea of when to start ramping up their efforts, so mentally they were pepared. They learned to break up the climb into three parts mentally and physically: the first section completed at an ‘easy’ or ‘moderate’ pace, the middle one at ‘tempo’, and the final section ‘as hard as they could’ (knowing that they are always trying to beat each other—and their parents). The actual result is that they ride all three sections at a fairly similar intensity/speed, but because their legs fatigue, it feels different. What is ‘easy’ initially is actually fairly hard to maintain, so they push harder at the end for a similar.
If you’re approaching a climb of unknown length or gradient, it’s best to err on the side of caution. Once you can see the top, then you can put in that ‘final attack’.
, or when investing in global markets.
The number one rule is to avoid that red line. Don’t step over it – the results are not positive. You need to stay within your limits. Even if you’re not riding with heart rate or power, most riders can rate on a scale of 1 to 10 their output – and 10 is not a good number to be experiencing early on.
Over-gearing the entire way. The general understanding is that adding extra resistance by selecting a bigger gear will make you go faster. If you’re riding for a short period of time and don’t have to worry about fatigue, that might be true. Riding in a high gear and using low cadence generally recruits more fast twitch muscle fibres that are used for explosive power and speed.
By all means – power it up the mini 20 second climbs in a high gear, if you’re comfortable that you’ve got energy to spare. However, use these up at your risk – because these muscle fibres get tired quickly. If you’ve got a long day ahead of you, you’re much better off using a higher cadence with a lower gear – thus recruiting slow twitch muscles that promote greater endurance.
A high gear also puts more strain on your muscles and tendons, so you can risk an injury by sticking with the big chainring too often.
Breathing doesn’t just provide your body with oxygen – it also informs your brain of your mental and physiological state. Sometimes the perceived threat of a climb, coupled with heavy breathing as a result of a ‘panic smash’, can lead our bodies to react as though the threat is much more dangerous than it is.
As Josephine Perry, who runs a sports mental training clinic, Performance In Mind told us: “Breathing is really important in all our sporting activities. Everything our body does physiologically feeds back into our brain and gives it signals as to how we are feeling. [Fast breathing] makes us tighten up, puts us on alert and gets our hearts beating much faster. Our brain’s reaction to that will be to slow down the body. This is clearly not what we want to be doing. So teaching our body to react well to situations like a climb coming up can be really beneficial.”
She gave us a selection of tips for beating this reaction – the key lessons being that we need to think consciously about controlling our breath; practice breathing deeply, not quickly; and work on staying positive about our own performance and abilities.
Let’s illustrate this one with a common scenario:
Rider A: “I’d like to be a better climber”
Rider B: “Have you been practicing much?”
Rider A: “No, I hate hills…”
We often have a tendency to believe that being a good climber is all about having an optimum power to weight ration. Read: being light. However, there’s two parts to that equation, and regular hill climbing can really help to boost your power.
Not only that, but the more you climb, the more comfortable you’ll feel with riding up hill. You’ll learn your own rhythm, and become more accustomed to where your ‘red line’ is.
Discussing her preparations leading up to the hilly Rio Olympic course, Lizzie Armitstead told us: “Climbing isn’t just about losing weight. You get better at it by climbing. Spending as much time as you can in the mountains – learning the rhythm of climbing, and power as well – it comes down to more than just being lean.