Cycling hills seated? Or Standing?

Seated hills, standing hills, does that sound scary?

In a sport like triathlon, you are looking to produce a steady paced effort over the entire event no matter the distance. A course with hills disrupts this even-paced effort, so the trick here is to practice on terrain like your event to achieve the perfect execution on race day.

So how do you know whether standing or staying seated expends more energy? They say the climbing position that feels right at any given time is the most effective. Research has shown that at shallower gradients, ascending while seated requires 10% less oxygen than when standing. That is because the centre of mass of your body is supported by the saddle, conserving energy. However, more power is possible when standing, but there is an energy cost.

Most of us find hills challenging, and for obvious reasons. As soon as you start to go up, so does the intensity of effort, and your heart rate will climb with you, testing your cardiovascular fitness and eating into your valuable glycogen reserves. So what we need to do is practice, training the heart, lungs and leg strength to keep at our steady state. If you prepare on climbs in the saddle most the time, that is where you will see the benefits; vice versa when standing.

Spend time at different gradients noticing the difference in effort output, stay seated gear down and increase cadence then ask yourself - what happened to my heart rate? Or stand up and ask yourself the same question.

Generally speaking in triathlon, staying seated is the general rule, but stand up for little bursts. Having a smooth practised and efficient climbing technique will save you valuable energy to help you to go further or faster later on in your ride and run. The key is to make sure your training incorporates routes similar to your target race. Therefore you will be as race ready as possible!

Author – Head Coach Amanda Moore