5 Drills To Help You Improve Your Climbing

Whether you love cycling uphill or hate the thought of riding your road bike up an incline, climbing is an inevitability for every cyclist. Being able to climb fast is a challenge for most cyclists, so we thought we'd share a few our favourite drills to help you work on your climbing, and get over those hills faster!

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Leave us a comment below!

[willwalker]

A GCN video came up in my recommended videos a few weeks ago, gave it a watch and now I've got my own road bike and am hooked on the sport already!

[pahlawanbasikal]

GCN: What are your best climbing tips?
Me: Avoids climbing area 😆

[xschakalx]

5 minutes out of the saddle is my speciality. I'll usually combine that with a coffee stop...

[michaelalbany]

Hank says “try it on your favorite climb.” Hahahahaha! Favorite climb! Like there is such a thing.

[drmitofit]

I recommend hill repeats, belly (diaphragm) breathing, hamstring "scrape" pedaling for 90-95% of climb, and quadriceps/calf out of the saddle pedaling for 5-10% of climb/attack. By alternating muscle groups, you can prevent early fatigue. I wrote a book coauthored with Greg LeMond "The Science of Fitness".

[endcensorship]

My old cycling coach used to say "Train your weaknesses, race your strengths." Wanna be a better climber? Climb. Ride with better climbers, stay on their wheel as long as possible.

[noice]

Thanks for the encouragement, and the laugh when Hank's voice goes up a couple octaves at 3:46. I've always liked climbs because of the rewarding view from the top and the massively fun downhills, plus that great feeling of accomplishment. In the last couple of years, I've taken to riding up steep long grades on a fixed gear and it has taught me: 1.) Proper pacing, 2.) The most effective pedaling techniques in the saddle, 3.) How to use my full body to climb including arms, shoulders, back, core, and, 4.) Proper posture to maximize leverage when out of the saddle. I'd encourage you to get a full, deep muscle contractions using a taller gear to gain strength and power; it translates nicely to winning sprints and maintaining speed with endurance in a headwind. Make sure you keep your nutrition spot on and get plenty of rest to fully recover and to avoid injury the next time you train. Don't worry about climbing fast at first, just work on technique and in about 3 to 6 months you'll find you're going plenty fast. Don't be surprised if other riders are amazed by your ability to keep going at a such a good pace, and then when they ask what you've been doing, you can share your story of how you got such deep power reserves. Oh yeah, I also use two psychological tricks to keep my pedals turning over on long, challenging climbs: 1.) I imagine there's a magnet at the top of the hill/mountain pulling me up towards it just a little bit with each pedal turn so each push doesn't feel as hard as it could. I pretend I getting a little "free energy" from the magnetic pull, and what ends up happening is I positively reinforce my good effort and good attitude, rewarding myself for trying hard, but not being too hard on myself. The last trick: I imagine colors in my mind's eye that match how I feel, and these colors produce energy and positive motivation to make things easier. This ends up distracting me from the difficulty of the work and focusing me on feeling good or not as bad as I would feel if I weren't seeing these amazing iridescent blues, translucent neon greens, intense shades of yellow, and reds that transition from burgundy to radiant pink hues. After doing this for a few minutes, a sort of synesthesia occurs where these colors automatically transition with my emotions surrounding my present efforts on the bike and the inspirational beauty of the natural environment. I imagine each of these colors as having a unique emotional characteristics and positive physical effects, including helping me to get more in touch with my abilities and tap my full potential. These neat tricks work for me, and if you try them, I hope they work for you too! Happy riding : )

[ronroman]

It would be helpful if GCN included all the different interval training options discussed in the video in the description area on YouTube.

[CyclingOffToSomewhereIDK]

These will definitely help, thanks. I climbed (well, tried.. stopped more than I care to admit) a very small portion of the course used in the 1984 Olympic men's road race in Mission Viejo a couple days ago and it was so bad it didn't qualify as pitiful. Now, I was 17.5 years old back then so I'm...um.. a bit older (read: I qualify for the senior discount in restaurants in the USA in 5 weeks) but still. I've been riding on and mostly off since back then. I got re-bitten by the cycling bug a couple years ago and have been going 2-3 times a week since then, I should be further along. These tips will give me some structure to work with. Many thanks

[ashleyyyy]

Five minutes out of the saddle is 'surprisingly difficult'... I think they forgot most of us are mere mortals.

[zerocooljpn]

yeah, I think you've also recommended this in previous vids, but the final answer is to lose weight. I was a "heavy" cyclist (track-oriented) with 78kg, and I hated climbing almost anything that took longer than 1~2m. I start taking spinning lessons, and even when my intention wasn't to lose weight, it burned like 8% of my fat, and now I'm 64kg. All hills I hated feel like nothing now. But again, I hate all hills ;) And on long rides I try to avoid them as much as possible. But yeah, no matter how much you train, I think in the end it is just that biomechanically and muscularly speaking, you have to be thin/light to get full potential of your legs on increasing inclination terrain.

[WalfredoCirne]

It really helps me to increase the three/four gears when I go out of the saddle.

[MrDagger]

I am a simple man, I see a great gcn video and I press like

[scottlawson]

Biked up the Alpe D'Huez, on my TT bike. Pretty much 1:19hr of standing and starting at my stem. Standing is the way to go. I did stop for some views, and did enjoy the ride down a bit more than the up.

[byrondixon]

Some random person on the internet said once... The best way to get better at riding up hills is by riding up hills.

[jeffrey]

I just do Cadance and Out of the Saddle style, now i'm adding more...

[keithou]

Been climbing a really long steep road(about 20 minutes straight, fuck.) for days now because of this person who really just impressed me climbing really fast. I tried his pace hoping the higher cadence will help me, turns out I was wrong. Ended up practicing on the lowest gears and trained using one gear up after a rest and kept trying to break my records. It improves and hoping it doesn't take so many months.

[tomwilliams]

Best training for climbing is climbing.. or gym work, leg press, quad extension, hamstring extension.. IMO

[MOSloan]

Great Video! The new presenters did really well. Very clear, relaxed, energetic presentation! Nicely done!

[veloriderkm]

A drill I’ve incorporated into my workouts is climbing out of the saddle but hands on the drops then back down onto the saddle but still in the drops. This helps when the gradient changes frequently but the speed is quick enough for aero gains to matter.