Fixed Gear Cycle Training
You can find lots of advice on the internet and in cycling magazines about training for and riding your first century.
Fixed gear cycle training. Fixed gear bikes are a pretty cool way to get around in a city but just how do they compare to a normal bike with a selection of gears. This article attempts to fill that gap. A fixed gear bicycle also called a fixie or a track bike is a single speed machine with a fixed drive train meaning the pedals move at the same rate as the rear wheel. Of course one has to train on a bike like road cyclists do but our sport is shorter more explosive and more technical than road cycling and road crit racing.
Depending the length of your ride you ll get in a solid endurance workout and work on your muscular endurance as well. Some road racing and club cyclists use a fixed gear bicycle for training during the winter months generally using a relatively low gear ratio believed to help develop a good pedalling style. Chris and james do a series of simple tests using jon s. A fixed gear bike or fixie is a type of singlespeed bicycle that doesn t allow the rider to coast.
Give me a time to be home a perceived exertion with a conversational hard barely breathing. A track bicycle or track bike is a form of fixed gear bicycle optimized for racing at a velodrome or at an outdoor track. It is impossible to coast on a fixed gear bike leading to a different style of riding from traditional free wheel equipped bikes. When the bike rolls the pedals rotate and if the bike doesn t have brakes like mine the only.
Instead i ride a fixed gear bike. One of those is finding a training regime customised for fixed gear crit racing. If you need to ride recovery rides as part of your training plan the fixed wheel bike with a low gear forces you to stick to your program. There is some debate about doing your off season training using a single speed or fixed gear road bike because reasons vary but the most common one is to improve pedal stroke.
For training and exercise on a bike i often prefer simplicity. In the uk until the 1950s it was common for riders to use fixed gear. Fixed gear riding works three major aspects of your cycling abilities that are important to both road mountain riders. Endurance leg speed efficiency and strength.
So far a standard training procedure for fixed gear crit racing does not exist. While there are a variety of cross training activities and off season training methods for cyclists one popular approach is to spend some time on a single speed or fixed gear bicycle. The fixed wheel drive chain is slightly more efficient than a geared drive chain.