Mel’s Rad Coaching Minutes: One Leg Pedaling
This bike-skills focused coaching minute discusses taking a relatively common drill – one leg pedaling – and adds some functional challenges to it. When you ride the trainer and pedal with one leg, your bike is stable. This means the stabilizing muscles of the opposite (not pedaling) leg do not have to fire to keep your bike upright and heading forward. Similarly, a lot of upper body twisting and pulling is masked when the bike is bolted into a trainer.
In the winter, you can make this drill more effective by switching to rollers. If you can ride outside, choose a hill of 5-8% or a big gear, and test your stability while pedaling one-legged. Both of these options create a more realistic instability on the bike to challenge your pedaling mechanics. You want to be able to one leg pedal as efficiently as you can with both. Using this drill, you will become much more aware of where you are inefficient in the pedalstroke.
