What cadence actually is — and why it matters more than most riders think
Cadence is the number of times your pedals complete a full revolution per minute — RPM. That's it. Simple enough that it's easy to dismiss as a detail, but here's the thing: your cadence determines whether you're burning your legs through muscular fatigue, overworking your cardiovascular system, or finding the sweet spot where both can work together efficiently. Power output is the product of force and pedal velocity, which means the same wattage can be produced by pushing hard at 60 RPM or spinning fast at 100 RPM. The physiological cost of those two options is completely different. Low cadence loads the muscles more heavily, raising neuromuscular fatigue and pulling you toward fast-twitch fibre recruitment. High cadence offloads some of that muscular demand onto the cardiovascular system, which is easier to recover from during a long effort — but at a cost of increased oxygen consumption per unit of work.
Most amateur cyclists pedal too slow. Not catastrophically slow, but in the range of 60–75 RPM where they feel comfortable and strong, which isn't wrong — except that it's leaving muscular efficiency gains on the table and making them more susceptible to fatigue over time. If you're training with any seriousness, cadence is worth paying attention to. Not obsessing over, but understanding what it does so you can deliberately choose the right range for each kind of effort you're doing.
Context determines the number — there is no universal ideal
Let's be direct: anyone who tells you "90 RPM is the perfect cadence" is simplifying to the point of being wrong. The target cadence changes entirely depending on what zone you're in, what the terrain demands, and what you're actually trying to train. For zone 2 cycling — the aerobic base work that forms the backbone of any well-structured training plan — a cadence between 70 and 90 RPM is a sensible target. In this range, you're keeping muscular loading moderate, maintaining a rhythm your cardiovascular system can sustain for long durations, and producing the kind of slow-twitch adaptations that zone 2 is famous for. Drop to 60 RPM in zone 2 and you start piling up muscular stress that doesn't belong in what's supposed to be a recovery-enhancing, base-building session.
On climbs, the equation shifts again. Most trained cyclists drop their cadence naturally when the gradient increases — somewhere in the 65–80 RPM range on a sustained climb is normal and physiologically defensible. Trying to force a 90 RPM spin up a 10% grade will spike your heart rate and respiratory demand in a way that often isn't worth it. Professional cyclists, who have spent years building their aerobic engines, typically ride at around 90 RPM on flat stages but back off toward 70 RPM on longer mountain climbs. That's not a mistake — it's a calculated muscular-versus-cardiovascular tradeoff. For racing and hard training intervals, a higher cadence in the 90–100 RPM range tends to be more sustainable because it spreads the workload more evenly across systems and preserves leg freshness better through repeated efforts. Understanding where you are in your training at any given moment — which zone, which demand — is exactly why it helps to have a clear picture of how cycling training zones interact with physiological cost.
Individual variation is real. Riders who have naturally more fast-twitch muscle fibre tend to gravitate toward lower cadences where force production feels comfortable. Leaner cyclists with more slow-twitch fibre often find higher cadences feel more natural. Neither is wrong — but knowing your tendency helps you understand which direction to push in training.
Low cadence intervals: the case for deliberately going slow
There's a growing body of evidence that deliberately training at low cadence produces adaptations that freely chosen cadence training misses. A 2024 study published in PLOS ONE compared two groups of well-trained cyclists following a polarised training programme. Both groups did sprint interval and high-intensity work, but one group performed that hard training at 50–70 RPM while the other chose their own cadence — which averaged well above 80 RPM. The low cadence group showed significantly greater improvements in VO2 max, maximal aerobic power, and power output at the second ventilatory threshold. The mechanism is straightforward: grinding at 50–70 RPM under intensity forces greater type 2 muscle fibre recruitment and deepens neuromuscular efficiency in a way that spinning at comfortable cadences simply doesn't. It's harder work for the legs, which is the point.
The practical application is simple but requires discipline. Low cadence intervals — typically done in the 50–70 RPM range at intensities that feel genuinely challenging — work well as a structured element within a broader training block, not as a daily staple. Two sessions per week of 3–5 minutes at low cadence during your harder interval sessions, dropped into otherwise normal workouts, is enough to provoke meaningful adaptation without wrecking your recovery. A common mistake is treating low cadence work as a gentle variation — easy spinning just turned into grinding. It only works if the intensity is actually there. If you're at 55 RPM and your heart rate is sitting comfortably in zone 2, you're doing leg strength training, not what the research describes. If you want to see how this kind of structured intensity work fits into a broader protocol, over-unders are worth understanding as a complementary format.
On the other side of this: low cadence is not a substitute for higher cadence aerobic work. It addresses neuromuscular strength and fibre recruitment, not cardiovascular efficiency. The two approaches are complementary, not interchangeable. An eight-week block of nothing but 55 RPM grinding will not produce a well-rounded cyclist.
How to build your cadence range — practically, without overcomplicating it
The goal is not to settle on a single number and defend it forever. The goal is to expand your usable cadence range so that you can ride at 65 RPM when a climb demands it, 85–90 RPM in a steady long ride, and 95–100 RPM in a race or hard group effort — all of them feeling controlled, not forced. Most riders have a comfortable range that spans maybe 15 RPM in either direction before things feel awkward. Training deliberately at both ends of your range expands that window. Cadence drills — short efforts at 100–110 RPM — teach your neuromuscular system to handle faster pedalling without the typical bounce and inefficiency that comes from never practising it. They're not about efficiency at those speeds; they're about building coordination so that 90–95 RPM starts to feel normal rather than frantic.
Practically: in your zone 2 rides, aim for a consistent 80–90 RPM and notice what actually happens to your breathing and perceived effort when you let it creep down to 70. You'll feel the muscular load increase. That feedback is useful — it tells you what your legs are doing, not just what your power meter says. If you're interested in the deeper mechanics of why one cadence range produces better economy than another, the specifics of most efficient cycling cadence are worth reading alongside this. In training sessions that include intensity — intervals, threshold work, over-unders — experiment with slightly lower cadences than feel natural, particularly in the harder efforts. Notice whether your power output is cleaner or whether your legs are screaming at you. Over weeks, that experimentation builds a cadence vocabulary that most riders never develop because they simply never vary it.
Track cadence as a data point, not a metric to optimise blindly. It tells you something about how your body is handling workload, and pattern changes over repeated sessions are meaningful. If your natural cadence drops consistently across long rides, it usually signals fatigue or fuelling gaps rather than a technique problem. Use it as information, not a target to hit regardless of what the rest of the data says.
Sources
Annaheim S et al. (2024). Greater improvement in aerobic capacity after a polarized training program including cycling interval training at low cadence (50–70 RPM) than freely chosen cadence (above 80 RPM). PLOS ONE. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0311833
Leirdal S & Ettema G (2011). Optimal cadence selection during cycling. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49284193_Optimal_cadence_selection_during_cycling
Foss O & Hallén J (2016). Determining optimal cadence for an individual road cyclist from field data. PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4989856/