Go Off Road To Make In Roads

As summer ebbs away and the weatherbegins to turn, Hannah Reynolds presents nine compelling reasons to take your cycling off-road this winter.

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Riding off road over the winter can benefit your fitness, improve your skills, keep you motivated — and, best of all, will make you a better road rider by next spring. We’ve picked the brains of a selection of experts and off-road aficionados to come up with nine great reasons to head off road this winter.

1 IMPROVE YOUR PEDALLING

If you want to develop your pedalling technique so that you apply power more evenly throughout the pedal stroke, then forget doing endless drills on the turbo and get yourself a mountain bike. Bike-fitting expert and positional coaching guru Phil Burt (philburtinnovations.co.uk) explains: “Attempts to teach people to pedal actually decreases overall pedalling efficiency. Studies have proven that asking someone to pull up to decrease the negative torque seen on the returning pedalling leg are counterproductive and result in an overall loss in efficiency. That’s not to say there aren’t better and worse ways to pedal, just that merely coaching from the outside with instruction in technique — push harder or pull up — makes no difference.”

What does make a difference is riding off-road.

“Mountain bikers are consistently shown to have the most even pedal stroke of all cycling disciplines,” Burt continues. “This is because they need to maintain power through the upstroke to have grip at the rear wheel.”

If you just push down on the pedals as though they’re pistons, there will be moments when no power is being applied to your rear wheel. In wet and slippery conditions, or when attacking a steep banking, this will cause you to slip and spin out. To keep your grip, you may need to slow down your cadence and increase your gearing, focusing on smooth, circular pedalling.