Strange question guys
But are compact cranks made especially for short people??
Yep I’m a shorty…5’6″ give or take a few mm
Now I have a standard 53/39 crank ….with a 28/11 cassette …..and I do alright with it on my rides….but I as always …I want to be faster especially on the hills…so would a compact help
Or is it seen more as a starter crank ??

If you want to be faster up hills then pedal harder.

If you want a lower gear you can spin up hills then get a compact.

cheekyget – Member
Strange question guys
But are compact cranks made especially for short people??

no.

Yep I’m a shorty…5’6″ give or take a few mm

try 165mm crank arms?

Now I have a standard 53/39 crank ….with a 28/11 cassette …..and I do alright with it on my rides….but I as always …I want to be faster especially on the hills…so would a compact help

the 34t chainring would make hills a little ‘easier’ but not necessarily ‘faster’.

Or is it seen more as a starter crank ??

eh?

er… maybe… as in, a bit easier than a ‘standard’, but mostly they’re seen as a way of getting easier gearing, without using a triple chainset.

Why would they be for short people?
And they’re certainly not starter cranks.
I don’t road race though.
I don’t think that compact cranks necessarily get you up hills faster – actually if you have taller gears then you’ll climb quicker – though smaller gearing might well make multiple hills easier.

I want to be faster especially on the hills…so would a compact help

Might want to check this out…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwYCdNm7f0k[/video]

You need to understand gear ratios, then re-read your post.

This is one of those posts where the words are real, and they’re even strung together in a readable format that on the face of it looks like real sentences, but when you actually read it you realise that the concepts within are such a load of nonsense you’re left wondering how to respond….but I’ll give it a go:

Strange question guys

it is a bit yes.

But are compact cranks made especially for short people??

no, why would you think that?

Yep I’m a shorty…5’6″ give or take a few mm

OK.

Now I have a standard 53/39 crank ….with a 28/11 cassette …..and I do alright with it on my rides*….but I as always …I want to be faster especially on the hills…so would a compact help

no, not really, you’ll get faster by either getting stronger, or fitter, or both, the gearing will have an impact on how hard you find it though, and may be worth tuning to your style, ie: spinner Vs masher

Or is it seen more as a starter crank ??

no, no it isn’t

* of which you’ve given us no indications to what they are like, length, speed, elevation, duration etc.

Do you struggle in your lowest gear on climbs (or ride at a really low cadence)?

Do you run out of high gears when on the flat/DH?

These are the questions to determine what ratios you need.

For the speeds most people ride at, compact makes much more sense than ratios that are designed for (fast) racers… I recall David Millar commenting a while back that he and his team mates often used bikes with compacts for training because they weren’t riding at racing speeds…

Ok thanks guys…I got some good answers there!!
Ok the reason was …
I used to always ride the large chainring on the front…then my ride buddy said you’ll go faster on the small one…and ..I do….so I found out the other day….so then it got me thinking about compacts and if they would make a bigger difference.
I think nemesis is bang on with the answer I was looking for….
As much as most of us think we should have the pro gears…not many can do the pro speeds …
So my next groupset will be a compact one
Apologies if my wording doesn’t make sense …..

It makes sense to me …then so does marmalade and marmite sandwiches …Mmmmm…yum!! 😀

marmalade! 😯

I used to always ride the large chainring on the front…then my ride buddy said you’ll go faster on the small one…and ..I do…

Do you understand what gears do and how they work? 😕

🙂

A lot of people ride in gears that are too big for what they can effectively spin. Moving to an easier gear often allows them to spin faster but ride faster overall. Particularly uphill.

Sounds like cheekyget rode everything in a 53 ring grinding away at low rpm up climbs until one day one of his mates suggests that he could use the left hand shifter to change from the big ring to the little ring and this came as some sort of revelation to him 🙂

… and then somehow thinks that this new found chainring is better suited to him because he is a short arse!

Yep 😉

To be fair, having introduced many people to cycling over the years, it’s not uncommon for new cyclists to ride that way. One guy I knew rode (admittedly a fairly flat route) in 53×11 the whole time because ‘it would make him faster’ 😯

That was essentially my reaction when he told me 🙂

It’s people who start off with their pedal foot at the bottom of the stroke that worry me – they end up scooting along to gain momentum or barely moving until they can get their other foot on the other pedal and put some power through it.

Its got to be better than the triathlete I used to know who came to the road coaching sessions we used to run in the late 90s who had never worked out how to get off the bike so used to ride onto the grass at the side of the track, slow down then fall over. We taught her how to get on the bike, ride around on it using gears and to not turn corners in a series of straight lines, and then how to slow down and safely dismount. Took 20 minutes off her bike leg!

I think compact cranks are a response to 2 things

Smaller sprockets as the back. Blocks haven’t always gone to 11.

A realisation that there is demand/ need for bikes with lower ratios

mrblobby – Member
Sounds like cheekyget rode everything in a 53 ring grinding away at low rpm up climbs until one day one of his mates suggests that he could use the left hand shifter to change from the big ring to the little ring and this came as some sort of revelation to him

… and then somehow thinks that this new found chainring is better suited to him because he is a short arse!

Don’t get me wrong …on what I would call a hill I would drop down to the smaller chainring….it was on the long steady climbs with a low % …..I could keep the candace up on the big ring and thought dropping to smaller ring was wimping out.

Thanks. Priceless. Reading this was like getting drunk really fast.

To be fair, having introduced many people to cycling over the years, it’s not uncommon for new cyclists to ride that way. One guy I knew rode (admittedly a fairly flat route) in 53×11 the whole time because ‘it would make him faster’

Oh, the reason I was given as to why a rider was in 50×11 the whole time was because the numbers on his power meter were higher.

This was ride leading on a corporate Sportive type event, lots of relative newbies there and a very common issue was the massive overuse of very high gears (offset by the seeming need to drop it right down to granny as soon as the road even though about going uphill). Basically, their bikes had 2 gears, 50:11 and 34:28. Churning away on the flat in 50:11 but it was OK cos the power meter readout was good. 😯

Oh, the reason I was given as to why a rider was in 50×11 the whole time was because the numbers on his power meter were higher

Isn’t that quite logical

It seems unlikely, but logical