[Closed] So does riding a single speed increase your fitness?

crikey - Member

It makes you stronger because you can't spin, and makes you more supple because you have to spin?

The only thing it does is place a mechanical limitation on your riding speed thus forcing an adaptation, which you can do to a far greater extent using gears sensibly; want to push a bigger gear up hill? Then change gear. Want to spin along like crazy on the flat? Then change gear.

Thing is you don't do these things on a geared bike, whereas a ss forces you to.

Hold on, SS is being sold as the answer to everything?

Hardly.

I am guessing there's something else going on, there shouldn't be any difference.

Well, my geared bike also has a chain device. And weighs a good 5lb more than my SS. And cost approximately ten times as much. 🙂

Crikey, do you do rides with any variation in terrain at all? And do they involve lots of hiding under bridges? 😉

Oh smoothness then, I get that. Suppleness is useful for bike handling, but I did wonder how a SS would make any difference for that.

Well anyhoo I ride SS effectively on my flat commute. I doubt it would be any good for the fitness of my knees off road. I think I naturally pedal slowly, like my dad

Any time I try high cadence it just feels awkward and like I'm making a meal of things.

[i]Thing is you don't do these things on a geared bike, whereas a ss forces you to.[/i]

Maybe you don't, but I certainly have.

[i]Crikey, do you do rides with any variation in terrain at all[/i]

Yes. That's why I don't ride SS.

...and I don't really see that daring to disagree with the STW SS posse can be classed as trolling.

no, not the answer to everything.

for almost all of the time it's a total inconvenience. still good fun though, and it forces me to work harder on climbs, yes i could just change gear to make it harder, but i'm lazy so that would never happen.

i especially enjoy the 'steering with your feet' thing which i find almost impossible to explain...

I doubt it would be any good for the fitness of my knees off road. I think I naturally pedal slowly, like my dad

Any time I try high cadence it just feels awkward and like I'm making a meal of things.

I find that carrying 20kg's of extra weight makes you fitter.

Personally I would say that a SS makes a person fitter for two reasons:

- You pedal harder up hills thereby developing leg strength and promoting adaptation to slow twitch muscles

- You spin faster on the flats and therefore a person's avg HR rate will be higher for a given speed. Lance Armstrong avg cadence was around 10 - 15 rpm higher than other riders as pedalling a higher cadence vs slower cadence is proven to be more energy efficient.

Of course the points made above are generally true for "average riders". Pros will always use gears to mash up hills and have a £1000 worth of power meter attached to the bike to ensure they are completing the correct training workout dictated by their coach.

It is possible to train within HR zones on SS. Flat road circuit on the fixie with appropiate gearing for base training. HR zone used so that the level of exertion doesn't reach the lactate threshold zone.

Whilst intervals can be accomplished on a turbo trainer with variable resistance. I had a road bike with gears and was never really comfortable doing intervals on the road due to traffic and other hazards. So I use a SS MTB on a trainer.

The type of riding I enjoy is long distance stuff and 24hr solos. Whereby a lack of gears is a mental advantage as it is one less thing to think of and one less thing to break.

My regime is specific to using the SS to the extent, for example, of practising steep hill repeats without hitting my lactate threshold which results in pedalling up the same hill VERY slowly many times. This way I can train the leg muscles not to tire as much as if I were to blast up a hill. So my "granny gear" is simply pedalling slower though the level of exertion will still be more than if I were using gears and therefore more tiring except I try to overcome this by performing such hill repeats.

It is a tradeoff in the end, but one that I enjoy 🙂

running too high a gear too soon can damage your knees but running the correct gear and labouring slightly isnt bad , its labouring continuously for a couple hours thats bad , if you told me to go ride the fungle path then id gear down to 32:20 as although i could ride it 32:16 id have sore knees at the end - thats when the damage can occur - not always but not a chance id like to take

would rather spin faster and be able to climb than have to grind out the climb

crikey - Member
Thing is you don't do these things on a geared bike, whereas a ss forces you to.

Maybe you don't, but I certainly have.

Crikey, do you do rides with any variation in terrain at all

Yes. That's why I don't ride SS.

So, you think it's usual to force yourself to do high/low cadence work with gears, but not on ss? Perhaps for those "into" training, but my point is that "normal" folk will get this kind of varied work-out on a ss but they wouldn't bother otherwise.

Interesting that you don't ride ss - it's often the folk that don't do something that want to argue against it.

Look at it simply, your knees are at the pivot point. You are putting alot of stress through that pivot. Once my fitness was on the up and after a long ride at Coed-y-Brenin I pulled my back out for weeks. No thanks!

thats user error as i explained. YOu could have quite easily done the same thing on gears !

it's often the folk that don't do something that want to argue against it.

And for that matter, you'll get a lot of SSers who are happy to admit that it's kind of retarded. 🙂

God, SSEC's going to be a laugh isn't it 😉

You think you could ride up the Fungle on a 32:16?

I know I couldn't.

It'll be full of unspeakable rotters comparing novelty sock designs. 🙂

choice is golden

certain courses dictate gears- Relentless & fyrish , certain its neither here nor there and you can use SS or gears , i wouldnt say SS was ever much of an advantage in a race tbh a pair of expert/elite riders of similar level one on gears one on SS - the geared rider imho will always win.

An expert/elite on SS vs a sharp end sport rider on gears an it would be a closer call

and expert elite ss vs mid pack sport geared should be expert/elite if the course suits SS

reminder to self - buy novelty socks.

crikey - The weight is a non-issue? Eh? So why the heck do people spend a fortune of uberlight components and bikes and not still ride 50lb Schwinns?

Hmmm these probably aren't niche enough. Must try harder.

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I'm not arguing against SS, I'm pointing out the fundamental flaws in the arguments people use to suggest it is somehow better than riding with gears. I can do everything on a geared bike that you can on a SS, and being able to choose a gear ratio allows me to get exactly the same benefit over a greater range of speed and terrain.
SS places a mechanical limitation on your ride, that's all. I can choose to get exactly the same limitation.
SS isn't magical, its just biking.

You think you could ride up the Fungle on a 32:16?

I did it once on 32:18 on my 29er.

pushed up mount keen from the queens well , rode down glen tanar and then rode back over the fungle up past the guard !

Hence why id never do it again on 32:16 as my knees and lower back were in tatters for a couple days

To be fair the weight of a geared drivetrain isn't that much, but then I suspect a lot of SSers will be those luddite weirdos who don't have suspension either. They can be recognised by little stitch marks round their wrists from the surgery to reattach their snapped-off hands.

aye the weight difference isnt much , about 2.3-3lbs .... my bike with gears is 21.8lbs and without it(and a change from tubeless SB8s to tubed panaracer muds) is 18.5lbs , thats largely XTR stuff i removed as well !

Clubber, those are rubbish. You want some that advertise a company that only makes steel bikes (aluminium is imaginary remember), contain some sort of reference to drinking beer, commemorate an event that only five really really cool people attended, and were once used as a gonk-rag by Keith Bontrager. 🙂

Weight, people buy light stuff because they think its important.
How much weight does a SS set up save?
...and what % of a 120kg bike/rider/camelback/sock/beard is that saving?

some great stereotypes here for a monday morning - 68kg - non beard whoring non niche monger. its all about carbon here !

I'm not saying that ss'ing is the pantheon of mtbing, its just another area of our diverse sport.

"gonk-rag" awesome 🙂

To make myself fitter I ditched the singlespeed in favour of a xc race bike. Whilst I've got the 'bail out' option of gears they also give me the oppertunity to work even harder.
If you want to be serious about getting fitter use gears and don't granny out when no ones looking.

they also give me the oppertunity to work even harder.

interesting concept - how ?

all i see it doing is using your energy more efficiently so you will cover more distance. Id argue i could achieve the same workout on an SS.

Mr Agreeable - Member
To be fair the weight of a geared drivetrain isn't that much, but then I suspect a lot of SSers will be those luddite weirdos who don't have suspension either...

Gears and suspension -just more levers and buttons to twiddle. I'd sooner just turn my pedals.

The disadvantage is only my legs get fit, while the non SS riders have better developed thumbs, so obviously gears and suspension make you fitter. 🙂

Saves less than 1% weight I'd imagine.

Erm you can re-train your cadence, it requires more than just "trying it", and I think it's well established that the whole "ss damages knees" thing is a myth.

I don't like the sound of pedalling uphill at such a low RPM.
Maybe I should try to stick with the high cadence thing but I genuinely find it annoying.

You get succesful people that ride high RPM & other low RPM in road bikes don't you? Maybe it just suits some people more than others

Single speeding bad for knees, same BS that suggests you need padded shoes for running. Bad backs, etc. are a sign of weakness in your back and core, try alternative strength training, I use kettlebells. IME SS helps with fitness, a road bike builds a better base for endurance in my experience.

I'm probably taking my life in my hands with this but I S-S and only ever with geared riders because (the few) other S-Sers I've ridden with/met have been fairly pompous idiots. Then again the geared riders are too, but I've known them longer and can't seem to get rid of them 😉

I can't say that 5yrs of S-S has [i]made[/i] me fitter than the 10yrs of geared riding I did before, but I have got fitter than I was. I just enjoyed singlespeed more and ended up cycling more. You can't always ride every hill at first, but for me that's like a red rag to a bull. Hills that I couldn't ride in the beginning I could ride a couple of months later, with much mashing and grunting, and then for the last year or so I've been able to do them seated. Much to my knee's dislike.

Genesis has it: arguing about gears vs. singlespeed is like XC vs. DH, road vs. MTB, steel vs. alu vs. ti vs. carbon, etc.

Goos effort trail rat, I remember wheezing up it in a 24:28 back in teh day.

trail_rat, in the sense that I can get a better speed & distance combined work out on my geared bike that I ever could on my singlespeeds.

Though of course we could be confusing faster with fitter.

I'm trying to get fitter for road racing, cyclocross and a bit of short course xc so I'm not cheating myself. As I said before I rode singlespeed for years and from my own experience I'd say I've got fitter as well as faster since gearing up, and slimmer which is an added bonus.

Winnats pass in 42-19, 70 miles into a 100 miler, how fit did I used to be?
Anyway, off out on geared bike now, have a good day!

A recent study has shown that while riding a SS bike does increase fitness levels this increase is immediately counter acted upon by the propensity to suddenly start to consume real ale.

And chesse, if you don't like cheese how can you ride a singlespeed?

The 2nd most important thing is to master the technique of supporting your weight through your arms when out of the saddle.

That means you can be out of the saddle on marginal gradients without knackering your legs. Then just think of it like walking up stairs.

The most important thing is knowing that it suits some people but not others.

I have ridden SS for ages. If you put the effort in then yes it does make you fitter but then so can riding a geared bike. Slogging round the Quantocks on one can be brutal if you aren't already pretty fit.

I like the challenge of getting up hills that the geared bikers find tough and just gives you a new challenge. You get what you put out and pootling along on a SS isn't going to get you fit.

Actually the link between singlespeeds and beer really put me off the whole s/s thing.
Loads of middle aged men going crazy at the weekend 🙄

it definately increases power output and overall strength out of the saddle. dunno about fitness overall though, i don't ride ss exclusively.

Actually that's probably how I lost weight, not having to eat cheese and drink beer to be accepted.