Watch any Tour de France mountain stage and you'll see it: Pogačar dancing up a 10% ramp, legs blurring at 95 RPM, looking like the road is flat. Then you go and ride your local climb, try to spin like that, watch your heart rate rocket, and grind to a near-stall in a gear that's too big. So what's actually going on? What's the best cadence for climbing — and why doesn't copying the pros work?
The answer is more interesting than "just spin." Let me walk you through what the research actually shows, and how to find the cadence that works for you rather than for a 65kg World Tour climber.
Why cadence drops when the road goes up
First, the physics. On the flat, most riders naturally settle around 85-95 RPM. Point the road uphill and that number falls — usually to somewhere in the 70s — even if you're trying to keep it high. That's not a failure. It's gravity.
Climbing slows you down. To keep the same cadence at a slower road speed, you'd need progressively easier gears, and eventually you run out of them. So cadence naturally drifts down on a climb, and the steeper it gets, the lower it goes. The question isn't whether your climbing cadence will be lower than your flat cadence — it will be — it's how much lower you should let it go before it starts costing you.
What the research actually says
Here's the part that surprises people: your body is pretty good at picking its own best cadence.
Studies on "freely chosen" or self-selected cadence — Ernst Hansen's work is the go-to here — consistently find that the cadence riders naturally settle on is close to their metabolically efficient range for the effort. Your legs and lungs are running a constant background calculation, and left to their own devices they tend to land near the sweet spot.
There's a nuance, though. At low power outputs, the most efficient cadence (least oxygen for the power) is actually quite low — often 50-60 RPM. But that's not the whole story, because efficiency isn't the only thing that matters. Grinding at 55 RPM loads your muscles heavily and recruits more fast-twitch fibre, which fatigues faster over a long climb. Spinning a little faster shifts some of that load off your muscles and onto your cardiovascular system, which is far more fatigue-resistant. So the sustainable cadence sits a bit above the purely efficient one.
For most amateurs, that lands at 70-85 RPM on a sustained climb. Low enough to be relaxed and efficient, high enough to keep the muscular load manageable so you can hold power to the top.
Why pros climb faster than that — and why you shouldn't just copy them
So if 70-85 is the amateur sweet spot, why is Pogačar at 90+? Two reasons, and both come down to what's underneath the cadence.
Fitness. Fast spinning costs heart rate. It moves the workload toward your cardiovascular system, which is exactly why it works over a long climb — but only if that system can take it. Pros have colossal aerobic engines, so they can afford the higher heart-rate cost of 90+ RPM and reap the benefit of fresher legs for when they attack. Spin at their cadence on your engine and you just redline your heart rate for no gain.
Gearing and power. At the power outputs pros produce, high cadence at climbing speed is possible with their gearing. At your power and speed, holding 90 RPM up a steep pitch might demand a gear you simply don't have.
The lesson isn't "spinning is wrong." It's that the pro cadence is the output of pro fitness and pro gearing. Build the engine and the RPM follows — chasing the RPM without the engine just puts you in the red. We dug into this in why you keep getting dropped on climbs, and cadence-copying is one of the classic culprits.
The real lever most amateurs are missing: gearing
Here's the uncomfortable truth. Most amateurs who "grind" on climbs aren't choosing to grind. They're forced into it because their easiest gear isn't easy enough.
If your lowest gear makes you push 55 RPM up your local climb at threshold, you don't have a cadence problem — you have a gearing problem. No amount of technique fixes a gear that's too tall.
The fix is cheap and transformative: a compact or sub-compact chainset (50/34 or 48/35) and a wide-range cassette (11-32, 11-34, or larger for really steep terrain). Give yourself the gears to hold 70-85 RPM on your steepest regular climb, and suddenly "spin vs grind" stops being a debate. You just ride at a sensible cadence because the gear allows it. There is no medal for suffering in a 25-tooth sprocket when a 34 exists.
When low cadence is actually the point
None of this means low-cadence riding is useless. Deliberate low-cadence, high-torque work — seated, 50-60 RPM, big gear, on a moderate climb — is a genuine training tool. It builds muscular endurance and on-the-bike force production, and World Tour coaches prescribe it in structured blocks. We covered exactly how in low-cadence training the World Tour coaches use.
But that's a session, not a climbing style. You use torque intervals to build strength, then on event day you climb at your natural, sustainable 70-85 RPM to actually perform. Don't confuse the training stimulus with the race-day tactic.
How to find your own best climbing cadence
Enough theory. Here's how to dial in yours.
Start by observing. On your next few climbs, don't force anything. Just ride at a hard-but-sustainable effort and glance at your cadence. Where does your body naturally settle? That number is your starting point, and it's probably close to right.
Test the range. On a long, steady climb, spend a few minutes each at 65, 75 and 85 RPM at the same power. Notice which feels most sustainable — where your breathing is controlled and your legs aren't screaming. Most riders find a clear preference, usually in the 70-85 window.
Watch heart rate, not just feel. At your best cadence, your heart rate should be steady and appropriate for the effort. If a given cadence spikes your heart rate for the same power, it's too high for your current fitness. If it leaves your legs burning while your heart rate is low, it's too low.
Fix the gearing first. If you can't hold your preferred cadence because you run out of gears, sort that before anything else. It's the highest-return change you can make.
Let it evolve. As your fitness climbs, your comfortable cadence will drift up on its own. Don't force it — earn it. There's a full self-assessment framework in the optimal cadence guide.
The bottom line
The best cadence for climbing isn't a magic number you copy off a pro. For most amateurs it's 70-85 RPM — lower than the flat, higher than a grind, and sustainable to the top. Your body already knows roughly where it wants to be; your job is to give it the gearing to get there and the fitness to lift it over time.
If you want your cadence, your gearing and your climbing power built into one coherent plan — instead of guessing from YouTube clips — that's what we do inside the Not Done Yet community. Structured training, real coaching, riders chasing the same climbs you are. It's $195 a month at skool.com/roadmancycling. Stop copying the pros' cadence and start building your own.