Here is a number that means almost nothing to you: 90 rpm.
It means nothing because it is an average. An average of professional road cyclists. Riding at professional power outputs. On professional race schedules. It is the single most repeated piece of cadence advice in cycling, and for most of the riders I speak to — serious amateurs, 35 to 55, riding four to six hours a week — it is about as useful as being told to eat like a Tour de France rider.
The cadence debate has been done to death. High versus low, Armstrong versus Ullrich, spinners versus grinders. What nobody tells you is how to find your number. Not the average. Not the lab ideal. The cadence at which your specific body, with your specific fibre composition and your specific cardiovascular capacity, produces the most power for the least physiological cost.
That is a testable question. And the test takes about 40 minutes.
Your Body Already Knows (Almost)
Before we get to the protocol, here is the good news: your body has been running its own cadence experiment for years.
Alejandro Lucia and his research group at the Universidad Europea de Madrid have done some of the most important work on self-selected cadence in trained cyclists. Their findings are remarkably consistent: when experienced cyclists ride without thinking about cadence — no coach barking numbers, no target on the head unit — they settle within 5 rpm of their most metabolically efficient pedalling rate. Your legs are not stupid. They have been calibrating since the first time you clipped in.
The catch is that self-selected cadence and metabolically optimal cadence are not quite the same thing. Most riders prefer a cadence 3 to 8 rpm higher than their pure metabolic sweet spot. The reason is intuitive once you understand it: spinning slightly faster shifts load from the muscles to the cardiovascular system. Each pedal stroke carries less force. The muscular cost drops. But heart rate ticks up a few beats because the legs are turning over more frequently. Your body interprets the lower muscular strain as "easier," even though total energy expenditure is marginally higher.
This is not a problem. It is a trade-off, and for long rides it is usually the right one. Your cardiovascular system recovers between efforts; your quadriceps accumulate fatigue. But it does mean that your comfortable cadence and your most efficient cadence might sit in slightly different places — and knowing both gives you an edge.
The Cadence Cost Test: A Step-by-Step Protocol
This is the test I walk riders through on the Roadman Cycling Podcast. It is not a lab protocol with a metabolic cart and gas analysers. It is a field test that uses heart rate as a proxy for metabolic cost. It is not perfect — no field test is — but it is repeatable, practical, and good enough to tell you what you need to know.
What You Need
- A power meter (crank, pedal, or hub — any will do).
- A heart rate monitor (chest strap preferred over optical wrist sensors for accuracy at steady state).
- A flat road or indoor trainer. If riding outside, pick a route with minimal stops and consistent wind conditions.
- A cadence sensor, or the cadence reading from your power meter.
- Fresh legs. Do this test after a rest day, not after Tuesday night chain gang.
The Protocol
Warm up for 15 minutes at easy zone 2 power. Nothing heroic. Get the legs moving and the heart rate settled.
Pick a target power. This should be approximately 75 per cent of your FTP — solidly in the tempo range. If your FTP is 240 watts, ride at 180. Use the FTP zone calculator if you need to check your numbers. The exact wattage is less important than keeping it absolutely constant across all four blocks.
Block 1 — 70 rpm. Ride for 5 minutes at your target power, holding 70 rpm. Record your average heart rate for the last 2 minutes of the block (the first 3 minutes are settling time). This is important — the heart rate in minutes 4 and 5 is your steady-state response, not the transitional drift.
Recovery — 3 minutes of easy spinning at whatever cadence feels natural. Let heart rate come down.
Block 2 — 80 rpm. Same power, same duration, same measurement window.
Recovery — 3 minutes.
Block 3 — 90 rpm. Same protocol.
Recovery — 3 minutes.
Block 4 — 100 rpm. Same protocol. If you cannot hold 100 rpm smoothly for 5 minutes — hips bouncing, power fluctuating — note the heart rate but also note the instability. That data point is still useful.
Cool down for 10 minutes.
What You Will See
You will have four heart rate values at four cadences, all at the same power. In a typical test, the results look something like this:
- 70 rpm: 142 bpm
- 80 rpm: 138 bpm
- 90 rpm: 141 bpm
- 100 rpm: 148 bpm
In this example, 80 rpm is the metabolically efficient cadence — the lowest cardiovascular cost for the same mechanical output. But this rider probably self-selects around 84 to 86 rpm on the road, which sits in the sweet spot between pure efficiency and muscular comfort.
Your results will be different. Some riders see a clear U-shape with an obvious minimum. Others see a gradual rise from low to high cadence, which suggests their efficient cadence sits below 70 — rare but it happens, especially in riders with a strength-sport background. A few see almost flat heart rates from 75 to 95, which means they have a wide efficient range. That is a very good result.
What Your Results Actually Tell You
The cadence where heart rate bottoms out is your metabolic sweet spot for that power output. But do not tattoo it on your stem.
Here is where it gets really interesting. That efficient cadence shifts with intensity. Repeat the test at 90 per cent of FTP and the minimum typically moves 3 to 5 rpm higher. The reason: at higher power outputs, you need to recruit more muscle fibres per stroke, and spreading the load across more pedal revolutions reduces the force each fibre has to produce. The cardiovascular system picks up the slack.
This is why professional riders — who produce very high absolute power — tend toward higher cadences than amateurs producing lower absolute watts. It is not because 90 rpm is magic. It is because 90 rpm is where the metabolic maths works out at 350 to 400 watts.
At your power output, your efficient cadence might be 78. Or 84. Or 92. The test tells you. And once you know, you can build from there.
Why Range Matters More Than One Perfect Number
Here is the thing nobody tells you about cadence: finding your optimal number is only half the job. The other half — the half that actually wins races and saves energy on long rides — is expanding the range of cadences at which you can produce power efficiently.
Think about what happens in a typical group ride. You are sitting at your comfortable 85 rpm on the flat. The road tilts up and your cadence drops to 72. A rider attacks and you need to spin up to 95 to close the gap. Then you hit a false flat and you are back to 85. In the space of ten minutes, your legs have worked across a 23 rpm range.
The rider who can produce clean power across that entire range wastes less energy on every transition. The rider who can only produce clean power at 83 to 88 rpm is fighting the pedals for most of the ride.
This is what cadence training is really for. Not finding one number. Building the neuromuscular infrastructure to use all of them.
Drill 1: High-Cadence Spin-Ups (Warm-Up Protocol)
Purpose: Train neuromuscular coordination at the top of your cadence range. These belong in your warm-up, not in your main training block.
Protocol:
- Start in a light gear at 90 rpm.
- Over 30 seconds, progressively increase cadence until you reach the point where your hips start to rock in the saddle. That is your current ceiling.
- Hold for 5 seconds, then ease off.
- Spin easy for 90 seconds.
- Repeat 4 to 6 times.
Target cadence: 110 to 120 rpm initially. After four to six weeks of consistent practice, most riders push this above 125 rpm before the bounce starts.
Power: Irrelevant. Keep it in zone 1 to zone 2. The constraint is leg speed, not force.
Frequency: Two to three times per week, always as part of your warm-up before the main session.
What to watch for: Shoulder tension, hip rocking, or the power trace going jagged. All three are signs that your nervous system has reached its coordination limit at that speed. That limit is trainable — but only if you do the reps.
Drill 2: Cadence Steps (Baseline Expansion)
Purpose: Systematically push the boundaries of your comfortable range in both directions.
Protocol:
- Within an endurance ride, insert a 20-minute cadence block.
- Alternate 2 minutes at 5 rpm above your self-selected cadence with 2 minutes at 5 rpm below. Repeat for 20 minutes total (5 rounds).
- Every two weeks, widen the gap: go to 10 above and 10 below. Then 15 above and 15 below.
Power: Steady endurance — 65 to 75 per cent of FTP. Use the FTP zone calculator for your targets.
Heart rate: Expect a 3 to 5 bpm swing between the low and high cadence blocks at the same power. As your neuromuscular coordination improves, that swing narrows. Track it. When the heart rate differential between 75 rpm and 95 rpm at the same power shrinks below 4 bpm, your usable range has meaningfully expanded.
Frequency: Once per week within a longer endurance ride.
Drill 3: Low-Cadence Force Blocks (Climbing Preparation)
Purpose: Build the torque capacity for steep gradients and headwinds, where cadence inevitably drops.
Protocol:
- Find a climb of 5 to 7 per cent gradient, or use your trainer in standard mode (not ERG — ERG changes the feel of low-cadence work in ways that reduce the training stimulus).
- Ride 4 minutes at 55 to 65 rpm, seated throughout.
- Power: tempo — 76 to 88 per cent of FTP. Not threshold. Not sweet spot. Tempo. The adaptation you want is sustained torque production under aerobic conditions, not a maximal effort that fries your legs. The low-cadence torque research backs this up — moderate intensity at low rpm drives the best gains.
- Recovery: 4 minutes easy spinning.
- Repeats: 3 to 5, depending on your training phase.
Frequency: Twice per week maximum. Low-cadence work at high torque places significant load on the patellofemoral joint. If you have a history of knee issues, start at 65 rpm rather than 55, and keep to one session per week until you know how your knees respond. Check your heart rate zones to confirm you are staying in the right intensity band.
Progression over 6 weeks:
- Weeks 1–2: 3 repeats at 65 rpm, tempo power.
- Weeks 3–4: 4 repeats at 60 rpm, same power.
- Weeks 5–6: 5 repeats at 55 rpm, same power. If your knees protest, hold at 60 rpm and add a repeat instead.
Cadence and Age: What Shifts After 40
If you are in the 35 to 55 bracket — and if you are reading this site, you probably are — your cadence story has an extra chapter.
Neuromuscular speed declines with age. The speed at which motor units fire, the smoothness of left-right coordination, the ability to sustain high rpm without mechanical breakdown in the pedal stroke — all of it erodes gradually from your mid-30s onward if you do not train it specifically. This is not catastrophic. It is not even noticeable year to year. But over a decade, a rider who never does cadence-specific work can lose 8 to 12 rpm off the top of their comfortable range.
The practical consequence: if you settled at 88 rpm in your 30s and never revisited it, your comfortable cadence might now sit at 80 to 82. That is not necessarily wrong — but it does mean you are placing more force through each pedal stroke than you used to, which is harder on your joints and burns through muscular endurance faster. The masters cadence guide covers this in detail.
Here is the fix: high-cadence spin-ups, done consistently, are the single best intervention for maintaining neuromuscular speed as you age. Two to three sets in your warm-up, three times a week. It takes five minutes. It costs nothing. And it preserves a capacity that is extremely difficult to rebuild once it is lost.
How Cadence Changes With Intensity
Your optimal cadence is not one number. It is a sliding scale.
At endurance intensity (zone 2), most riders sit at their self-selected cadence — typically 80 to 90 rpm — and that is fine. The forces are low, the metabolic demand is modest, and your body finds its groove.
At threshold, efficient cadence typically shifts up 3 to 5 rpm. Higher force demands per stroke make it worth spinning slightly faster to reduce the muscular load per revolution, even though cardiovascular demand ticks up. If your endurance cadence is 84, your threshold cadence might naturally sit at 88 to 90.
At VO2max and above, cadence climbs further — 95 to 105 rpm is common during 3 to 5 minute maximal efforts. The logic is the same: at very high power outputs, the force per stroke at lower cadences becomes muscularly unsustainable.
On climbs, cadence drops. Gravity slows the wheel. The gear gets harder. Most riders see a natural 5 to 10 rpm decline from their flat cadence, and steeper gradients push it lower still. Fighting this drop by holding flat-terrain cadence on a 10 per cent gradient is a losing game — the cardiovascular cost of maintaining 90 rpm against steep resistance is disproportionate.
Train across the range. Use cadence steps at endurance power, higher-cadence targets during interval work, and let the climbing sessions naturally build your low-end coordination. The goal is not to maintain a single cadence everywhere. It is to be efficient at each cadence when the terrain and effort demand it.
When to Stop Doing Cadence Drills
Cadence work has diminishing returns. If your comfortable range already spans 72 to 100 rpm and you can produce clean power across that window, more cadence drills are not going to move the needle. You have built the neuromuscular infrastructure. Now maintain it.
Here is how to know you are there:
- Your heart rate differential between 75 and 95 rpm at tempo power is 5 bpm or less.
- You can hold 115+ rpm for 30 seconds without hip bounce.
- You can produce threshold power at 65 rpm without your power trace looking like a mountain range.
- Your cadence adjusts naturally to terrain and intensity without you thinking about it.
If all four of those are true, cadence work drops from a training focus to a maintenance habit. Two sets of spin-ups in the warm-up, one cadence-step block per week in an endurance ride. That is enough to hold the range.
Put the time you save into the things that actually limit your performance — threshold intervals, endurance volume, or recovery. The biggest cadence gains come in the first eight to twelve weeks. After that, the returns taper sharply.
Put It Together
Run the cadence cost test. Write down your numbers. Do the drills for eight weeks. Run the test again.
You will know more about your own pedalling than 95 per cent of the cyclists you ride with. And you will have the range to produce power efficiently whatever the road throws at you — flat, climbing, surging, sitting on, attacking.
That is what cadence training is actually for. Not finding one magic number. Building the flexibility to use them all.
If you want structured guidance on this and every other aspect of training as a masters cyclist, the Roadman Cycling community is where we put all of it together.