Your Successful Bike Hill Strategy. 11 Tips that make Cycling Hills Easy

Do you find cycling your bike up a hill difficult? Are there steep hills on your daily cycle commute that you dread?

Maybe you want to ride a long distance event like 100 Mile Bike Challenge that features rolling hills in the route.

In this article you will learn successful bike hill strategies that you can use to make cycling hills easy. You will also learn about conserving energy on hills to help you finish long distance endurance cycling challenges.

Bike Hill Strategy

1. Always know how long the ride hill is

– This is vital information and helps you plan your tactics for riding hills. With this information you can decide how much energy to use, how close to the limit you can push. If you don’t know the distance to the top of the hill it is like riding blind. Particularly true on long alpine climbs where they can be more than 20 km.


Why are you riding the hill?

2. Are you riding hard for cycling hill training

– If you are training to get faster and thereby ride hills as a form of intensive interval then your approach should be all out. The length should determine whether you go over your anaerobic threshold or not but the basic approach is to push to the limit and use the decent for recovery


3. Are you conserving energy?

– If the hill is part of a longer ride and your main focus is on finishing the ride then adopt a defensive strategy of conserving energy. Do NOT go anaerobic. In fact try NOT to even raise your work effort. Imagine the whole ride from start to finish is one long time trial. The key is to ride at an even work rate NOT an even speed. In this situation use your gears and do everything you can to KEEP your heart Rate at the same level as it was on the flat. If you don’t have a monitor then you need to judge on “perceived effort”


4. Learn to pedal standing up without spiking your heart rate

– This is a vital skill as often when you stand up you will experience a spike in your heart rate of 5 or more beets per minute. This is very significant and VERY bad news whether you are riding to conserve energy or are riding on the limit.

To do this you need to practice and feel your body. DONT WORK HARDER standing up than you would sitting down. Inevitably your body wants to as you are using more muscles to support the extra weight which is no longer supported by the saddle. You need to compensate in other ways.

This takes practice and can only be done with reference to a heart monitor. Give it a try. After 1-2 sessions practice you will find that you can stand up and subconsciously adjust your effort resulting in a continuous heart rate with no spike


5. Change gear early

– getting caught in the wrong gear, changing late are cardinal sins when cycle climbing. Anticipation of the terrain particularly with relation to changing gradient and road surface will help you be in the right gear at the right time. Always better to change to early rather than too late.


6. Keep your cadence at its natural level

– Spinning or Grinding big gear? this is a personal choice and is subject to the whims of fashion. Since Lance Armstrong the current vogue is to spin a small gear. Up to you which strategy you adopt. My personal preference is to spin a small gear as my objective on long rides is to keep my work rate even (& HR) unless I’m training something different of course. I find it easier to maintain this even work rate with small gears which bring me to next point “the triple”


7. Should you use a triple chain ring?

– Again this is subject to the vagaries of fashion. Any die hard roadie wouldn’t be seen dead riding a triple and I can understand that. Whereas cycling hills on a mountain bike would be insane without a triple. If your objectives are to ride comfortable for long endurance rides then I would strongly recommend the additional lower gears that riding a triple will bring. Success is about EVEN PACED EFFORT so to me vanity takes a distant second place to my desire to make my long distance riding easier. After 24 hours on the bike the only person watching and feeling your pain is YOU !!


8. Pedal in circles

– There is a tenancy especially as we get tired to stamp on the pedals when cycling climbs. This causes our pedal motion to become more like a “square”. It is inefficient in propelling the bike forward and results in wasted energy. So as you get tired focus your effort on technique rather than on how much your body is hurting.


9. Breeth deeply and Rhythmically

– As you get tired you will tend to take shorted breaths and may start to “pant” this is not productive for your cycle hill climbs. Concentrate your thoughts and energy on expelling all the air from your lungs and then let them passively fill up again with air and in a smooth and even way.


10. Don’t start too fast

– this is important regardless of whether you are riding all out or conserving energy. Base your riding strategy on the “whole hill” not just on the beginning. Dying half way up is physically and emotionally very tough and is ALWAYS SLOWER in the long run. Adopt a considered approach that takes into account your actual fitness level and ride objectives.


11. Finish Every Hill

– You can enjoy significant time savings when you cycle hills by riding right over the top and keep pedaling UNTIL gravity pulls you down the other side. Fight the temptation to slow down as you near the top, don’t be fooled into thinking that the job is done. Ride right through the hill and then you can use the descent to recover.

I hope these tips and cycling techniques help with your bike hill strategy for cycling and climbing hills on your bike. If you are tempted by the endurance riding then take a look at the 100 mile bike challenge. Also I work with many amateur riders coaching them to realise their fitness potential. To find out more check out Century Training

This is a new web site and I would really appreciate your help in raising awareness. If you enjoyed this article please take a moment to comment or share it on Facebook or Twitter. I would really appreciate it. Thanks and keep cycling.

Luke Bream

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P. P. S. Are you getting the fitness and weight loss goals you desire? Maybe I can help you. To find out more check out Cycling Training

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