Your pedal stroke: what's worth working on, and what to ignore
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Type "how to improve your pedal stroke" into a search box and the answers arrive with total confidence: pedal in circles, pull up on the backstroke, scrape mud off your shoe. It's some of the most repeated advice in cycling — and most of it doesn't survive contact with the evidence.
Here's what's actually happening around the pedal circle, what's worth working on, and what to stop worrying about.
Studies looking at trained cyclists consistently find that they do not pull up meaningfully on the backstroke — and that deliberately trying to do so tends to make riders less efficient, not more. Elite riders don't produce a smooth, even circle of force; they produce a big push and get the other leg out of the way. Chasing a perfectly round power profile is optimising the wrong thing.
What each part of the circle actually does
Think of the stroke as a clock face, with 12 at the top:
The power phase
Most of your powerHip and knee extension driving the pedal down and forward. This is where the overwhelming majority of your force is produced, and it's the part worth training.
The finish
MeaningfulContinuing to push through the bottom, with the calf helping transmit force. Ends with a subtle 'scraping' feeling as the foot passes the bottom.
The upstroke
Very littleThe leg is being lifted, largely by the opposite leg's downstroke. Trying to pull hard here is where most riders waste effort — see below.
The recovery
Near zeroGetting the leg back over the top and out of the way, ready to push again. Unweighting matters; actively pulling doesn't.
The practical takeaway is blunt: the downstroke is the stroke. If you want more power, you get it by producing more force from roughly 12 to 5 o'clock — not by inventing power on the way back up.
The one thing worth fixing on the upstroke
There is a genuine exception, and it's a subtle one. While you shouldn't actively pull, you also shouldn't leave your recovering leg sitting like a dead weight on the pedal — because your other leg then has to lift it as well as drive the bike forward.
The goal is unweighting: taking your own leg's mass off the pedal on the way up, so it isn't resisting. That's a very different sensation from hauling upward, and it's largely automatic in experienced riders. If you're going to think about the backstroke at all, think "get out of the way," not "pull."
Four sessions that genuinely help
Single-leg drills
30–60 s per leg, 3–4 rounds, on a trainer at moderate resistance
With one foot unclipped you feel every dead spot immediately. Excellent for smoothing the transition over the top — but keep them short, they're fatiguing and hard on the knees.
Low-cadence torque work
4 × 5 min at 50–60 rpm, sweet-spot power, seated
Trains the ability to produce high force per stroke. Build up gradually and stop if you feel any knee discomfort.
High-cadence spin-ups
6 × 30 s building to your maximum sustainable cadence
Improves coordination and smoothness at speed. Aim to stay still in the saddle — bouncing means you've exceeded your control.
Cadence variation within a block
Alternate 2 min at 95 rpm / 2 min at 70 rpm at the same power
Teaches you to produce the same watts in different ways, which is exactly what a varied road demands.
Cadence: there is no magic number
Riders spend a lot of energy worrying about whether they should be spinning at 90 rpm or grinding at 70. The research on self-selected cadence is fairly reassuring: most people naturally settle near their own efficient range, and forcing a big change usually makes things worse rather than better.
What's genuinely worth having is range — the ability to produce your power comfortably at 70 rpm on a steep ramp and at 100 rpm chasing a wheel on the flat. That's what the cadence-variation work above builds, and it's far more useful than converging on some ideal number.
Before you optimise the stroke, check the fit
A lot of what gets diagnosed as bad pedalling technique is actually a bike-fit problem. Saddle too high produces hip rocking and a stretched, dead bottom of the stroke. Saddle too low overloads the quads and closes the hip. Cleat position affects where force transmits through the foot.
If your stroke feels genuinely awkward, or you get persistent knee or hip discomfort, spend the money on a proper bike fit before you spend months on drills. It's the higher-leverage fix by a wide margin.
Where to do the drills
Single-leg work and low-cadence torque intervals are close to impossible to do properly outdoors — you need constant resistance, no junctions and no descents, and with one foot unclipped you really don't want traffic. The trainer is the natural home for all of it.
Moveee Indoor is a reasonable place to run them: pair a trainer in the browser, load a structured session, and the resistance is held steady for you while you ride one of your own real routes in 3D. For the torque work specifically you'll want gradient-driven slope mode rather than ERG — our ERG mode guide explains when to use which. It's free while in alpha and there's nothing to install.
Push harder from twelve to five, get the other leg out of the way, own a wide cadence range, and get your fit checked. Everything else is folklore.
Sources 6
Where this article summarises a study, the study itself is linked — not a write-up of it.
- 1 Korff T, Romer LM, Mayhew I, Martin JC Effect of pedaling technique on mechanical effectiveness and efficiency in cyclists · Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 2007
- 2 Theurel J, Crepin M, Foissac M, Temprado JJ Effects of different pedalling techniques on muscle fatigue and mechanical efficiency during prolonged cycling · Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports · 2012
- 3 Coyle EF, Feltner ME, Kautz SA, et al. Physiological and biomechanical factors associated with elite endurance cycling performance · Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 1991
- 4 Mornieux G, Stapelfeldt B, Gollhofer A, Belli A Effects of pedal type and pull-up action during cycling · International Journal of Sports Medicine · 2008
- 5 Marsh AP, Martin PE The association between cycling experience and preferred and most economical cadences · Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 1993
- 6 Bini R, Hume PA, Croft JL Effects of bicycle saddle height on knee injury risk and cycling performance · Sports Medicine · 2011
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