How to Train Torque Without Just Grinding Bigger Gears

Torque training has become almost synonymous with low-cadence riding. But simply dropping to 60 RPM doesn't guarantee you're producing more force or creating the adaptation you're after.

Coach Adam Pulford breaks down the relationship between torque, cadence, power, and force production; explains why the gym may be the best place to raise your strength ceiling; and shows where low-cadence work actually belongs in a cyclist's training year.

HOST

Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Resources:

• Strength Exercise F-v and P-v Profiles as Predictors of Elite Sprint-Cycling Performance - PubMed
• Power-time, force-time, and velocity-time curve analysis during the jump squat: impact of load - PubMed 
• 58. HIGH INTENSITY TORQUE TRAINING CAN INCREASE CYCLING PERFORMANCE
• Effects of Cycling Training at Imposed Low Cadences: A Systematic Review - PubMed
• Effect of Cycling Cadence on Neuromuscular Function: A Systematic Review of Acute and Chronic Alterations - PMC 
• Pro Workouts: Torque Efforts with Noemi Rueegg | EF Pro Cycling 
• https://trainright.com/camps/

Transcript

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Why Torque Training Gets Misused

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Asked 10 cyclists what torque training is, and nine of them will probably tell you the same thing. Riding at 60 RPM. That's become the default prescription. If you want to improve torque, just find a hill, shift into a big gear, and grind away. But here's the problem. Low cadence doesn't automatically mean more work or better work is being done. It doesn't automatically mean higher force output. In fact, I've seen riders spend months doing low cadence intervals and never actually getting stronger on the bike. Why? Because we've confused cadence with force production. Today I want to challenge the way most cyclists think about torque training, explain why strength training is often the missing piece, and remind everyone if you're going to train something to improve it, you should actually measure it. The sad truth is that lots of coaches and athletes claim to use torque training in their programs. But when I ask them directly if they even monitor torque during their self-proclaimed torque intervals or analyze it in the files afterwards, very few actually say yes or even no that you can do this. As you'll see here in a minute, higher force production or increasing torque can be an effective method to improve aspects of your cyclone. But you can do this with high or low cadence training and with strength training in the gym. For the record, I'm not not a torque guy, but all I'm saying is if you're gonna train it, measure it so you can actually see if what you're intending to train is actually working. I'm Adam Pulford, head coach of cycling at CTS. That's an endurance coaching company that works with amateurs, pros, and everyone like you to help hit their goals. We produce these videos to cut through the bullshit of training so that you can take it to the next level by either hiring a coach or coaching yourself better. You can find out more at trainwright.com. Now, there is a lot of misinformation about torque training out there, so today let's try to dispel the myths and look at tools and strategies that you can apply to your training for better results overall.

The Low Cadence Myth

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Part one The Myth about Torque Training. Somewhere along the line, the cycling world simplified torque training into one instruction: ride at lower cadence. Need more torque, ride at 60 rpm. More force, ride at 55 rpms. Need to improve your climbing? Ride at 50 rpms. But cadence is only one variable. You can pedal at 60 rpms while producing very little force. Likewise, you can generate enormous pedal forces without intentionally riding at low cadence. It's called a sprint. And that higher force output, which elicits higher power, is what moves the needle on performance. We've confused the tool with the adaptation. Low cadence isn't the adaptation. Force production is. In particular, force production over time. That's the important distinction because it changes how we think about training. Part 2. What

Where Torque Really Comes From

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actually creates torque? Let's start with a simple concept. Power is produced by two things, torque and angular velocity. Angular velocity is simply cadence. Torque is the rotational force at the crank. Most cyclists immediately focus on the cadence side of things for this equation. If I slow my cadence, I'll improve my torque. But ask yourself, where does the torque actually come from? It comes from your ability to apply force to the pedals. Cadence changes the conditions under which that force is applied. It doesn't magically increase your ability to produce force. I have a good infographic displayed about this right now, and it is a little dense, according to my editor and producer. She's awesome, by the way. But she also encouraged me to remind you all that you can pause and read through this if you wish. But back to my point here about torque production. Think of it this way: lower cadence gives you more time to apply force during each pedal stroke. But if your maximal force production hasn't improved, power is unchanged. And power in wattage is the thing that drives adaptation and performance. Low cadence at lower power doesn't make you stronger. Force production needs to be high in order to elicit a higher power output. And that intensity makes all the difference. Part three. So

Why The Gym Raises The Ceiling

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that's how maximal strength actually increases. The gym raises the ceiling. Cycling teaches you how to use it on the bicycle. And that's why more endurance athletes are lifting now than ever before. Not because they're trying to build bodybuilder legs, it's because they're trying to increase their force-producing capacity. Another fun fact: changing crank length doesn't change your torque output at a particular power and cadence. So don't think that by going shorter cranks actually give you an advantage here. In fact, shorter cranks require more force output at the same power and cadence. That's a common misunderstood fact about cycling and biomechanics there for you. And all the more reason to focus on force production. Anywho, part

When Low Cadence Still Helps

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four. Does low cadence training still matter? Absolutely. I'm not arguing against low cadence work, and I'm not arguing against torque training. I'm arguing against using it as your primary strength intervention, that's for sure. And I'm arguing against low cadence intervals without any thought about the power, force, or adaptation that you're trying to accomplish. Low cadence intervals have two important jobs. First, they help transfer strength you've developed in the gym onto the bicycle for cycling specific movements. Second, they improve your ability to express force while pedaling under real riding conditions. That's specificity, not maximal strength development. Those are two very different adaptations. If strength training raises the ceiling, low cadence riding can teach you how to use that new ceiling on your bike. Now, part five.

Torque Profiles Beyond FTP

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This is where torque becomes really interesting. One of the reasons I've started using torque analysis in my own coaching is that it adds another layer to the traditional power duration curve. The power duration curve tells us what power the athlete can produce, while the torque duration curve, along with cadence, which is still important by the way, begins to tell us how they produce it. So imagine two riders, and I've got this up on the screen as well, and I'll walk you through it here a bit, but feel free to hit pause and read through to get all the details here. So these two riders both have 320 watt FTPs. Both have nearly identical power duration curves. From a traditional coaching perspective, they look the same. But then you look at their torque profiles. One rider maintains exceptionally high torque throughout the curve. The other relies heavily on cadence. Suddenly, they aren't the same athlete anymore. The first rider may already have excellent force production. The second rider may have an incredible aerobic engine, but relatively lower muscular force production. Same FTP. Different coaching strategies, potentially. That's where I think looking at torque has some real value here, because it adds more description to the athlete phenotype or some strengths and limiters rather than pure power production alone. Torque then becomes not the number to chase, but another layer to observe and measure. It's another way to understand an athlete's movement strategy and if you need to train or modify anything around it. Now, we could go wild here and talk about critical torque, which in a very simplistic term is adjacent to critical power insofar as it's a high torque value that a rider can sustain for a long period of time without fatiguing rapidly. Critical torque is more commonly a thing in laboratories for researchers, biomechanists, and measured in a pretty controlled setting. But of course, we can get at it from the field side of things. At the time of this recording, I don't know of any platform that measures or estimates critical torque at all, including training peaks, intervals. And anything that I've seen over the past 20 years. Why? My argument is that critical power in W prime or FTP and FRC, depending on which camp you're in there, along with cadence, is just a far better way to measure and monitor performance without confusing athletes about chasing yet again another metric. So please hear me on this one. I'm not telling everyone that they need to measure their own critical torque, like you see here on the screen. But if you are curious, here's how I do it for some of my athletes. Because I work with elite athletes in different teams whose performance managers may want the critical torque analysis or some kind of torque analysis, along with making sure that my athletes are making gains where it matters when we're doing torque training. Here's my workflow of estimating critical torque using WKO5 and a few other tools. It's pretty heavy-handed, and most athletes or even coaches listening will not need to go this far into detail. However, if you love to tinker or you are an ultra curious athlete, here you go. Took me a while to find my workflow here, and now I'm just giving it to you here for free. Enjoy that. But even giving you this information, it can be confusing. I understand. So if you don't want to tinker with your torque, just head over to trainwrite.com, click on free consult, and we can get you set up with a coach that can help lead you toward your goals in a very simplistic way for your specific needs. Because if you get all hyped up on torque training, you can actually make some mistakes that could lead to poor performance outcomes. So ultimately, I use critical torque to identify that sustainable torque output, call it at like FTP, if you will. And then what we're gonna do over time is we're gonna look at shorter durations and higher torque productions, see if that's a limiter. If it is, we're gonna work on increasing force production. Okay. We'll when we'll do that through the gym, we'll do that through intervals, and we'll measure it specifically with the torque production on the power file afterwards. And we'll make sure that the five second, the 10 second, 20 second, one minute, 20-minute torque production and force production goes up. That's how it works. That's how I do it anyway in my coaching practice when it comes to using torque values to increase overall performance. You don't need to go into that deep of a level, but I just wanted to share with you that that is how I do it when I need to do it on my side of things. But oftentimes when I'm communicating to the athlete, I'm still using an actual uh power prescription and a cadence prescription to get it done. I will then share with them when we've made changes in that torque production.

A Practical Torque Analysis Workflow

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Okay, moving on to part six now because timing matters. Another one of the mistakes I see is athletes trying to do torque work all year round. Everything has a season, including torque training. So when do you do it? Well, the first kind of time period that I would do it with an athlete if they need to work on it is during the base phase. This is where I'm gonna increase maximal strength in the gym, and I'm gonna build aerobic capacity on the bike. Heavy lifting in the gym, higher volume on the bike. For most people listening, I would keep it as simple as that, but you gotta lift heavy. This increases force production by the muscles, and then we apply it to the bike later. Next, during the build one phase, so this is coming after several base phases. This is where we're training the force-producing engine. Okay. We're gonna begin transferring that strength onto the bike with lower cadence and torque-specific intervals. In my coaching practice, I use 50 to 60 RPMs at zone three to four to help with this transfer on the bike. I'm only doing one to two sessions per week for a few weeks. You don't need to go wild with this. And in my opinion, you should go harder than zone two in order to see benefit here. As we progress through the build part of the season, I'm gonna start to incorporate things like standing starts, overgeared sprints, and low cadence, high power hill attacks, and high speed sprints. These are all good drills and intervals to incorporate in order to ensure high force production gets translated to the bike from the gym. These are hard efforts, by the way. Zone six plus, okay? And it feels like a nine out of ten on the RPE scale. 10 being a max effort, one being super easy. We're usually going nine. Now there's no specific cadence on these, by the way, but you're using a taller or heavier gears that you would normally use while racing. You should feel overgeared to start the effort. And then as you finish the effort on these five to 20 second sort of drills or intervals that I'm talking about, you should be just about getting on top of the gear with normal cadence. Again, these are more drills than intervals. I don't have the athlete looking at really anything, uh, torque, cadence, or power, it's just too short. I want them to focus on the effort itself. I want them to feel the effort. Okay. And you're gonna have to use some trial and effort to dial it in. But then, then we look at the torque and the power production afterwards on the file itself. If you or your coach have determined that you need more high force work in these build phases, I would advise at least a two-week block or more of low cadence, high force VO2 intervals. That's two sessions per week, intervals done at zone five to six, so pretty darn hard here, too. Nine out of 10 RPE, and we're gonna use low cadence, 50 to 60 RPMs, and have full recovery in between. Aim for at least 15 minutes of time in zone per workout, and you'll see the benefits from these. I use power and cadence targets that I know that will elicit the critical torque or higher torque, and that force will elicit a positive training response. I don't have the athlete look at torque on their device if they don't want to, because I know based on past data that they have been doing at that power with a specific cadence, they will hit the exact torque they need to. Now, if they are curious, absolutely, we'll put uh torque displayed on their unit and I'll have them hit a targeted torque. However, I try to keep it pretty simple with my athletes and I don't want to overconfuse this message here. So if I can still stick with cadence and power in order to get it done, but then show them what the torque is afterwards and say that look, we're hitting the we're hitting the target. And on torque training, we're actually improving your torque. Now we're talking. And so I'll monitor the average torque afterwards to make sure that we're staying on a target to keep moving forward with the goal of being able to produce more sustainable force in the early phases of training so that uh come race season, we don't have a weak link in the kinetic chain of force production, cadence, and power for the effort. For athletes racing on steep terrain with that you only have a low cadence option, that means you're doing high power demands at uh 15 to 20 percent gradient increases. This stuff's for you. For athletes who live in flat terrain or they live in Watopia, where you may not see anything more than a 2 to 3% incline, these intervals are also for you. For athletes or coaches who identify that they're limited by force output in order to make their power in a sprint or in a race setting, do more strength training, and then these intervals are for you.

Season Planning For Force And Speed

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Now, as you get into the first peak and race portion of the season, you want to maintain strength in the gym by bringing down the load and overall weight. You want to develop the maximal aerobic power and you want to develop energy systems, and you're gonna do this with freely chosen cadence. This is always the best strategy for race-winning performance out there in the real world. Freely chosen cadence has time and time again been shown to be the best strategy for racing and the majority of endurance athletes in their training. This is because there are trade-offs between the aerobic system and the anaerobic system, or your heart and your legs. When it comes to making your best power, if you use higher cadence, same power, less torque, you have less force per pedal stroke, better ability to sprint, jump on the attack, make a move when it happens, and respond to terrain changes. Having lower cadence and high torque ability allows you to produce more muscular force when needed. This is on steep hill climbs, punching through rock gardens for my mountain bikers, you're doing a seated sprint, or you're making sure that you have no weak link in your pedal stroke. Also, a big one is like during the season, use low cadence work only when it supports the demands of the events that you're preparing for. Because if you train low cadence all the time, you're training for slow leg speed. And that's not great for sprinting, bridging those gaps and producing max power on group rides, races, and going fast on your bike. Just isn't fast as fast. So remember this every intervention should have a purpose. Not every athlete needs more torque, not every athlete needs more gym work. The key is identifying the limiter. Data, such as torque, power, and cadence, like I've shown you here today, or a good coach, can help you with that. Here's

Final Questions To Guide Training

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my closing thoughts. The next time someone tells you to do torque training, don't immediately ask, what should my cadence be? Instead ask, what adaptation are we trying to create here? Because low cadence alone usually won't move the needle. Force production does. That means high torque and high power. Cadence is simply one way of expressing it. And that's why I think torque has some unlocked potential for some people. Not because it replaces the power duration curve or critical power, not one bit. Because without power, cadence and duration, torque is kind of useless. It does help us answer a much more interesting question though, not how much power can the athlete produce, but how do they produce their best power? Once you understand that, you can make much better training decisions, like should you spend more time in the gym? Do you actually need low cadence work or not? And if so, at what intensity, or do you just need more aerobic training? Ultimately, proper torque training using critical torque analysis is another tool to individualize training instead of giving every athlete the same prescription and hoping for a different outcome next season while shooting in the dark with low cadence. Overall, I hope this video was useful in shedding some light on torque training and how it's different from just low cadence training. So if you're looking to put these concepts into practice, check out our 2027 CTS training camps calendar, and that's linked below. They're a great chance to train alongside of our coaches, get personalized feedback, and learn in a super immersive environment. We'd love to see you there. Until then, if you're enjoying these videos, please like and subscribe below if you haven't already. Share it with a friend, especially those who need some torque training work, because that's the best way to grow the show and our audience in making sure that you get top notch information to improve your training and racing for months and years to come. Thanks again for watching. We'll see you back here for the next one soon.