Lots of people keep asking me in what way does riding fixed help you if you already have a road bike and train on that? Good question I thought and after hearing it more than once, I’ve tried to capture what the benefits are to cyclists of all affinities out there..

Arguably you could say that training on a fixed would create the biggest benefits if you are a road racer or ride on a velodrome, but actually skills gained on a fixie go wider than that, here’s why

Bike handling

This is an obvious one. When you ride fixed you have to settle for the fact that pedals are turning, constantly, always so things you would have gotten used to in the past like holding your inside pedal up at 12 o’clock when making a sharp corner doesn’t apply anymore. Pedals keep turning whether you are going straight or around the corner. This teaches you a keen eye for corners and the speed you take into a corner. Granted fixies and track bikes tend to have more ground clearance to the bottom bracket than your road bike, but still – carelessness will punish you with a grounded pedal and potentially your backside on the tarmac. Also you can’t do bunny hops the normal way either anymore, but it is possible to feather your ride and compensate by pulling light wheelies to get over pot holes to get you out of trouble. 

In general you get a very keen and deep feel for the bike and also for the road you are riding and this sensitivity you will take with you to any other bike you ride too, even if they are not fixed.

Endurance

Needless to say when you are pedaling constantly there is no such thing as resting your legs going down a hill or just coasting on the flats. A very common thing you see when people pick up cycling is that they mash the gears and then punctuate the effort with coasting for as long as possible until they have to mash the gears some more to keep up their speed. When you ride fixed of course, none of that is possible – you have one gear, that’s it and better still, like it or not, you have to keep pedaling. That means you gradually unlearn this bad habit of mashing your gears and coasting, and learn to put the power down when you pedal, but also relax while you are still pedaling. Varying your power output this way is crucial for building up endurance and enabling your legs to get better at clearing the lactic acid from your legs. Incidentally they will do it faster when you pedal at a high cadence than if you are coasting. Counterintuitive but true – just ask Lance Armstrong!

Climbing skills

Here of course your ability to climb is somewhat defined by the gear you have chosen to ride in – so if you are running a 48T chainring, a 17 or 18T rear sprocket will let you tackle hills whereas anything smaller will really demand a lot from both your knees but also your stamina. That’s not to say that riding fixed is for flats alone.

In fact, climbing on a fixed will teach you a lot about position on the bike, weight distribution and when to use the handlebars and your upper body to give a little extra leverage to pull you up when the hill kicks up unexpectedly. Here it certainly helps if you have bull-horn type bars that will help you have a similar riding position as if you were riding on the hoods of a road bike, but even if you don’t you can use the drops for a similar purpose, but will have to be in much more of a sprinting position when you climb, which means that some of the leverage you can use your body weight for when climbing in a more upright (dancing on the pedals) position, you can’t do here.

I call it the zimmer-frame approach – which sounds funny I know, but its really to illustrate where your body weight is in relation to the bars and the bottom bracket. A lot of people hunch over the bike when they are climbing, so being out of the saddle, but not using the body weight to help push down the pedals. If, on the other hand you bring yourself closer to the handlebars, (imagine you are climbing stairs holding on to a zimmerframe for support) your butt doesn’t stick out so far, your back is straighter and more upright and your arms are close to your pelvis and you use this different centre of gravity to help push the pedals down in addition to your legs of course. Also if you have to pull the bars a little, you can, but you won’t make the bike violently swerve from side to side nor will you waste too much energy.

Souplesse

This is what the french call smoothness and flexibility, a way of cycling which is defined by a smooth, seemingly effortless way of turning the pedals. Wonder what I mean? Just watch Jacques Anquetil! Riding fixed you’ll begin to pick this up in no time, because doing anything else is just too much work. Particularly if you make a point of riding longer distances on a fixed, you’ll nail this pretty quick as your brain gets re-wired into continuous pedalling.

For road riding I have noticed that compared to back in the day when I had a tendency to stay in my bigger chainring on the flats and only use the small chainring when going up hills, I changed my 52T to a 50T and my 39T to a 38T and installed an 11-23 cassette on the back and these days I use the small chainring a lot more. It’s great for super speedy accelerations from a standing start, I spin a lot in the 14T and 15T sprocket and the 38T on the front and save the bigger chainring for really putting the hammer down (for me that would be going faster than 36 km/h).

Before riding fixed I just couldn’t fathom spinning at 90-100rpm continuously – I was more likely to be down in 75-80 rpm and that meant that I had a tendency to mash my gears too and get knackered as a result. Not so anymore!