Look Who it Was Random video

How to Improve your cycling power to weight ratio

1,137 views · Published 2 December 2016 · 5:30 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: leonardmlee · 2016 · Sports

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Gravitationally challenged is a phrase I hear quite a lot but just exactly how challenging is gravity?

I am, of course, talking about the power to weight ratio. Everyone knows that the heavier you are, the harder it is to ride uphill. This is one of the basic tenets of cycling.

Meet my cycling chum Kev. As you can see from his Strava profile, he is a reasonably fit cyclist in his early forties. He has very kindly agreed to help me with an experiment to demonstrate the effect that extra weight has when riding a bike up hill.

Seeing as we are getting all scientific, here are the numbers on the weight side of the equation: Kev weighs 85 kilos and his bike weighs 9.1kg, making a grand total of 94.1 kg or 207.45 lbs.

To measure his power output, Kev’s bike is equipped with a set of Stages Shimano 105 power cranks.

Kev has been riding to power for a few months and it is now one of the key metrics he uses in his training. 

Kev IV.

So here we are at our top secret, closed road hill climb course and I’ve already created a Strava segment which is 2.7km or 1.68 miles long. As you can see from the profile, it ascends for 96 metres with an average gradient of 4%

Kev will ride this course three times. For his first ascent, he maintains an average power output of 250 watts. This, divided by the 94.1 kg of the combined weight of him and his bike gives him a power to weight ratio of approximately 2.65 watts per kilo. Kev completes the course in 9 minutes, five seconds.

As with his first run, Kev will ride up while maintaining an average power output of 250 watts. Now, though, the extra six kilos has increased the overall weight to 100.1 kg or 220.7lbs  and reduced his power to weight ratio down to 2.49 W/ KG. 

The six extra kilos represents approximately a 7% increase in weight and a difference of 0.16 of a watt per kilo in his power to weight ratio. This may not sound like a great deal but it will have a profound effect Kev’s ability to ride the course..

As you con see, Kev completed the course in 9 minutes, 43 seconds which is 38 seconds slower than his first run. Percentage wise this means he was approximately 8 %  slower.

For Kev’s third and final run he will ride up with the weight but, this time, we will see how much harder he has to work to complete the course in the same time as his first run. So his target time is nine minutes, five seconds. This will almost certainly be the hardest run of the three. 

Kev finishes the third run in nine minutes and ten seconds, only five seconds behind his first time but in order to achieve this he had to ride with an average power output of 272 watts, which is 22 watts more than the first ascent. Interestingly, is also represents an increase of about 8% in power. 

Based on these results there seems to be a very direct relationship between extra weight added verses extra time taken and extra power needed to compensate. It would be very interesting to see what would happen if we made a dramatic increase to the weight but that’s probably another experiment for another day.


If you would like to follow my efforts on the bike you can follow me on Strava. My profile is here: http://www.strava.com/athletes/515946

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