Why does pedaling up hill feels harder than walking up the same hill?
In: Physics
One obvious cause is that you have to push the bike. Extra weight is quite important when going uphill, so adding 5-20kg of bike is not trivial.
Another reason is the “shape” of the effort.
For example, when going flat on a bike, you can push very hard when the pedal is around horizontal, and not push as hard the rest of the time. That’s fine, because the bike does not slow down much between strokes.
When going uphill, the bike will slow down a lot whenever you stop pushing on the pedals. You almost have to push continuously.
Human muscles like working like the first case, making pulse like efforts. And don’t like making continuous efforts like in the second case. So, on a bike it’s more difficult to output the same power going uphill Vs going flat.
I suppose the same is observed for walking uphill Vs riding uphill: your muscles are ok with the shorter bursts that make you walk, but find it harder to spread out the effort when on a bike.
It’s mostly because bike gears, even first gears, are usually designed for greater speeds rather than power. It means that it transfers the energy of the pedaling into a higher rotation speed for the wheels at the cost of torque. When you are going uphill, the speed is quickly lost due to the acceleration of gravity, so a part of the work you do by pedalling is lost.
It wouldn’t necessarily be the case if you were taking advantage of gearing on your bike. That said, assuming you have a fixed gear and can’t switch to a lower gear for the incline waking seems easier than pedaling because walking is a very efficient and natural motion to begin with. Half the motion is a controlled fall so gravity is doing some of the work and it’s very easy to modulate your effort to make things easier or harder as you see fit.
Pedaling isn’t as natural a motion for your body so it’s inherently going to feel more difficult. In addition you have to deal with the extra weight of the bike as well. In simplest terms riding up a hill is just more work. More weight to carry.
That’s because you are moving against the gravity. And a component of gravitational force is pulling you downward while you are moving upward.
When you walk you control your momentum, you lift your feet and step forward, however when your biking up a hill you are now pushing a peddle that’s pulls a chain to spin a wheel that requires more force to move due to the resistance, weight of the bike, what gear you are in (always go as low as you can for hills before you start going up)
Because you are on wheels and gravity is trying to force you down the hill. Where as when you are just walking up it you can keep yourself steady. Not sure if that explains it well enough but yeah.
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