During contact control tasks, the goal is to move an object that is in permanent contact with the limb. If muscular forces act in opposition to the desired movement direction, they counteract the movement and may be regarded as inefficient. Under certain conditions, one might accept a loss in muscular efficiency in order to gain advantage during another part of the movement. For example, in bicycling, adults produce negative muscular work at higher cadences during the recovery phase (Neptune & Herzog, 1999). At these cadences, a net advantage might be achieved by applying redundant positive work to the crank during the downstroke at the expense of negative muscular work during the recovery phase. The ability to appropriately apply negative muscular forces is acquired over time as it has been shown that children apply muscular forces differently than adults in the task of cycling (Jensen & Brown, 2001). From a developmental perspective, then, it is of interest to determine how children acquire this skill scaling negative muscular forces when the task demands change. Purpose of the present study was to investigate how adaptable children are in applying negative muscular forces at different speed requirements during bicycling. Subjects were divided into three age groups: adults (mean age: 26.2 ± 1.8years), older children (9.2 ± 1.0) and younger children (5.4 ± 0.4). Each group contained five subjects. Subjects rode a stationary bicycle at 60, 80, and 100 rpm at proportionally equivalent resistances. The muscular component of the pedal force acting tangential to the crank was calculated using the pedal force decomposition technique (Kautz & Hull, 1993) and normalized with respect to resistance. Subsequently, the negative muscular work applied to the crank was calculated. Regression equations relating cadence and negative muscular work and their corresponding r2 values were calculated for each subject and averaged within each age group. The r2 value for the adults (r2=0.81) was higher than for the older children (r2=0.60) and the younger children (r2=0.42). These results show that children are less capable of task-appropriate scaling in response to changes in cadence than adults. Younger children have yet to acquire an organized muscle response to cadence changes and find the optimal ratio between redundant positive work during the downstroke and negative muscular work during the recovery phase. These findings have implications for a preferred cadence selection as well as for coaching and the use of cycling as a means of rehabilitation.