Poor man's Powercranks? (PPC)

Fday

One-legged pedaling has two drawbacks that make them relatively ineffective at really changing pedaling style.

First, few do them for more than a few minutes at a time and only a few minutes a week, maybe 1% of their training time. How is it beneficial to train one group of muscles you would like to use only about 1% compared to the other muscles you will be using?

Second, one-legged pedaling doesn't train the two legged coordination.

PC's make the entire ride a one-legged pedaling exercise for both legs at the same time so you are training all of the muscles equally in both time and intensity and you are training the two legged coordination. There is no substitute.

n crowley

PC's force a rider to lift the pedal from 6 o'c up to and over the 12 o'c spot, more like the "ankling" style which is a more extreme version of the relaxed circular style. The objective in ankling is the attempted application of continuous effective tangential force to both cranks at all times. Now in your
opinion, does the PC objective differ from that "ankling" explanation which I have given. The problem with trying to explain the linear style to a non believer is that while mentally the application of power and drawing back is a simple V shape, to any onlookers it appears as a circular style. If you were to stand on the pedal at 1 o'c when out of the saddle, while your pedal feels as if it is going straight down, it is in fact descending in a semi circle style. With greater use of ankle, calf and other muscles, the linear style uses this type of idea for extension of main power stroke and the power generation technique from hip to sole of foot is completely different. That's why a demonstration with the explanation is a necessity.

Fday

PC's only "force" the rider to have some positive force on the pedal around the entire circle. That force is usually quite small on the back stroke but it can never be zero or negative or the cranks will not come up. The PC's don't care what style one uses to do this. PC's don't "force" any particular style but do require complete unweighting on the backstroke.

The problem with your description of the linear style is you don't even attempt to try to explain it. What do the pedal forces look like around the circle, in your opinion, when someone is using the linear style? That should be pretty straight forward.

vadiver

It is not different.

The diference comes when you do the entire ride doing ILS on both legs at the same time. Is is necessary to do 100% of your training in ILS?

n crowley

Of course they don't care what technique is used but when the brain has a clear picture of the objective and the best way to do it, it makes pedaling an easier task. I have explained the forces of the linear style many times. Each leg attempts to apply continuous equal power to the pedal for only 180 degrees of the pedaling circle, from 11 to 5 o'c, and that can be max power when required, giving almost 360 degrees of continuous power application. Almost 360 degrees because there will be very brief interruptions as power application switches from one leg to the other.

vadiver

So your solution is to do ILS 100% of the time. That is pointless as well.

Who cares? Once you are on a real crank the two legged coordination is there. It is not real hard to unweight a peddel.


If you can spin each leg independetn how can this be? I can either let one leg rest at 6 o'clock and keep peddeling with the other. Or I can pull the other leg at 10% effort and not put any rotation on the bottom bracket. The clutch does not know. Unless the only place it works in at 6 o'clock.

n crowley

I forgot, I believed the objective of PC's was to teach a rider to perfect the circular pedaling technique by forcing him to use it. So what is the real objective of PC's.

donrhummy

I disagree. Frist off, it's a "poor man's" so it'll never be perfect. Aside from that, though, the point of power cranks is to improve the muscles that pull up the foot on the back of the pedal. I don't see how doing intervals of 1-leg pedalling (you can even do them on hills) won't achieve this. And from my personal experience, it DOES work. When i added in 1-legged hills, I noticed that my left leg got tired way before the right. After a few months, they were pretty much equal and I noticed that after long rides (which used both legs) that my left "up-pull" muscles were much more fatigued than in the past - an indication of a change in pedaling technique.

Fday

Many think the term perfect circles means equal forces around the entire circle. That is essentially impossible. To me the term "perfect circles" simply means zero negative forces around the entire circle. That is all the PC's require. We also suspect we change the forces to be more tangential, but that is yet to be proven. Other than forcing zero negative forces around the entire circle there is lots of room for variation depending on the needs and style of the rider.

The real objective of PC's is to make the athlete better than they otherwise would be using standard training techniques. We do that by making them use more muscles in training and, at the same time, changing the coordination pattern such that the pedaling efficiency goes up, both of which will result in more power.

Bro Deal

Because that doesn't cost anything.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Fday

Hey, one legged pedaling will make you better. I didn't say it wouldn't. It is just the potential for improvement is less. So, you pay your money (or don't pay your money) and you take your chances. Up to you.

n crowley

If all you are doing is zeroizing all negative forces, what does it matter whether the work involved is tangential or not.

Fday

Because, for the same linear force one gets more torque if the direction of the applied force is tangential than if it is not. More torque means more power.

The most extreme example of this principle would be when, with powercranks, you are standing on the cranks with your full weight on them with both of them at the bottom but not pedaling. The force on the cranks is maximum, being the full weight of the rider but the direction of the force is perpendicular to the pedaling circle so the torque is zero and no work is done even though the forces are high.

It is a simple physical law, the more tangential the applied force is to the circle, the more effective is that force in generating work and power.

n crowley

I know about the tangential effect, but you are not applying any effective force or torque, all you are doing is unweighting to eliminate the negative force effect, or are you now claiming that you are producing effective pulling up force when using powercranks.