What is the evidence that training with power is superior to . . .

TheDarkLord

Proof enough that Frank cannot be trusted with anything related to privacy.

Fday

Hey, at least that explanation for his behavior doesn't involve substantial character defects.

I suspect you have sponsors. Would you ever treat any of your sponsors in that fashion?

acoggan

And so the character assassination continues...



Nothing formal (in part because I prefer to maintain my independence).



That would depend on how the sponsor treated me.

fergie

Sponsorship is a two way street.. Wonder what happened (outside of brain surgery, yeah good one Frank) to make him act that way.

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Hamish Ferguson: Cycling Coach
http://hamishferguson.blogspot.com/

Fday

Well, why don't you ask him. I think he would be hard pressed to point to something we did to cause him to post what he did.

We had essentially zero contact with him for the last several months and the last contact we had was positive, although we were trying to convince him he would benefit from them more if he used the cranks more than he was using them (he was using them essentially just for warm up and cool-down. Even though he did, apparently, take them outside and do some longer rides he never got to the point of transitioning to where these became "easier" and more like regular cranks in effort). In one e-mail we gave him the example of Marco Pinnotti, who started them about the same time he did and was blogging he had gone way beyond Pete's abilities with them and seeing advantage as a result.

We simply suggest to our athletes ways we think they could use the product better. We never argue with success though and if someone is successful they can use them however they think is most beneficial for them. If he had won this year and gone slower than the year before, we wouldn't have cared much from a sponsorship perspective, as long as we could tout his achievement and he was happy with our product.

Instead, he got faster, to which a strong arguement can be made the PC's had a substantial role to play in that improvement from numbers he supplied himself to us, yet he posted in a public forum that they were garbage and our efforts to tout the achievement of this sponsored athlete was thrown back in our face as a lie because of this post. Needless to say, I was not very happy.

So, ask him. Only he can know.

midastouch

There is none. We are conducting such a study at the Shands Hospital/University of Florida Cycling Performance Center right now. 13 participants completed another 7 to go before I analyze the data.

frenchyge

Are you saying there's no evidence currently because the study isn't yet complete?

Care to summarize the study protocol? I'm interested to know whether the participants used the power data to construct their own training plan, or followed a training plan prescribed by the study.

midastouch

A thorough search of the scientific literature shows no studies comparing power based training to other forms of training. Even studies just showing the effectiveness of power-based training are pretty limited. It may indeed be superior, but the studies have just not been done. I'll report on the study when it is complete. We will also submit it to an appropriate scientific journal.

daveryanwyoming

I'm curious, how does your study separate the tool (power meter) vs. the training philosophies and plans that utilize that tool. This entire thread seems awfully rhetorical, how do you "prove" an instrument helps or hinders anything given that it's accurate and reliable. It's all about the way that tool is applied and power meters don't require any particular application of the tool. You can use a power meter to implement long slow miles, fancy interval routines, fartlek approaches or anything else a coach can dream up. How does your study plan to answer the question of whether training with power meters is superior to training without power meters when there are so many different ways to use power meters in training?

-Dave

midastouch

Yes the debate and the marketing are awfully rhetorical and generally lacking a good empirical base. We have no delusions about answering all of the complexities of the question(s) in a single study. We will begin to answer one piece of the puzzle. I've been a researcher for a long time and I realize how difficult it is to change people's opinions with or without convincing data. We will attempt to show, for a given type of well researched interval training, whether HR-based, or Power-based methods result in significantly different Vo2, LT, or TT outcomes. We determined that to be the best place to start the investigations because interval training is really the only type of training that has received good emprical support in the scientific literature. I have no vested interest in either technology being determined superior to another. I own and use both power and HR devices. They are fun, I like the data, but I really don't know that I am a better cyclist because of the use of either of them. And more importantly, I know that extrapolating from my own personal experience to draw conclusions about devices and people in general, is just about the worst form of science!

RChung

Hmmm. You could give everyone the tool but add a random error to some so they'd lie to the rider (compared to the control PMs) from ride to ride. I'd think the virtue of a measuring device (whether PM or HRM) is that it lets one refine and then exploit the relationship between dose and response. Suppose you were trying to lose weight and you bought a crappy bathroom scale. You might not be able to tell whether you got better results from eating celery sticks or ice cream.

daveryanwyoming

Agreed, that's why I see the title of this post as rhetorical, it's hard to definitively determine that the use of a training tool in and of itself is superior to not using the tool. The tool is what it is, and it does what it claims to do. That much can be validated on a lab bench, whether arbitrary use of that tool produces better end results well there are a lot of assumptions related to how the rider uses that tool. A hammer can be a great tool, but kind of lousy for tuning swiss watches.....

I see the gist of the study, compare efficacy of a particular interval routine between riders with PM feedback and those with HRMs or those relying on RPE. It's a start but it only answers the question of whether a PM, HRM or RPE produces better results with that interval routine. Say you choose some sort of micro Tabata set with really short hard intervals, hard to say whether the PM will make any difference as it's tough to even glance at the display or modulate your power short hard efforts. I suspect the study is structured better than that, but still it doesn't really answer the question posed in the title of this thread. But then the OP wasn't looking for an answer, it's pretty obvious he was trolling.

-Dave

Piotr

On that note, I'd like to ask what's better? Cycling, swimming, or running?

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Steve_B

Dave, I just had to point out that that is about the third time I've seen you post something somewhere using Tabata in your comment in the last week. You've got Tabata on the brain.