Scientific Proof?

Shibumi

Ric recently said that he would not advocate isolated leg training because it had not been scientifically proven to be of value. J-Mat supports it based on anecdotal evidence.

Now I don't want to re-open the debate on ILT (honestly!), I'm just interested in the different view points, and I'm hoping that we (or at least I!) may learn something as a result.

eg. if, equally, ILT has no scientific proof that it is useless, then maybe anecdotal evidence is all that can be used?

In a similar vein, if sodium phosphate can make you go faster, but there has been no scientific proof to say that it has no unwanted long-term health effects, then why would you risk using it?

J-MAT

You can waste your whole life waiting for a study to come out, or you can think for yourself, separate yourself from the conventional "wisdom" of the herd and experiment on your own with your bike and trainer.

I mean, it's not like you need a university lab or millions of dollars to support your own research. A bike, a cadence meter, and a trainer. That's all you need.

I don't even want to harp on ILT's effectiveness right now. The bigger issue is thinking for yourself. What if people suddenly stopped doing research??? Does that mean we would stop thinking and stop reaching??? It appears for many, that would be the case.

Life ties to box us in, categorize us, label us, define us, limit us, etc. That's bad enough, but why do it to ourselves??? Dare to dream, push to accepted limits, then keep the hammer down and keep going. If you don't believe in yourself, who will???

What about racing??? There are no studies that show how to win race, yet many riders still show up for races and "wing it," using their tactical knowledge to do the best they can. How dare they!!!

Some of these riders actually win the races they enter, can you believe that??? How can they possibly do this without research to back them up???

Is is luck, hubris, or just plain ignorance to actually get results without a study to back you up??? Perhaps it's the other way around!!!

__________________
Send comments, praise, or flames to:
jm_560@Hotmail.com

2LAP

A good post J-MAT, but like to comment on a few points. I'll let Ric comment on the ILT.

Originally posted by J-MAT
You can waste your whole life waiting for a study to come out, or you can think for yourself, separate yourself from the conventional "wisdom" of the herd and experiment on your own with your bike and trainer.

> Agreed and remember there is very little research on training 'coz its hard to do and doesn't get much money as it doesn't save lives. The rest of the 'herd' normaly do stuff because it works! Most science of coaching/training only goes to prove what we have done for a while works and how to improve practices!

I mean, it's not like you need a university lab or millions of dollars to support your own research. A bike, a cadence meter, and a trainer. That's all you need.

> But only if you remember the limitations of doing this. How did you isolate the performance changes from ILT from other training, weather changes, etc.? (No need to answer that one its just highlighting a point!).

I don't even want to harp on ILT's effectiveness right now. The bigger issue is thinking for yourself. What if people suddenly stopped doing research??? Does that mean we would stop thinking and stop reaching??? It appears for many, that would be the case.

> This is a daft point to make. Take Ric's Zones, there is no research suggesting that these work however as they are built on sound scientific principles they do work when used correctly. There is nothing wrong with science or thinking out of the box; doing one without the other is wrong!!!

Life ties to box us in, categorize us, label us, define us, limit us, etc. That's bad enough, but why do it to ourselves??? Dare to dream, push to accepted limits, then keep the hammer down and keep going. If you don't believe in yourself, who will???

> Agreed, there is lots of research in psychology showing that this approach (i.e. motivation, goal setting, visualisation, etc., etc.) do you think that this research is bad too or holds us back? J-MAT I think that you should become a sports psychologists as some of your best arguements come from this direction.

What about racing??? There are no studies that show how to win race, yet many riders still show up for races and "wing it," using their tactical knowledge to do the best they can. How dare they!!!

> You are wrong!! There are studies into how to win lots of different races (like marathon races and time trials)!!!! They describe optimal pacing strategies, warmups, physiological and psychological characteristics needed, nutrition, etc. In fact just be reading I could get a good idea about how to win a race!!!

>I guess you are talking about Road Racing and yes there is little research into tactics (although there is into drafting other riders, cornering, optimal pedal cadences, equipment, etc. that you can apply to your tactics!) and yes some people wing it. Here I would suggest that science tells you who is most and least likely to win. For example, just looking at lab data I am sure that I could tell you that pantani would beat chipolini through an alps stage of the tour. Mass start events are less predicatable, but you can use scientific principles like drafting to improve your chances to win!!!

Some of these riders actually win the races they enter, can you believe that??? How can they possibly do this without research to back them up???

> There are some great performances and sometimes these are due entirely to chance or the mistakes of others. You don't always win a race sometimes people lose them. There is always research backing people up; to win a race you must do the fastest average speed... thats physics, training helps you get better... thats physiology, drinking beer makes you go slower & CHO makes you go for longer... thats nutrition, bikes... thats design and engineering!!!!!!!

Is is luck, hubris, or just plain ignorance to actually get results without a study to back you up??? Perhaps it's the other way around!!!

>I think that you miss understand science as many people do. Science does not prove things, it only indicates the probability of something happening!!! (Think about it). There are often exceptions to the rule, which you use to say that science is rubbish. However most sport science demonstrates the probability of something happening and for something to be significant in sport science its usualy shown to happen (statisticaly) 95% or 99% of the time. That means every 5 in 100 people or 5 in 100 attempts MAY produce different results. Medicine is more stringent ususaly 1 in 1,000,000; and thats why people have side effects!!!! To make science more complicated many studies have flaws and only apply to the people/conditions that are used in the study.

>For the sports people my recomendation is ignore individual studies, but look towards reviews or principles that have stood the test of time and scientific scrutany. Take 'specificity' this is a scientific principle and as 'sprint training' will make you a better 'sprinter', time spent doing 'two leg training' is likely to make you a better two leg cyclist than the same amount of time spent doing 'ILT'.

__________________
www.cyclingforums.com

ric_stern/RST

Just to very quickly answer these points

I can't recall J-Mats reason for doing ILT, but all the writing i have seen on ILT, suggests that it's used to smooth out the pedal stroke and pedal nice 'circles' instead of 'squares'.

However, the research on this by e.g., Ed Coyle, and Jim Martin, and Jeff Broker all show that we push down from top dead centre to bottom dead with little work going on from bottom dead centre to top centre. The Coyle work showed that the better the rider, the less they pulled up on the recovery phase of the pedal stroke, using force instrumented pedals.

With this in mind, and the fact that the majority of us ride bikes with two legs, and the evidence within sport psychology that we shouldn't break down motor control skills into small parts but practice them as whole, leads me to believe that ILT doesn't do much, except perhaps make you a better one legged cyclist.

As regards phosphate loading and it's safety, it's obvioulsy been tested in many studies and for certain applications, and has been deemed to be safe for those applications. As regards being safe as an ergogenic aid, it's been stated that it should have no side effects if used up to four times per year. However, thoughts are, that if it's used more than that the phosphate is just excreted.

J-Mat, it always makes me laugh that one minute you write something trying to support science and then the next you don't. I like a lot of what you write, but i wish you were consistent!! BTW, there's stacks of research on many things, just requires a good look around.

I'm not sure at all what you can prove (in your own science experiement) with a bike, cadence meter and a trainer. With an n=1, no performance measure(s), and no double blind testing, i think you'll find that any answers you get from the experiment won't be valid.

Ric

__________________
http://www.cyclecoach.com

edd

I've read everything now ! The push point on your down stroke will increase in ratio to your lift/scrape/kick point the faster your cadence.
Do ILT for strength work only- on a stationary bike.

J-MAT

Gentlemen:

Allow me to clarify my position. You have to be able to look at training protocols, analyze the effectiveness of them and make appropriate decisions based on what you see. Sometimes it might come in the form of a study. Sometimes it might come from a coach or rider with a track record of success, but with no study to support it.

You have to know when to filter and when not to filter information. You have to know what to discard and what to keep. Blindly following one viewpoint only, regardless of what that may be, will not make you as well informed. The bottom line is that results are really the only thing that matters. If you get results from unorthodox methods, why question it as long as it works???

Sometimes studies conflict with similar research. Look at the different results from interval studies conducted by Lindsay, Tabata, and Stepto. Each study showed improvements in performance, but the intervals ranged from 20 seconds to 5 minutes. That's a lot of variance. Who's right???

If standing on your head in your underwear in the middle of the street increased TT speed by 2 mph, you can bet you would see me looking like an idiot every day, in my underwear, standing on my head in the middle of the street. I wouldn't really care why it worked, as long as I got my 2 mph increase in speed. It might be interesting to have a scientific explaination for it, but it still wouldn't change the outcome.

Your bike, cadence meter, and trainer become a lab in which you can record your progress. With consistent bike setup on the trainer (roller & tire pressure, etc.) you will notice cadence and gearing increases as you become better trained. Since there is no wind to skew the data, your trainer data accurately charts your progress. Keep good, accurate records, and maintain a training log. If you do this, you are acting as a scientist doing scientific research.

Yes Ric, as the power goes up, our pedaling does get worse. But, ILT will help to smooth out chunky pedal strokes. It's like waxing a plane. During WW2, American P-51 pilots had their planes waxed just like a car. At 400+ mph, a good wax job is easily worth 5 mph, from less air friction. Perhaps the ILT acts like a good wax job for your pedal stroke. If you jerked less, you might last longer to fatigue, or you might put out some more watts, or both!!! Although ILT does wonders in other areas, I say anything that makes you smoother at high power outputs will help!!!

As far as the ILT goes, it gets old defending it. It is not very glamorous, but it is dramatically effective in many different areas, that it almost seems to good to be true. It's amazing, but it is still just a part of a well-developed program, a spoke in your performance wheel.

I've prescribed ILT to many riders, and I haven't heard one negative comment from it, only good things. It works for me!!!
I'm not asking that you spend your hard-earned money, just spend 15-20 minutes on a trainer for 5-10 workouts and see for yourself. Certainly, that's not too much to ask is it???

__________________
Send comments, praise, or flames to:
jm_560@Hotmail.com

crowley

Riders have created all the problems when it comes to
pedalling by simply trying to reproduce walking or
running when on a bike. So you have got a dead spot
area, arm and leg power cannot be combined in TT
races, you slide forward on the saddle and worst of
all for some riders, your natural pedalling is the root
cause of all severe persistant lower back pain. The
polished version of this pedaling is called round
pedalling.
If researchers were only to use their brains, they
would soon realize that linear pedalling was the most
benefical and safest way to pedal. All of the above problems are instantly removed and you have
the smoothest and most powerful pedalling that is
possible. Linear pedalling uses one extended powerful
stroke from 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock, at which time you
unweight the pedal but there is no pulling back or up.
This pedalling can be seen on the recently released
video on the racing years of J Anquetil, he used this
very same technique and because of it was invincible
in time trials.
As for one legged pedalling, it works well with linear
pedalling and helps to increase the power in the legs
but is best done on a trainer.

ric_stern/RST

Noel,

didn't wayne offer to pay to have your research done for you in andy's lab? why not take him up on the offer?

jacque dominated TTing and riding because he produced more power than the other riders.

ric

__________________
http://www.cyclecoach.com

crowley

Do you believe that his pedalling was similar to the
pedalling of other riders and had no real advantages?

Saying he produced more power is an easy escape from
admitting you don't know how he did it.
I do not have time to travel to Wayne's lab and what
does a lab prove, not very much if progress in pedalling
is an indicator.
If I can get 10 of the worst victims of cycling's back pain
to travel to Dublin, within a day their back pain will be
eliminated and all of them will have the biomechanics
of Anquetil's pedalling technique which is completely
different to normal pedalling.

ric_stern/RST

Under given environmental and topographical conditions, to travel at higher speeds requires 1) either better aerodynamics, i.e., decreasing CdA, 2) producing a greater power output, or 3) a combination of the aformentioned first two*

*obviously, if going uphill, a gross change in total mass will also increase velocity

Those are the laws of physics!

If none of these are altered, then changing pedalling style won't affect your speed for a given power under given conditions. You could argue (but no evidence even vaguely bares this out) that it might be more comfortable to pedal in some style that you imagine Anquetil did do, but this wouldn't affect power output/speed.

Ric

__________________
http://www.cyclecoach.com

crowley

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ricstern
Under given environmental and topographical conditions, to travel at higher speeds requires 1) either better aerodynamics, i.e., decreasing CdA, 2) producing a greater power output, or 3) a combination of the aformentioned first two*

*obviously, if going uphill, a gross change in total mass will also increase velocity

Those are the laws of physics!

If none of these are altered, then changing pedalling style won't affect your speed for a given power under given conditions. You could argue (but no evidence even vaguely bares this out) that it might be more comfortable to pedal in some style that you imagine Anquetil did do, but this wouldn't affect power output/speed.





Imagine accelerating from a standing start when out
of the saddle, if you could not combine arm resistance
and leg power, your power would be reduced. That
is just one of Anquetil's advantages when seated in the saddle at speed. By eliminating the dead spot area, as
ROTOR research claims, you are creating extra
pedalling time of mins. per hour, but Anquetil's direct
elimination is much more effective with almost maximum power at all times through the dead spot area. Rotor
only tries to compensate for power lost in this area by
enabling you to start pedaling earlier than normal at
1 o'clock.

ric_stern/RST

And? If iirc the Rotor doesn't affect your power output, which would increase speed, with the caveats previously mentioned. It would seem to affect efficiency, thus maybe reducing fatigue and allowing you to ride for longer at a given power output, not increasing it.

__________________
http://www.cyclecoach.com

2LAP

Ric if you improve a riders economy (i.e. it costs less energy to produce a given poweroutput) a rider would be able to pedal at a higher power output for the same energy cost as before economy was imporved. So you could pedal at the same power output for longer or you could pedal at a higher power output for the same amount of time; both for the same energy cost.

The variability in ecconomy between riders is very small (relative to running) and as in running, riders will tend to select their most economic technique for any given situation when cadence is freely chosen. I doubt very much that you can learn much about how a rider presses on their pedals by watching them on a video and that the way that they press on the pedals has such a massive impact on performance (i.e. Anquetil) when you take into account the 3 factors mentioned by ric.

I agree with Ric that ILT is likely to be less effective than alterantive forms of training at acheiving any given cycling goal, except rehab or improving pedaling with one leg. Why would the technique developed in ILT have positive transfer to 2 leg pedaling to improve efficiency/economy?

__________________
www.cyclingforums.com

crowley

That is corrrect, when using rotor you still have the
handicap of having to use the recommended round
pedaling style in addition to having to use the
equivalent of a higher gear through that area where
the compensation is being made. You just get some
extra pedaling time.
With Anquetil's method you get even more extra
pedaling time and the increased power generating
technique of hip/thigh and arm resistance which
enables you to cruise in a much higher gear in time
trials while in an aerodynamic position.