ECSS - Congress
- Thread starter fergie
- Start date
fergie said:
One last thing [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4kbnHcMDw"]YouTube - Fergalicious music video‎[/ame] ,
publishing a five week 'training' program on ic's by people pulled off the street is worse than one published by those not taking the full 6-9 months training required into consideration from people who know what they are doing to prove or disprove the effects of proper (circular) pedaling, right or wrong?
Again, either "Yes My Mighty Lord Sir Preston, Almighty transgressor of the internet, you have once again pointed out what facilitates as incompromisable and non neglectable points to ponder upon whilst overwhelmingly providing an overflowing abundance of evidence to support yet once and to the again that I am a complete and utter travesty of a nincompoop."
or wrong and then state your case, if you have one, not that you do as we've been over this time and again.6-9 months, nothing else.
oh wait, by professionals, then nothing else.
Chapeau! said:WRONG!!!
You ADAPT to the energy cost/work, overtime.
Wrong!.
Pulling back has no deprimental effect to downstroke. Its all about neural adaptation, repetition & teaching your body the correct movement.
Go out cycling. Train it, Adapt it.
Your losing a massive power source with every cadence of a pedal stroke.
Slower times. Slower speeds. Increase the activity of the power source or your leaving yourself short.
Try riding powercranks for about 100 seconds and see how pittyful your prior attempts at pulling back and up really were.
Thinking you were doing just that and actually doing the pulling up and back are two completely different things.
What people don't seem to get is that Powercranks don't really train you to pull back and pull up harder... For me it's been the opposite, you do just enough to get the cranks up and over in a 'I don't have to think about this' way while you get on with the important stuff. However, just in the same way that you change how you pull up, you also change how you push, or should I say pull, down.
My quads love me now... my hamstrings, not so much.
Chapeau! said:
As I recall the topic of strength came up from your insistence that Fabian performed strength training in the gym and the strength gained here (absolute strength) unless one wastes their time in the gym doing sub-maximal efforts was the foundation of his success.
roadhouse said:
Most cranks are rectangular in cross section and usually vary between 170 and 175mm. It's normally the chainrings that are round. The path of the pedal is circular too... but the cranks themselves - not circular.
roadhouse said:
Why would people waste their times doing this? The Bohm study showed that the trained cyclist subjects pedalling was altered within the time frame of the study. This alteration led to worse performance compared to the control group. None of the studies reported subjects being unable to complete the prescribed training. Guess you have to be retarded or alcoholic to take longer. Fernandez-Pena (2009) found altered muscle patterns in a similar short period of use and after subjects went back to normal cranks the adaptations were rapidly lost.
fergie said:
So this was taken from a study that was a couple of weeks long (where the riders really hadn't adapted) and then they checked to see if the riders still pedalled as they did when trying to learn how to pedal on independant cranks?
Interesting...
It'd be like me trying to write with my left hand after trying to learn how to write with that hand several years ago...
... and if adaptations are so quick, Fergie, why does it take so long to learn how to do a simple thing like writing with the other hand? Or even playing guitar left handed? I've played guitar for 25 years and I can say that a few weeks playing lefty aint gonna get me anywhere close to where I'm at playing right handed.
swampy1970 said:
You? Well where do I start
If a lefty lost his left hand then he would be motivated to learn to use the right pretty quick.
That's another factor in the Gimmickcrank studies where you would expect the novelty would lead to bigger gains in the experimental group and the control group has no novelty (low motivation) so you would expect fewer gains which paints an even bleaker picture for the Gimmickcrank as an effective training tool.
swampy1970 said:
Yeah, I totally agree.
I have never used PowerCranks, but they "activate" muscles that are left abandoned on regular cranks. (If there is a point to be made both "activate" the same muscle groups, we will say the PowerCranks activate to a higher degree. Why?. A session on the PowerCranks is a much tougher workout than regular cranks, factors remaining the same.
I only train/ride on regular cranks. (Consciously), I push forward & pull back on them & overtime I have become efficient in learning this movement BUT training on the PowerCranks, I can see the push forward & pull back are being magnified to a greater length. This has to relate to an increase in performance.
If you were to train on PowerCranks & regular cranks, you would see greater increases in performance from choosing that option, than training on regular cranks alone. You have activated/increased muscle strength to a higher extent, left nullified on regular cranks.
fergs throws all sorts of hearsay around. YOU CANNOT go on studies. There are far too many factors involved which could sway the result to indicate an increase or decrease in performance.
If a rider dedicates his training to "supplementing" his cycling with other training methods, he will certainly become a more accomplished/faster/stronger rider, than just riding alone.
swampy1970 said:
Are you seriously comparing the gross motor skill required to pedal a bike with the fine control required to write or play a musical instrument?
Do most kids learn to ride a bike before or after they learn to print, let alone write cursive? Even then, balancing on a bike takes more motor control than pedalling.
Chapeau! said:
And yet there really hasn't been any repeatable demonstration of this.
Chapeau! said:
You knock a guy for hearsay, but then say that one can't use studies because too many factors could be involved. So do you think that there would be a greater or fewer number of factors in a study that presumably has some modicum of control or in the internet distribution of anecdote?
acoggan said:
what of the mental ability to control and/or distribute it evenly and properly throughout the pedal stroke for up to, oh, let's just say 9 months minimum, the mental fortitude to completely re-train, re-adapt to an entirely new way of pedaling, is that not an if not the absolute in its purest form of strength x's 100 Doc C.?
jollyrogers said:
I was actually linking the hearsay directly to the studies, due too the factors which could become involved. Athletes have different lifestyles, dietary habits, pain tolerances, training methods etc etc which could sway the result to indicate an increase or decrease in performance for any given method (PowerCranks) for any given "lab rat" or rider. Its hearsay. It didn't work for them, It won't work for me?. Thats speculation. We could say what works for one person may not work for another, again apples & oranges.
acoggan said:
What I was referring to was that strength can be expressed in many ways with different types; Maximal strength, Static Strength, Explosive Strength, Strength Endurance, Relative Strength etc etc.
Chapeau! said:
You can go one studies if your intent is to seek results that are required during a set period of time but seeking information about adaption, for example, beyond that period is left as an unkown...
It's like the whole pedalling study, I know the good guys involved were pretty darned quick, there's no disputing that... but not quick enough to attain the mythical status within the sport that the more storied guys who have broken 5km, hour records, time trials in Pro Tour events. Would we see a difference from those guys to those that are highlighted as the elite subjects in these studies as we do the elites to the more 'regular' folk? What would we have seen if we threw the likes of Cancellara, Boardman, LeMond, Indurain, Hinault, Kelly etc into a lab and told them to go at it as hard as they could for 10 miles? Do they pedal any differently to the elite amateur riders?
Back to the powercranks - I too used to conciously push forward and pull back and up when I rode on fixed cranks. I thought I was good at doing this...While not a great cyclist I wasn't a complete duffer - I could consitently break 22 minutes for 10 miles and broke the 21 minute mark once, without the aid of disc wheels and the like but, when I started using 'the cranks' I quickly discovered that what I thought I was doing and what I was actually doing was two different things entirely. That first PC ride was worse than people had made it out to be and I'm glad it was done in the privacy of my garage.
Ironically now, even though I'm supposed to be 'more difficult' with PC's it's actually easier when it comes to pedalling. It's a bit of a pain cornering when you've been out for a couple of hours and the legs are shot but I feel it's worth it. The power meter shows it's worth it.
Too see how much 'worth' could be put into the cranks I trained for the first six months of the year on regular cranks doing the same training that I have for the past few years. My training has been pretty much Jan-July full on and then July-December veg out, drink lots of beer and undo all that has been regained. Rinse and repeat... so starting again this year was done with a pretty good clean slate, as had previous years. This year had given very similar results to two years ago, FTP ~300 to 310 watts, the last time I trained seriously on fixed cranks for the majority of time. Last year I rode powercranks the FTP was ~345 to 350watts, with a ride of >2hours done at 321 watts average.
I weigh less this year so the w/kg hasn't taken a huge beating, thankfully.
Now, I accept that there's some slightly differences in training, such as the odd missed session here and there due to family commitments or a cold etc etc. I've had some health issues that effected training several years ago... but that really wasn't apparent this year.
I recently started training again on my powercrank bike and life is becoming good again. It didn't take that long to adapt, a couple of weeks to become truely comfortable, although it must be said that I had no problems with pedalling on them when I re-started my training on them, it's just that the unnatural fluidity you aquire after a few months worth of initial training takes a while to come back after a year off them. What will be interesting will be to see if the progression curve is similar to that noted last year... only time will tell. If it's anything close to last year then they're staying on the bike and you'll have to pry them outa my cold, dead hands if you want to take them from me.
I'd still rate them as probably the best bike related purchase I've made.
jollyrogers said:
Yes I am... and being that I've played guitar for over a quater of a century in addition to violin and french horn I think I've got enough background to start to qualify that statement.
If, as Fergie says, skills are easily learned then taking something like writing with your 'other hand' should be pretty easy. You've mastered the art with one hand, the brain knows what to do so therefore it's a cake walk to get your other hand to do it....
... but as we know it isn't.
And, from my experience (ok, not just mine but pretty much everyone who uses independant cranks) it's a royal P.I.T.A to 'learn' how to pedal despite having 'learned to pedal' for years on a bike with regular cranks. Learning how to make both legs do their own thing almost defies believe when you start. Pedaling seems like a really simple thing to do - make the cranks go around the bottom bracket. Simple. Right? Well, no...
Not only is it physically painful as your hip flexors are really used for the first time for an extended period of time but you need to learn how to coordinate both legs. Once you've got that down you then need to learn how to relax so you can do this for a long period of time... and for me this is where the 'magic' starts. You forget about pulling up, pushing forward, pushing down, I find I just think about pushing forward and pulling down (I use the hamstrings and glutes alot more than I ever used to) and find it's both less painful and faster. The rest of it 'just happens'. It happens because it has too - otherwise the cranks don't come back up but you don't actually think about it.
Comparing it too fine motor skills like playing guitar? Yeah. You become much more aware of whats going on, especially when you get to the point to where you relax and it just 'happens'. You learn what needs to be done, just in the same way that you learn the motor skills when playing an instrument to the point where it 'just happens'
