Roadie_scum wrote:
> Bleve Wrote:
> >
> > No, not serious problems, understandable and expected variations.
> > It's
> > called a "rough idea", not a precise measurement. I could send him
> > down to Dr Blood at VU and get a VO2max/blood lactate test done, but
> > that's $200 he could spend on something useful instead, like a new
> > pair
> > of shoes or a deposit on an HID light 
>
> Yeah I definitely agree that VO2max/blood lactate tests are not a
> useful thing to spend money on for most riders. However, you need to
> control the variation very well to get useful results out of field
> tests.
Of course, and as you mention, there's a lot of variation, and for
elite level riders, it's not good enough. Most of the riders I work
with are sub elite (from rec riders to a couple of A graders, and
everything in between) and this sort of field test is good enough. The
obvious things like wind, temp etc are certainly going to have
significant impact.
> Either use an indoor velodrome (DISC) or a steep (as possible
> without losing cadence - best with a low gear) climb for every field
> test an athlete does. Variability on a flat (and even on some climbs)
> is ridiculously large and it can be depressing, misleading and
> unmotivating to do a field test on a shitty day and think you've got
> worse when the opposite is true. I have done field tests (before I knew
> better) on climbs (the wall in this case) and done poorly due to
> environmental factors and found it hard to deal with in the lead up to
> a race. Conversely, I know one coach whose current PB was set on a very
> (VERY) similar day in terms of wind and weather, in the same position,
> with the same equipment, as his previous PB. Except he rides with a
> powertap so he knew his power was lower by about 10-12 watts.
Remember that powertaps aren't perfect tools either. That said, I will
be getting one as soon as the true wireless one is available - the
distributor in the US reckons a couple more months.
> The problem is, the variability in field tests that you claim to be
> able to 'understand and expect' can be and often is larger than the
> fitness gains you would be looking for in field tests (assuming you are
> dealing with reasonable level athletes - if your athletes come to you
> relatively untrained this wouldn't be true).
I'm glad you pointed it out
> As you say:
>
> > There's a bunch of formulas you can apply to get a rough idea
> > of power from speed, frontal area etc, but they're (by necessity)
> > pretty inacurate.
>
> The truth is, the formulae are very accurate.
As you point out,the variables are so great and difficult that they're
(in most cases) little more than educated guesses. Kinda like a Polar
HRM's guess of VO2max (or wattage
)
> The inaccuracies come
> from inputting incorrect data - frontal area, cda, wind speed,
> velocity, rolling resistance, air pressure, etc. As you obviously can
> see, these basically impossible to pin down so you can't get accurate
> replicable data about your power from field tests. But, and this is the
> whole point, it's your power you want to know about to know whether
> you've improved, not how fast you ride the field test. If you can't
> know your power from the test, you can't know if you've got better or
> if it's just a favourable day. In the alternative, where there is a
> massive improvement, you can know you've got better but not by how much
> (because of the magnitude of error inherent in making assumptions about
> environmental factors).
I think for elite level riders, this is relevant, but for the majority,
a field test (with sanity as part of it) is good enough. As you're
no-dount aware, untrained riders go through pretty rapid changes early
on, and field tests show such gross changes (again, the caveats apply)
reasonably clearly. A rider who could do the 1:20 in 22 minutes who
gets it down to 18 after 6 months of solid training has definiatly made
a significant improvement. One who's doing it in 15 mins is going to
know less if they do one in 14:55 and one in 15:30.
The same goes with another test I do regularly, we do downhill sprints
at the Kew loop. It's windy, the weather changes a lot, tyre pressures
... caveat after caveat ontop of another caveat. But - a rider who
could consistantly get down it peaking at 50km/h who after 6 months can
reliably hit 60, has improved. For a lot of my riders, this is good
enough resolution. I'm frustrated by it because I'm making small
improvement (I hope!) but the test is not reliable enough for me to
tell. Thus, the test isn't good enough ...
We do another field test on strength, on the same hill we do almost
standing start big gear sprints, as riders get stronger they can get a
bigger gear up to speed. Again as we know, once you get into reduced
improvements, that's not good enough, and a power meter is required,
but, for most, it's good enough.
> > If you really do want to know, a power meter is
> > required, but they're expensive and on the whole, unnecessary, IMO.
>
> I wouldn't recommend a power athlete to anyone without a bit of
> experience, self-knowledge and a willingness to learn but they are not
> particularly expensive when compared to other cycling equipment (though
> I wouldn't call them cheap) and given that they make it drastically
> simpler to track both training load and training response, I think they
> are a very worthwhile investment for any serious or semi-serious
> athlete. The AIS and VIS clearly agree and while that doesn't prove the
> point for amateurs who have to pay for their equipment, it's interesting
> to see how much they've taken off in the US and UK where they have been
> promoted properly (mainly through audience education) as well as how
> well many riders do training on power in terms of realising
> improvements faster for full time/very serious athletes or racing well
> with limited training time for others.
Sure. This is why I will be getting a particular powertap as soon as
it's available. The current ones don't suit my requirements. I'm
quite looking forward to having it
> And on exercise science:
>
> > It's a young science, a lot of what goes on inside people is still not
> > clearly understood, and an awful lot of available research papers are
> > contradictory and used out of context.
>
> 'Young science' is a relatively subjective term so I'm not comfortable
> agreeing or disagreeing with that statement. However, I've been
> surprised how much scientists with a relatively complete view of the
> literature do know about goings on in the body. Sure, playing amateur
> scientist, you or I can pull out a couple of references and reach a
> wrong conclusion, but there has been good work going on in exercise
> science since just after the turn of the 20th century at the latest.
Yes, there has. But, there's a lot of fairly rapid change (the whole
lactate as a fuel/muscle inhibitor/just what exactly does blood lactate
mean anyway?!, and dehydration, and stretching etc etc) in the field.
By rapid change I mean in reasonably fundamental things - this suggests
that the body of knowledge is still pretty shaky, *especially* when it
comes to prediction (ie: applying the science). Compared to physics,
for example, where in most low speed cases F does equal MA and we can
predict a lot based on that (crude .. but you know what I mean I
think). I'd compare it in terms of maturity to subatomic physics. Both
have been around for roughly the same time (within 50 years or so
anyway I think), and both are pretty confused and difficult to study.
It's questionable as to which of the two has more funding these days,
we care more for gold medals and nationalistic fervor than we do for
understanding the nature of the universe....
> This gives the pros plenty of room to reach pretty solid conclusions.
> Whilst their is room for debate in many areas of ex sci (as in all
> sciences - that's how they progress), they tend not to be the ones that
> baffle the layperson. Many of the issues that are claimed to be
> contentious or treated as unknowable by coaches and athletes are
> actually well settled. Ignoring science. I think belittling the science
> by calling it young and waving your hands and claiming that the body is
> not well understood leads to 'belief based' as opposed to 'evidence
> based' coaching.
I'm not belittling it at all, I'm saying it's immature (not in a
pejorative sense). Not that it's useless, but that it's still got a
long way to go before it settles on a lot of reasonably fundamental
issues, and also before it's communicated well to its target. Compare
with physics, as an example. There's a lot going on, but just about
everyone knows that the earth orbits the sun and that light has a
speed, and so on. (ok, bad example, there's a lot of tools that
believe astrology! ... *sigh* the Egyptians knew the world was round
...). Take altitude training as another example of a bunch of confused
studies with poor controls and inconclusive results. I'm yet to find a
quality study that shows that it makes any real difference to
performance in trained riders. A lot of folklore ... and a lot of
poorly controlled studies, some showing improvement (but compared to
what?) and so on. The challenge is that isolating variables is close
to impossible for a lot of these types of studies. Take altitude
training as a classic example. To do a valuable study, you'd need a
sufficiently large collection of very similar riders, doing identical
training at low and high altitudes, and then a well designed testing
protocol to determine if there's any significant difference. Where does
the sports scientist find willing people who fit the criteria? It's
easy to do a test for potassium in cells etc and see the results, it's
a very different thing to see what sort of training is optimal for a
rider preparing for the Melb->Warnambool.
Perhaps a better comparison is with economics. At a muscular/cellular
level (cf micro economics) it's pretty well understood. Scale it up
and no-one knows what's going on!
It's nigh-on impossible to isolate variables, everyone's trying to
extrapolate ... and it's a confused mess.
I believe (note!) that at the moment, there's very little in the way of
what you're calling "evidence based coaching" in cycling because, I
suspect (I'm not AIS
) the vast majority of elite level coaches
working for national squads have vested interests in keeping secrets to
a certain degree. There's a -lot- of material around, and an
incredible amount of exercise physiology data, but little (that I've
found anyway) in the way of a roadmap to what's out of date, what's
current and so on. Cycling's so full of folklore and dinosaurs it's a
joke - US Postal/Discovery still age tyres, Armstrong, with no conflict
of interest (heh ...) rattles on about CTS, but maybe being coached by
Ferrari after all. We're all fed misinformation. A lot of the
coaching methods I've been exposed to came from Charlie Walsh's manual
and Hilton Clarke saying "This is what we did with Frenchy". One
wonders just what exactly he did that he didn't tell us at the course,
and what does go on at Del Monte when no-one (aparently) is looking?
What I think is important is to clearly state and differentiate, when
working with riders, what is an assumtion/belief and what is shown by
real research. Ie: I do the best I can with my riders to explain why
we do things the way we do (and yes, a lot of that is based on gut
feeling for a particular rider, findng ways to apply narrow results to
broad issues is the "art" of coaching, I think). The role of a coach
is one not just (although it's a pretty important part!) to know the
science, but also to understand the people being coached and to help
motivate, support and encourage them, teach them good race smarts and
good sportsmanship and so on.
> If anyone is interested, have a look at this article and see what you
> think...
>
> http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/coachsci/csa/thermo/thermo.htm
That's a very good and interesting article. Thankyou for the
reference. It's a bit of a stretch to apply Heisenberg to coaching,
but all the same, it makes some good points
