Strength and cycling controversy
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ARHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA!!!!! checkmate!frenchyge said:I doubt someone who has a maximal leg strength of 30kg's can even *stand* up.Think about it.
yer good point but still, imagine a 50kg guy having to sit down and stand up 100 times a minute! Thats still 25kg's each leg and thats not taking into account the accelerations where force is much higher. You have to have a bit of strength to have strength endurance.
dm69 said:ARHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA!!!!! checkmate!
50 kg guy wouldn't have to put out nearly as many watts when climbing, therefore not as much force per leg. And we haven't seen too many 50kg riders winning tt's.
Also: Ric typically puts the disclaimer on his points that if you are extremely weak, say a "little old lady," as I believe he puts it, strength could be a limiter for ECP. But how many people like that are even going to ride a bike?
So, what do you know about Armstrong's training other than what you've heard from a man who probably has not been his coach for some time, and a few pictures of Postal in the gym a couple of years ago? Most likely, if Amrstrong did go to the gym, he lost all the weight once he began riding more and it became useless anyway.dm69 said:Apparently armstrong doesn't know anything
And your rationale for these statements is....dm69 said:
It really appears that you *want* to weight train, so you should probably just do it and admit it's for other reasons than ECP....
Not that I want to argue or anything. I have no point to make anyway.
But has anyone ever seen the results of a test comparing the maximal strength one can put on one pedal cycle on a bike, relative to the maximal strength one can do on squat, or leg press?
Example : 120 pounds on one leg, 1 rm on a bike, compared to 240 per leg while doing squat?
Again, I am not trying to make a point. It's just that I spent some time trying to find data on this subject, but I have failed.. so far.
But has anyone ever seen the results of a test comparing the maximal strength one can put on one pedal cycle on a bike, relative to the maximal strength one can do on squat, or leg press?
Example : 120 pounds on one leg, 1 rm on a bike, compared to 240 per leg while doing squat?
Again, I am not trying to make a point. It's just that I spent some time trying to find data on this subject, but I have failed.. so far.
I used to be able to do a max lift on leg press of 500+lbs when I was 18. (I wasn't training those muscles either at all) Now, I have no idea. All I know is that when I'm in shape (cycling only), I can do 220lbs roughly 60 times on the leg press, and do that three times in one week if I want, but not continuously. Only if I felt like it for a few weeks. I think though, that my max lift on leg press is probably 400lbs now, which I don't think is very much at all. When I did 3 sets of 20 on 220lbs, I would do this after an hour or so on the bicycle, then lift, and switch to the bike immediately after and pedal for another 10-15 minutes. I thought this was a decent way to train in the winter, but not in season. It sort of mocked LT intervals, because after transferring to and from the bike, I would feel the burning in my legs as I pedaled away. The lifting gave me an idea of my strength, and also helped to work the full range of my gluteus maximus', calf muscles, and quadriceps, as well as ensuring that my knees and joints were in good standing for larger sustained efforts.SolarEnergy said:
I don't know if this particularly answers your question, but my own curiousty over the years also made me wonder...so this is what I found for myself.
Additionally, I think your question has already been demonstrated...on this thread.
Felt_Rider said:I like the side of the fence that I sit because I find these strength/cycling threads amusing.
From a weightlifter's perspective I would be ridiculed by my fellow lifters for experimenting with endurance cycling which is like opposite worlds and I have drifted into some kind of alternate world. Lifters typically take the complete opposite viewpoints that are shared here. Why?
Because endurance cycling is devastating to gaining muscular size or to gain in strength competitions.
Now to what I find interesting from my own perspective as an avid weightlifter. If it were true that lifting was minimally beneficial to endurance cycling then my 20 years of extreme hardcore lifting would have given me an edge once I started cycling one would think. However, I recently had to change my 53/39 - 11/23 combination to a 12/27 cassette because I could not rely a sustained strength from my legs to pull some of the bigger hills on the group rides. Even on the last ride guess who were the ones pulling away from the pack once we hit the hills? The absolute skinniest, anorexic looking, 12" arms riders.
Seriously though, I could put enough force on the pedals once to snap them off the crankset or damage my handle bars, but what good would that do? What I need to do is more cycling up hills and maybe someday I will be fit enough to pull those hills with the old 11/23 cassette.
You've already seen Andy's strength analysis based on the force generated during standing starts, right? Isn't that the information you're asking to see?SolarEnergy said:
http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/misc/id6.html
The maximal pedal force that the individual could *theoretically* generate, at 0 rpm, was about 1075N, which is the weight of ~110kg (theoretically, because the pedal was not held motionless, and as soon as it began to move, the force dropped). I'm not sure who the individual was for Andy's tests, but I'd be surprised to see a trackie that couldn't squat or leg press much more than that (each leg, of course, and minus body weight for squats). Pedal forces are so much lower than weight-lifting forces, because a rider really only has their own weight to work with, plus what little bit of pull they can get from their arms. It's really nothing compared to what a person's legs are capable of lifting when the body is constrained in a leg-press machine.
Don't start confusing strength with power again. Strength is the maximal force you can generate (once) -- power is how much work can be done in a certain period of time.dm69 said:
I'll bet he can stand on one leg fairly easily, and that's already twice the strength needed to pedal. Then if we imagine he can actually *hop* on one foot, it'll really give us some perspective on just how much more strength the average person has than is needed to generate typical pedalling forces.dm69 said:
velomanct said:
I just happened to be browsing and noted your weight in another post to be 190 lbs (86kgs).
That would put your power/weight ratio at 23+ watts per kg which, according to A. Coggan's profiles, puts you in world champion elite class.
You appear to be a track sprinter. What is your best flying 200m time?
acoggan said:
So you have the data for the groups I mentioned? You know, real world people like the people who read this, race at our tracks, compete at our championshiips. Great! Let's see the data for these people.
It will be interesting to see that all those people with a great jump and the best kilo first half lap, you know, the ones with a high w/kg, are also the ones who usually get top 3 in the kilo. Hmmm, I'm trying to think of a guy in my age group who fits your opinion and has won the Kilo at Masters Nats but I can't think of even one in the last 6-7 years.
acoggan said:
Just like I said, not as important as their absolute power during their event, which of course we know will determine far more than just a few tenths of a second.
whoawhoa said:
You have made a number of incorrect assumptions there. Many pros will spend some time in the gym during winter, and some go back after their first half of the season or so to help regain strength they have lost during their on-the-bike training.
As an example, you need good strength in your back and core and legs for certain hard efforts, but if you rely only on training this while on the bike you will need to do practically those same hard efforts during training. How much of that training do you want to allow for given the other training objectives?
For example, 20 minutes of pilates is as/more effective for conditioning certain areas than doing a number of hard, uphill sprints. If you're some climber-type do you want to spend an hour or so doing those sprints that leave your legs and CNS fatigued the next day, or the 20 minutes of pilates that has no effect on your on-the- bike training?
frenchyge said:
I disagree. The arms are near straight and capable of resisting fairly high amounts of force for the brief periods during a pedal stroke. Can you do a one arm pull up just part way? Because of an injury I was doing some leg presses last month and the force of 390 pounds (very fast, explosive reps where the bar often went off my feet) was fairly similar to that during the early parts of my uphill standing starts in 53x15. I got my grip (squeeze strength measured last week, 125 pounds, without trying as hard as I could (because I didn't know what the test was for). Now add in most of bodyweight...
Who are you trying to 'win over' with your arguments?! This has been debated long enough, in at least two threads. If you know so well, maybe you should train Jan Ulrich to win the next tour. If you love weight training so much, then do it. No one said you can't, they just said why it's not beneficial to cycling.dm69 said:Apparently armstrong doesn't know anything
I dont know about anyone else around here but that 25kg's for each leg that he averages up those hills seems pretty massive to me...Take into account all the accelerations where the force increases and you have a lot of weight to push.
As you should have noted, Lance didn't work his legs to gain strength in the gym. So your argument is invalid.
Go buy "The Cyclist's Training Bible" and you'll see exactly what everyone is talking about.
WarrenG said:
See the article by Dr. Mike Stone, the strength/power specialist at the OTC.
WarrenG said:
There are none so blind as those who will not see...
Here's a representative example: my wife was national champion in the pursuit, but couldn't crack 40 s in a 500 m. Becky Conzelman was national champion in the 500 m (and was faster than even Chris Witty through 333.3 m), with a PB in the 37 s range. Measured using the same SRM crank, their absolute power was nearly identical. Becky, however, was lighter, and thus could accelerate much more rapidly. IOW, W/kg was more indicative of performance ability in this event than W, as is true of the kilo as well.
WarrenG said:
See above. Moreover, keep in mind that mass and aerodynamic drag are correlated, such that even once you are up to speed, expressing power relative to mass provides a better indicator of performance ability than absolute power alone.
WarrenG said:
It isn't an example, it was what was used in the study. As for why, you'd have to ask the investigators...but interestingly, the riders (which included resident athletes at the OTC) were equally fast through 1 lap despite the "huge" difference in gear selection.
frenchyge said:
My wife (who weighs about ~70 kg).
frenchyge said:
If you're really comparing apples-to-apples (e.g., same joint angles, etc.), then during a standing start you ought to be able to generate as much force pushing on an umoving or slowly-moving pedal as you can in the gym. You need to be able to prevent your hips from rising at the same time, though, which means 1) having adequate (not necessarily large) upper body strength and/or 2) good biomechanics (i.e., locked, or close to locked, arms and a near-vertical torso).
frenchyge said:
BTW, there's also this, which gives some indication of how much one's (or at least my) upper body can contribute when you stand up:
http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/setraining/id3.html
(And yes, my wife has stronger legs than I do!)
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