The Lifting Apologists....

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

Interesting approach, rather the technique of higher leg speed.

I actually use a hill just like that, as a lead out of sorts, and then go all-out at the 'dip' where the incline begins. Usually I'm using a 13 or 12 which would keep the cadence lower. Granted the downhill that leads up to the dip, is not especially steep (2% or so), but enough that I can easily start the sprint at 45 km/hr or so and hit 60+ on the way up. I will have to try it in maybe a 14 to get the cadence over 120 at the start of the sprint.

I regularly generate 600+ lb-in of toruqe on the sprints, but have yet to go over 137 rpm. All the more reason these leg speed exercises might be useful.

P.S. - I was joking about motorpacing with trucks, and sorry about your friend. I had a run in with a car once (just riding normally) and it was none to pleasant for me, or the bike.

 

[RapDaddyo]

Interesting approach, rather the technique of higher leg speed.

I actually use a hill just like that, as a lead out of sorts, and then go all-out at the 'dip' where the incline begins. Usually I'm using a 13 or 12 which would keep the cadence lower. Granted the downhill that leads up to the dip, is not especially steep (2% or so), but enough that I can easily start the sprint at 45 km/hr or so and hit 60+ on the way up. I will have to try it in maybe a 14 to get the cadence over 120 at the start of the sprint.

I regularly generate 600+ lb-in of toruqe on the sprints, but have yet to go over 137 rpm. All the more reason these leg speed exercises might be useful.

P.S. - I was joking about motorpacing with trucks, and sorry about your friend. I had a run in with a car once (just riding normally) and it was none to pleasant for me, or the bike.

It's worth doing some experiments to find your cadence/power curve (sort of like the rpm/torque curve for a car engine). There's not a "good" or "bad" cadence/power curve, but if you know the cadence range at which you generate your max power, you can use that knowledge to your advantage in selecting your gearing before the start of a sprint. I suppose it's also possible that this will change over time, so you might want to test this regularly.

 

[n crowley]

What is the most important limiting factor to a fully trained TT or pursuit rider's pedal power application ?

No reply, the correct answer does explain the ineffectiveness of weight or resistance training, but it is something that can be rectified.

 

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

It's worth doing some experiments to find your cadence/power curve (sort of like the rpm/torque curve for a car engine). There's not a "good" or "bad" cadence/power curve, but if you know the cadence range at which you generate your max power, you can use that knowledge to your advantage in selecting your gearing before the start of a sprint. I suppose it's also possible that this will change over time, so you might want to test this regularly.

I understand what you mean about a cadence/power/torque curve if you will.

I guess I'm looking at it from perhaps a trackie perspective, and wondering why they go > 150 rpm's in sprints. That and the AIS coach was mentioning speed being a distinct phase in training.

 

[RapDaddyo]

I understand what you mean about a cadence/power/torque curve if you will.

I guess I'm looking at it from perhaps a trackie perspective, and wondering why they go > 150 rpm's in sprints. That and the AIS coach was mentioning speed being a distinct phase in training.

Be careful looking at the cadences used by trackies. They are limited to the single gear ratio, so they have to take into account several variables in selecting the gearing. As a roadie sprinter, you have more latitude in choosing a gear.

 

[Bruce Diesel]

It's worth doing some experiments to find your cadence/power curve (sort of like the rpm/torque curve for a car engine). There's not a "good" or "bad" cadence/power curve, but if you know the cadence range at which you generate your max power, you can use that knowledge to your advantage in selecting your gearing before the start of a sprint. I suppose it's also possible that this will change over time, so you might want to test this regularly.

A biokineticist I know said to me that your optimum cadence *could* also change with fatigue levels, which means that self-selected cadence is generally the best option.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Be careful looking at the cadences used by trackies. They are limited to the single gear ratio, so they have to take into account several variables in selecting the gearing. As a roadie sprinter, you have more latitude in choosing a gear.

To echo RDO's statement. On the track we have to choose a single gear for each event, it has to be suitable for standing starts for say the kilo or pursuits, be able to accelerate repeatedly for events like a miss and out or points race, be able to hold high average speeds in most events and be able to kick out a top end sprint in flying 200's, match sprinting or most mass start events. When I raced a lot of track I'd swap chainrings a couple of times during a night of track racing to try to match the event. Regardless of the gear chosen it still helps to be able to deliver power from a standing start to 150 rpm or so to deal with that fixed gear.

Personally and totally anectdotally I think it's a good idea to work power over a wide range of cadences. In particular being able to quickly wind up to 130 or 140rpm in response to an attack and then shift is really helpful in mass start racing. I haven't seen any formal work on the benefits or fallicy of high cadence work but I know I've relied on it a bunch of times over the years to close a gap in a hurry. It also lets you ride a cog or two lower into crit corners knowing you can wind it up with cadence coming out of the corner and then shift. Maybe that's just a trackies perspective, I'm curious what the exercise physiologists think about training for a wide QA scatter plot.

-Dave

 

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

These are some interesting responses and I should like to continue the discussion.

Obviously as a road sprinter you have multiple gear options that are not available as a trackie (at least not on the same ride!).

FWIW, at normal speeds and riding (Level 3-4 stuff), I prefer a lower cadence than most roadies, opting for 75-85rpms. Obviously for sprinting I go much higher, but still rarely go over 135.

A few things in no particular order....

How would you determine if a sprinter would benefit more from better leg speed or being able to generate more force? Is there a given torque value where you'd say, ok, that's high enough or too low, etc?

Is it desirable or even beneficial for someone (me!) to do high-cadence work (150+ rpm's) to improve leg speed?

What kind of cadence are Bonnen, Petacchi, and Marianne Vos turning out to win the many sprints they all have?

 

[acoggan]

How would you determine if a sprinter would benefit more from better leg speed or being able to generate more force?

http://www.fixedgearfever.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2318&highlight=

 

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

http://www.fixedgearfever.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2318&highlight=

Andy, thank you, that is a very helpful and quite relevant discussion. As if I didn't have enough food for lunch, now I have some more for thought. I think I understand the overall concept but would like to learn how to apply the ideas to my own situation (analyzing pedal velocity-force data, etc). This section stood out the most to me:
***************************************************************


"Closer examination of the pedal force-pedal velocity data shown in the link above, however, reveals opportunities for optimizing the approach to suit this particular individual. Specifically, although they have raced on the track for many years and are quite comfortable turning the cranks at a high cadence, their theoretical maximal pedal velocity (i.e., the X intercept of the pedal force-pedal velocity relationship) is a relatively low 2.85 m/s, equating to a cadence of "only" 160 rpm (vs. 180-185 rpm for the AIS women). OTOH, their theoretical maximal pedal force (i.e., the Y intercept) of 1070 N is ~20% higher than that of the AIS women - in fact, when differences in body mass are taken into account the maximum force that they can apply to the pedals is comparable to that of world class male Australian sprint cyclists! IOW, it is clear from analyzing data collected during one flying 200 m TT and a few relatively pain-free standing start efforts that they are "speed limited" and not "force limited", and therefore the greatest opportunity for improving their performance lies in working the "speed" end of the spectrum (e.g., by having them focus their gym work much more on explosive movements instead of lifting heavy weights at slow speeds to induce hypertrophy, by having them perform more high cadence pedaling drills than normal, in an attempt to increase muscle contractile velocity, by having them taper more/longer prior to competition, etc.). At the same time, however, the data suggest that they may benefit from using a significantly larger gear than true sprinter, since 1) the flying 200 m is performed on the descending limb of the power-pedal speed (or power-cadence) relationship, i.e., maximal power is sacrificed in favor of increased ability to accelerate, but 2) this particular individual can generate more force than most, meaning that their ability to accelerate in a big gear should be greater. "

 

[acoggan]

I think I understand the overall concept but would like to learn how to apply the ideas to my own situation (analyzing pedal velocity-force data, etc).

The only way to do that would be to test yourself to determine your own personal pedal force-pedal speed relationship, then compare the data to, e.g., that of the AIS women. The good news is that since you own a powermeter, such a goal is easily within your reach...all it would take is a little bit of time and the desire to do some all-out, but very brief, efforts. The hardest parts would probably be 1) working out the best protocol for you, given the time, venue, etc., available to you, and 2) crunching the numbers in Excel, since you have to "filter" the data to get ride of extraneous data points before calculating the regression.

 

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

The only way to do that would be to test yourself to determine your own personal pedal force-pedal speed relationship, then compare the data to, e.g., that of the AIS women. The good news is that since you own a powermeter, such a goal is easily within your reach...all it would take is a little bit of time and the desire to do some all-out, but very brief, efforts. The hardest parts would probably be 1) working out the best protocol for you, given the time, venue, etc., available to you, and 2) crunching the numbers in Excel, since you have to "filter" the data to get ride of extraneous data points before calculating the regression.

Any suggestions on the protocol? I always have desire for brief maximal efforts

Andy is this a specific application of QA? Whereby one follows basically the same process but for a particular scenario...i.e., all-out standing starts.

As for figuring out regression and what not, well, it has been 10 years since my last course in maths, so I'll need to reference most of it!

 

[acoggan]

Any suggestions on the protocol?

Essentially what you want to do is emulate this study as closely as you can:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=9372489&query_hl=23&itool=pubmed_docsum

The best approach, then, would be to put your bike on a trainer and perform maximum effort "spin ups" in various gears, so as to get as many points along the pedal force-pedal speed relationship as possible. (If you had an SRM, you could just set it to record data at a high frequency and could probably collect the necessary data in just a few efforts, but since you're using a PowerTap, you're going to have to do more of them.) The key points are:

1) make certain you're fully warmed-up and fully rested/recovered before initiating any effort, and

2) use data only from the first few seconds of effort (since you'll start to fatigue and will "fall off the curve" after that).

It may take you a few go-rounds before you work out a protocol that gives you data you have complete confidence in, but fortunately these efforts are completely painless, so it's not like you've tortured yourself for no reason. (You could also just include a couple of efforts at the start of your usual trainer workout, then once you've figured out what gears to use, etc., set aside a time for formal testing.)

The one caveat I would make is to do the testing when seated, since that will allow you to compare apples-to-apples (i.e., compare to the data for the AIS women). As shown here (and in the scientific literature as well):

http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/setraining/id3.html

you can generate more power when standing, but you may calculate a falsely-steep slope since it gets progressively harder to coordinate upper body and lower body movements as cadence increases.

 

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

I need to give this some thought as I tend not to care for doing sprints or high wattage efforts on the trainer.

An idea I had was doing it on one of those 'dipper' roads Alex mentioned IIRC. I could essentially coast to the bottom and then do a short, maximal effort on the uphill. The idea being that I'd have no data before the sprint, and I could limit my analysis to 5 seconds or so. This, keeping in mind what you said about remaining seated - though that would certainly lower the power by a good 10-15%.

Then there is the question of the regression and the line, I'd have to see if excel does that automatically or if I need to solve an equation, etc.

 

[RapDaddyo]

I need to give this some thought as I tend not to care for doing sprints or high wattage efforts on the trainer.

An idea I had was doing it on one of those 'dipper' roads Alex mentioned IIRC. I could essentially coast to the bottom and then do a short, maximal effort on the uphill. The idea being that I'd have no data before the sprint, and I could limit my analysis to 5 seconds or so. This, keeping in mind what you said about remaining seated - though that would certainly lower the power by a good 10-15%.

Then there is the question of the regression and the line, I'd have to see if excel does that automatically or if I need to solve an equation, etc.

This issue has piqued my interest in the applicability of something I am working on. I have a research application that parses ride files by duration and power. It already has a batch processing engine to process a whole bunch of files at one time. I'm wondering about the value of a customized version that would extract all efforts that meet a certain duration/power criteria (e.g., D>=5s and AP>=1000W). Basically, it would dump all such efforts in one file with a few key summary statistics (e.g., total duration of each segment, max power, AP, max torque, avg torque, max cadence, avg cadence, etc.). Andy is familiar with the app I am referring to. I'd be interested in his and your (and Alex, our friend "down Under") thoughts on the value of such a data file (for further analysis) and any suggestions for data elements to include in such a summary file. The main output of this app would be a .csv file with the date, start and end time (for an audit trail) plus the desired stats from each effort. Thoughts?

 

[Lucy_Aspenwind]

This issue has piqued my interest in the applicability of something I am working on. I have a research application that parses ride files by duration and power. It already has a batch processing engine to process a whole bunch of files at one time. I'm wondering about the value of a customized version that would extract all efforts that meet a certain duration/power criteria (e.g., D>=5s and AP>=1000W). Basically, it would dump all such efforts in one file with a few key summary statistics (e.g., total duration of each segment, max power, AP, max torque, avg torque, max cadence, avg cadence, etc.). Andy is familiar with the app I am referring to. I'd be interested in his and your (and Alex, our friend "down Under") thoughts on the value of such a data file (for further analysis) and any suggestions for data elements to include in such a summary file. The main output of this app would be a .csv file with the date, start and end time (for an audit trail) plus the desired stats from each effort. Thoughts?

Rap - yes I've read about the file parsing app you've developed. Could such an application be useful for what Andy has tried to explain to me (the entire notion of being force or speed limited vis-a-vis the AIS women sprinters).

I'm a neophyte here as I've demonstrated many times, but I'd certainly think such an app could be useful. Presently, I am using a much more primitive method, by creating an additional bin in my 'power by zone' chart, where I define NM power as anything > 1000 w. Sunday's ride I had somewhere 2+ minutes in my so-called 'NM' zone.

 

[Alex Simmons]

This issue has piqued my interest in the applicability of something I am working on. I have a research application that parses ride files by duration and power. It already has a batch processing engine to process a whole bunch of files at one time. I'm wondering about the value of a customized version that would extract all efforts that meet a certain duration/power criteria (e.g., D>=5s and AP>=1000W). Basically, it would dump all such efforts in one file with a few key summary statistics (e.g., total duration of each segment, max power, AP, max torque, avg torque, max cadence, avg cadence, etc.). Andy is familiar with the app I am referring to. I'd be interested in his and your (and Alex, our friend "down Under") thoughts on the value of such a data file (for further analysis) and any suggestions for data elements to include in such a summary file. The main output of this app would be a .csv file with the date, start and end time (for an audit trail) plus the desired stats from each effort. Thoughts?

A few random thoughts....

I think for the sort of analysis Lucy (and the rest of us) is learning about, the protocol used to generate the data is probably the most important piece. It needs to be repeatable, same conditions, etc. Not sure you can draw relevant conclusions by pulling this type of data from various ride files.

Still I think there is some merit in considering extraction of these maximal efforts. Certainly the ap would make pulling the data out easier though (although sprints are easiest to spot in a power file). Still I'm always up for looking at data in new ways and then seeing if there's value in it.

However since there is no "upper boundary" to max power and the riding population has wildly varying power profile ratio between NMP and FTP you would have to choose the lower limit arbitrarily. Maybe that doesn't matter if we are not so interested in how much time we spend at that power but rather focus on the other characteristics while at that power level.

I might be interested in knowing how many times I exceed a certain power/duration criteria.

Hey Lucy - don't want to make you jealous but I have at least 6 tracks within 2 hours drive (maybe more DGV, Goulburn, Adcock Park, Lidcombe, Hurstville, Tempe, Unanderra...) with one 10 minutes away (Tempe outdoor 333, just refurbished) and DGV 30 minutes away (OK 50-60 min at peak hour). Add another hour and there would be another half dozen in the regional towns. Most small towns here have a track of sorts, ususally goes round a sports oval and not steep banked like a velodrome but they're everywhere. We have indoor wooden board velodromes in Sydney, Melbourne (x2), Perth, Adelaide & Launceston. Other major centres would have an outdoor velodrome.

 

[Alex Simmons]

Quote:
Originally Posted by n crowley
What is the most important limiting factor to a fully trained TT or pursuit rider's pedal power application ?

No reply, the correct answer does explain the ineffectiveness of weight or resistance training, but it is something that can be rectified.

Don't know if I understand the question? Road TT or a track TT (completely different ride demands). For a pursuit it's a matter of exceptional power at VO2 Max and/or a high AWC. If you're lucky you have both. I'm not aware that either of these can be influenced by weight training. They certainly can be improved by riding your bike. Easiest method would be to pick your parents to start with....

 

[Roadie_scum]

A few random thoughts....

I think for the sort of analysis Lucy (and the rest of us) is learning about, the protocol used to generate the data is probably the most important piece. It needs to be repeatable, same conditions, etc. Not sure you can draw relevant conclusions by pulling this type of data from various ride files.

I think Rap's app mod idea would be useful for pulling data points from files if you only included the testing files. I'm not sure why you'd put a duration constraint on it if this was what you were doing though.

This issue has piqued my interest in the applicability of something I am working on. I have a research application that parses ride files by duration and power. It already has a batch processing engine to process a whole bunch of files at one time. I'm wondering about the value of a customized version that would extract all efforts that meet a certain duration/power criteria (e.g., D>=5s and AP>=1000W). Basically, it would dump all such efforts in one file with a few key summary statistics (e.g., total duration of each segment, max power, AP, max torque, avg torque, max cadence, avg cadence, etc.). Andy is familiar with the app I am referring to. I'd be interested in his and your (and Alex, our friend "down Under") thoughts on the value of such a data file (for further analysis) and any suggestions for data elements to include in such a summary file. The main output of this app would be a .csv file with the date, start and end time (for an audit trail) plus the desired stats from each effort. Thoughts?

I think this is a good idea, although, as mentioned above, I think you would only want to apply it to actual testing or racing files (eg from flying 2's and kilo's). For the purpose here I think you need to know that the effort is maximal. Also, I'd like to know why you think it's necessary to put a minimum time on the efforts. I think it would be important to 'snip' the data at 6s to stop inclusion of data where you have 'fallen off the curve'.

So here is what I think the batch app might look like:

Enter minimum time P recorded for (optional)
Enter maximum time before snip (optional)
Enter minimum AP

Rest like normal...

 

[Alex Simmons]

I think Rap's app mod idea would be useful for pulling data points from files if you only included the testing files. I'm not sure why you'd put a duration constraint on it if this was what you were doing though.

I think it's more to do with how the existing parse ap works but Rap can answer that!

I'm still yet to test the latest incarnation. Time...

Hey Roadie - where are you based?