Where does power come from?



Fday said:
Possibly, but only if you trained those muscles to have cycling endurance. In general, increasing muscle mass will not help your cycling. The muscles you already have are likely more than adequate for most types of racing, if you train them properly and use them better.
why then do most of the guys i race against have bigger legs and faster sprints?
 
acoggan said:
The precise communication of precise concepts requires the precise use of precise terminology. Anything else just results in unnecessary confusion.



That's because performance in a kilometer or 500 m is heavily influenced by the time required to accelerate up to speed, an act which must be accomplished from an initial cadence of zero. In contrast, strength is not an important determinant of performance in something like a flying 200 m TT (although somebody who can do a really fast flying 200 m is likely to be stronger than average).
Why don't we define cycling strength as the maximum force that can be applied through a distance of 14 inches 90 times a minute for an hour. Is that specific enough? To say that strength doesn't matter is the same as saying weakness doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how weak you are you can become an elite cyclist. Maximum one time repetition strength doesn't matter. Endurance strength (perhaps as defined above) matters.
 
jamesstout said:
why not if my power increases by 10% and my mass increases by <10% my watts/kilo increases

True, but simply increasing your muscle mass won't necessarily increase your power at all.
 
Fday said:
Why don't we define cycling strength as the maximum force that can be applied through a distance of 14 inches 90 times a minute for an hour.

Because that's already defined as power.
 
jamesstout said:
why then do most of the guys i race against have bigger legs and faster sprints?
Perhaps they are better trained. Perhaps they have better technique. Perhaps they have better endurance so they come to the sprint fresher. It is unlikely that it is just because they have bigger legs. Want big legs, put an NFL lineman on a bike and see how he does in those sprints.
 
jamesstout said:
why then do most of the guys i race against have bigger legs and faster sprints?

You may not realize it, but you've just changed the comparison from a longitudinal one to a cross-sectional one.

Anyway, on the whole bigger people have, among other things, bigger hearts, yet as mentioned previously in this thread their aerodynamic drag doesn't increase in proportion. Hence, on a flat course and all else being equal, bigger individuals will tend to be faster than smaller individuals in, e.g., a TT. Somewhat along the same lines, when all else is equal, a bigger person will not only be stronger, but also more powerful, and hence will tend to be a better sprinter. The question, though, is whether increasing muscle mass, and more specifically, increasing strength, will automatically result in an increase in power...and the answer to that question is, "not necessarily", due to the fact that strength and muscle mass per se are not the limiting factor.
 
ric_stern/RST said:
Just because you think the definition isn't correct, doesn't alter it. The definition of strength is the maximal force generating capacity of a muscle or group of muscles. End of. Silly, or not.

Ric
Cool. I don't deny that is a definition. I just deny that is the only definition or the only definition relevant to cycling. Maximum strength that can be sustained for a certain number of repetitions is another equally valid definition. Maybe strength should always have a number after it referring to the number of repetitions. You are referring to strength (1). I am referring to strength (5400). I agree strength (1) has little to do with cycling. I believe strength (5400) has a lot to do with cycling.

Cheers.

Frank
 
Fday said:
Perhaps they are better trained. Perhaps they have better technique. Perhaps they have better endurance so they come to the sprint fresher. It is unlikely that it is just because they have bigger legs. Want big legs, put an NFL lineman on a bike and see how he does in those sprints.
naah iget there fresh i just cant burn it up when the big boys kick. If its not strength what do in eed to work on to have more explosiveness?
 
jamesstout said:
naah iget there fresh i just cant burn it up when the big boys kick. If its not strength what do in eed to work on to have more explosiveness?
Maybe you need more fast twitch fibers. You could try lifting weights and report back to us and let us know how it goes.
 
Fday said:
Cool. I don't deny that is a definition. I just deny that is the only definition or the only definition relevant to cycling. Maximum strength that can be sustained for a certain number of repetitions is another equally valid definition. Maybe strength should always have a number after it referring to the number of repetitions. You are referring to strength (1). I am referring to strength (5400). I agree strength (1) has little to do with cycling. I believe strength (5400) has a lot to do with cycling.

Cheers.

Frank

That IS the definition. You can deny it all you want, but it just makes you look very silly. Your **** about face 'definition' would throw up a huge problem as the most likely (actual) strongest cyclists (i.e., 200-metre and 500m/1000m cyclists) would end up being the weakest.

It's a bit like learning another language and saying you don't like the word "chair" and referring to it as a "table" (in whatever language you're learning). It would be rather pompous of you to tell the native speakers that they have the word wrong. Likewise, suck it up, you're wrong here.

By the way, you're essentially defining functional threshold power/~1-hr TT power.

Ric
 
Fday said:
Cool. I don't deny that is a definition. I just deny that is the only definition or the only definition relevant to cycling. Maximum strength that can be sustained for a certain number of repetitions is another equally valid definition. Maybe strength should always have a number after it referring to the number of repetitions. You are referring to strength (1). I am referring to strength (5400). I agree strength (1) has little to do with cycling. I believe strength (5400) has a lot to do with cycling.

Cheers.

Frank
Are you confusing/comingling force, work, and power?
 
vadiver said:
Are you confusing/comingling force, work, and power?
Not for the purposes of the definition. However, if one wants to analyze cycling performance it is necessary to comingle them along with endurance and efficiency.
 
ric_stern/RST said:
That IS the definition. You can deny it all you want, but it just makes you look very silly. Your **** about face 'definition' would throw up a huge problem as the most likely (actual) strongest cyclists (i.e., 200-metre and 500m/1000m cyclists) would end up being the weakest.

It's a bit like learning another language and saying you don't like the word "chair" and referring to it as a "table" (in whatever language you're learning). It would be rather pompous of you to tell the native speakers that they have the word wrong. Likewise, suck it up, you're wrong here.

By the way, you're essentially defining functional threshold power/~1-hr TT power.

Ric
I suspect your 200 m cyclists would look best with looking at something like strength (100) and the 500 meter people if tested using strength (250). A 40k specialist may test best at strength (2000) while an Ironman or TDF specialist may do best at strength (10,000) and the best at one is unlikely to be the best at another. If one wants to look at a physiological parameter that might effect performance it seems to me that the parameter should have something to do with the activity. I agree that measuring strength (1) has nothing to do with cycling. But to say strength per se has nothing to do with cycling performance is pure fantasy unless the whole world is so rigid that they cannot think outside the box and accept that there might be other, equally valid, definitions of strength. Just because you cannot accept this does not make you right and me wrong. I suspect we will find a strong correlation between performance in any cycling discipline and strength, as I have defined, it if we choose the number of repetitions well and someone took the time to do the testing.

And, I am not defining FTP. FTP also involves cycling efficiency. I am defining muscle strength (). Wouldn't it be cool if there were a correlation. How strange would that be.
 
Fday said:
I suspect your 200 m cyclists would look best with looking at something like strength (100) and the 500 meter people if tested using strength (250). A 40k specialist may test best at strength (2000) while an Ironman or TDF specialist may do best at strength (10,000) and the best at one is unlikely to be the best at another. If one wants to look at a physiological parameter that might effect performance it seems to me that the parameter should have something to do with the activity. I agree that measuring strength (1) has nothing to do with cycling. But to say strength per se has nothing to do with cycling performance is pure fantasy unless the whole world is so rigid that they cannot think outside the box and accept that there might be other, equally valid, definitions of strength. Just because you cannot accept this does not make you right and me wrong. I suspect we will find a strong correlation between performance in any cycling discipline and strength, as I have defined, it if we choose the number of repetitions well and someone took the time to do the testing.

Obviously, you are a moron.

Ric
 
jamesstout said:
which weights?squats dead lifts leg press/ when in the week?

You are going to have to figure it out and report back as none of us know.
 
Fday said:
Not for the purposes of the definition. However, if one wants to analyze cycling performance it is necessary to comingle them along with endurance and efficiency.
I wish there was an icon for confused, it would be used here.

I probably should not have used the term confuse/comingle the way I did. Yes I would agree that all three terms need to be used in analyzing cycling. There are many more that need to be "comingled" as well. However, this was not what I meant when I used the phrase. I proably should have used confuse/interchanging. For example, 11:00 pm in the day or 11:00 am in the night. Yeah, you could probably finagle it to be what you said. But when their are clear, concise, and accepted definitions, why make new ones to suit your argument?


When I first saw posts similar to this one I wondered why a person argued about physics/physiology with people who are deeply invoved in the subjects.

Then when I found you were the inventor of a product you keep trying to sell on this site I was supprized Ric kept letting you tout them. It appeared to be competitive to him.

I read the study summaries on your site, I cannot get the entire studies although I have tried. I see, from the summaries, many holes. These holes may be filled but with the entire study, I do not know.

With your continued lack of understanding terms and how to apply them. I have become even more reluctant to use the product. Thus I have a guess as to why Ric contiues to keep the posts. I would not buy the product because I have no faith in the inventor behind it.
 

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