Cycling Coaches in Sydney

[Enriss]

Well, assuming you mean the proportionately weakest muscle in the chain, certainly. If a part of your body can't keep up with the movement, train it until it can!
I think I read an article somewhere though about how in endurance sports, it's possible to achieve similar results while restricting yourself to smaller muscle groups, since your body will adapt and make your muscles bigger.
I believe the article specifically mentioned rowers, and the author got an e-mail from a coach asking for advice. The author was shocked to see how big the rowers were, until he realized that their particular boat rowing sport didn't allow lower body movement to assist in the rowing motion or something like that.

 

[fergie]

When you can show us that hip flexor strength is a limiter to cycling performance or the studies using a crank that requires the use of the hip flexor leading to greater power then I will consider training that muscle.

 

[Fday]

Well, assuming you mean the proportionately weakest muscle in the chain, certainly. If a part of your body can't keep up with the movement, train it until it can!
I think I read an article somewhere though about how in endurance sports, it's possible to achieve similar results while restricting yourself to smaller muscle groups, since your body will adapt and make your muscles bigger.
I believe the article specifically mentioned rowers, and the author got an e-mail from a coach asking for advice. The author was shocked to see how big the rowers were, until he realized that their particular boat rowing sport didn't allow lower body movement to assist in the rowing motion or something like that.

I am not sure what the rowing analogy is supposed to mean. I did row crew in college and I do believe I would understand it if it were applicable.

 

[Fday]

When you can show us that hip flexor strength is a limiter to cycling performance or the studies using a crank that requires the use of the hip flexor leading to greater power then I will consider training that muscle.

I think it is quite evident to anyone who has actually looked at the data that the HF's are a limiter to cycling performance simply because the average cyclist does not completely unweight on the backstroke. By failing to completely unweight it means they are not getting the full benefit of the work the pushing muscles are doing. Simply increasing the work done by the HF's on the backstroke (they are already doing quite a bit of work as they quite a bit of unweighting is already occurring) just a little bit should result in more power to the wheel. What is so difficult to see about that?

And, BTW, they will continue to be a limiter to many as long as coaches like you feel like no attention need be given to them.

 

[swampy1970]

Until you look at studies using a crank that require a circular application of force through the pedal stroke and involves the flexor muscles of the hip and knee joint and see there is no increase in power and in some studies a regression.

... ah studies that don't last that long and give the rider, who's never really used hip flexors that much (as well as altering the rest of the pedal stroke), a whole month or two to get used to undoing many years of pedaling in 8 to 12 weeks.

That you don't see a whole scale reduction in power is a complete mystery to me given those circumstances...

 

[fergie]

So why no difference in power between cyclists using clipless pedals and flat pedals?

 

[Fday]

So why no difference in power between cyclists using clipless pedals and flat pedals?

????, Your point?

 

[Enriss]

I am not sure what the rowing analogy is supposed to mean. I did row crew in college and I do believe I would understand it if it were applicable.

Yeah, the article explains things way better than I did, and I hardly actually explained it at all.

So, there are these two variants of rowing. One type has a boat with seats that allows the legs to assist, the other type uses seats that prevent the legs from assisting in the motion. The athletes that couldn't use their legs had more developed upper bodies. I think this demonstrates the point that muscle volume can be a limiting factor in aerobic events, but I wish I could remember where the article was.

 

[Fday]

Yeah, the article explains things way better than I did, and I hardly actually explained it at all.

So, there are these two variants of rowing. One type has a boat with seats that allows the legs to assist, the other type uses seats that prevent the legs from assisting in the motion. The athletes that couldn't use their legs had more developed upper bodies. I think this demonstrates the point that muscle volume can be a limiting factor in aerobic events, but I wish I could remember where the article was.

Well, I would be surprised if those with the "fixed seats" had significantly bigger upper bodies than those that actually use their legs. I can assure you that the upper bodies of moveable seat rowers are well developed because the back and shoulders are used to resist all the power of the legs. The arms are straight at this power part of the stroke but once the legs are done then the arms finish the stroke. Now, the arms will be used differently in that they are used more to continue the stroke rather than as the prime mover but they are not finishing the stroke passively.

Nobody would ever confuse a rower as a cyclist or runner as their upper bodies are usually quite "buff". They look more like swimmers than runners or cyclists.

 

[n crowley]

I think the most damning evidence against the idea of pulling up is the average graphs which show that the faster group of riders pull up almost not at all on average.
Since strength doesn't make the difference, the benefit would have to be from increased aerobic efficiency. My understanding of aerobic efficiency is that it's basically limited by how much of the oxygen you breath can be consumed by your working muscles, which is restricted by the surface area of the blood vessels in the muscles, which is a function of muscle volume and vascularity or capillarity or some physio term like that.
Adding new muscle groups increases the muscle volume, probably substantially. This means more of the oxygen you breath in can be involved in power-generating processes, which means more power and faster riding.

Training the pulling up muscles is a waste of time, the only effective work they are capable of is unweighting and walking will be sufficient training for that. The latest (before and after accident) power values form Alex Simmons clearly demonstrate that natural pedallers do not use the lower leg calf and ankle muscles to increase their power output. These are the extra muscles that are worth training (stepper/resistance bands). Correctly combining these muscles with the arm muscles and a different power generating technique in the hip/thigh muscles can not only increase maximal hip/thigh crank torque but also double the area of the pedalling circle to where this increased torque can be applied. Linear pedalling is a rebuilt version of the circular style with the "pulling up" completely eliminated.

 

[Enriss]

Sorry to bring back a week old topic, but I found the article I was referencing earlier.
The paper is "Strength Training and Endurance Performance" by Stephen Seiler PhD and the portion I was referencing was this:
"I got a message from an Australian who was familiar with the lifeguard boat races down under. He said these guys had bigger upper bodies than "regular" rowers and were very strong, but not quite as good on the ergometer. I had to think about that a bit to decide what it meant. Then I remembered "They don't have a sliding seat!" Which means of course that the legs are taken out of the game and rowing becomes an upper-body only sport. Hence the bigger upper body just like the wheel chair athletes. So, as I thought about that while driving up to Lillehammer for my first mountain bike race, the wheel chair scenario hit me, and I understood things better. I was pretty excited!"

The wheelchair athletes bit refers to a discussion earlier in the paper about wheelchair marathon racers.

 

[fergie]

Specific adaptations to imposed demands principle. No surprise they are not too flash on a rowing erg.

 

[Enriss]

Right, and by the rules of specificity, we can imagine that the more developed upper bodies of the fixed seat rowers is due to:
a) hypertrophy due to sport induced load
or
b) magical pixie dust, because rowing is not a strength limited sport so there will be sport induced hypertrophy effect

 

[Alex Simmons]

 

[fergie]

Right, and by the rules of specificity, we can imagine that the more developed upper bodies of the fixed seat rowers is due to:
a) hypertrophy due to sport induced load
or
b) magical pixie dust, because rowing is not a strength limited sport so there will be sport induced hypertrophy effect

You mean like gymnastics where all the guys have massive upper bodies and matchstick legs and very few would know what a weights room looks like. Think you will find as Alex's photo illustrates that there is a huge strength component to surf lifesaving.

 

[Enriss]

If you're going to claim that gymnastics is not a strength limited sport, then I'm not even sure what to say. Just because you're not lifting weights doesn't mean you're not doing weight training. With gymnastics, we're talking about bodyweight exercises that make use of leverage to control the weight your muscles work against, but it's still resistance training.

 

[fergie]

Ummm, did I say gymnastics was not a strength limited sport?

The point was surf life saving (as illustrated in Alex's photo) certainly involves a lot of strength. Hence well developed upper bodies.

 

[Enriss]

I'm trying to draw comparisons here between cycling and rowing. You drew a comparison between rowing and gymnastics.

 

[n crowley]

I think they figured out aerodynamics was relevent to cycling a long time ago. Land speed records set behind a train etc.

I did see a study on thumb position at the biketechreview site but here we are getting into small gain territory. At $1000/hr for US based wind tunnels I think there are bigger fish to fry when looking for aero advantages.

I was referring to the use of aero/tribars in TT's.

 

[n crowley]

And explain why increasing tangental force by X amount is effective when Coyle (1991) showed that cat 1 riders deliver more force over a lesser part of the pedal stroke at a higher power output than cat 2 riders.

But that is exactly what the cat 1 riders are doing, increasing their tangential force in the very restricted area of their stomping downstroke where such a force can be applied. You need to study the biomechanics of cycling.