and if you look inside KiwiCoach's toolkit, you'll find a looped audio tape of a zipper being undone, which he plants on the opposite side of the meadow from his hiding place; spooking his favorite "ladies" right into his clutches.

there's other stuff too,

Ha ha Swampy you finally made it here. Love ya work.

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Hamish Ferguson: Cycling Coach

Perhaps, but since we are discussing the physiology of exercise, the only way to avoid problems in communication is to use the definition accepted in that field.



Fortunately for me, you are not in a position to judge said skills - instead, that task falls to my peers, who seem to appreciate my work just fine. :-)



You need to work on your logic skills, Frank - I said "necessarily".



I trust what Dean (not Dave) tells me. What I don't necessarily (there's that word again) trust are statements by Carmichael and/or Armstrong that are published in the lay press, reported via Twitter, etc.



As a matter of fact, I did ask Dean about the story on cyclingnews.com. Unfortunately, I cannot share what he told me - all I can say is, it's going to be an interesting Tour. :-)

That is probably part of it. However, I think two other factors are even more important in explaining this misconception:

1) the fact that numerous ill-informed coaches keep telling people that strength is important (even though 20 y ago they were saying the exact opposite);

and even more importantly

2) the fact that our nervous systems tend to report the relative effort (force), not the absolute effort (force), thus leading us to believe that we are truly strength-limited when, e.g., sprinting uphill in the big chainring, even though the absolute force we are generating is only about half of the maximal force our muscles can generate.

(Look for a post tomorrow here and/or on the wattage list illustrating exactly the latter point.)

If Darwin never would have published On the Origin of the Species (or any of his other scientific journals) would you be using him as an example of a 'real scientist'? Probably not; you would then talk about Wallace I guess...

BB

What a joke some people have turned this in to.

What could have been a sensible discussion has been ruined by people refusing to acknowledge and use the correct terms.

So now we've established that strength and endurance cycling performance have to date not been proved to have a correlation we just get people saying stupid things like - oh we weren't talking about that strength. We are talking about a different kind of strength...

Well derrrrrrrr, how pathetic.

There is only one accepted definition of strength as it pertains to exercise science. Period.

Now as Tom A said, you can choose to call something else strength - but you then realise that strength training as every sensible person knows it will have to change to, so that it no longer becomes strength training. Dumb diddly dumb dumb dumb.

I actually think it is fantastic that people who are experts and world renowned in the area come here and share their knowledge. I think they are being more then patient with a few ignorant idiots who refuse to accept the knowledge that these experts are passing on. Keep in mind, all the experts around here are doing is passing on what they've learnt, and specific beyond that some personal opinions of what they've learnt. But the core of the message is soundly based in what we currently know are the FACTS. If you don't like the message of FACT then go and argue with the hundreds of researchers that have contributed to building our current knowledge base and tell them they are all wrong too.

Stop trying to pretent you're some sort of Galileo Frank D. You are not, you are showing you are a foolish infantile. Your lack of understand of basic physiology is oustanding.

Yes people use the word "strong" to describe all sorts of things. Some people say I've got a very strong finish to my races. I can't lift myself up off the ground sometimes I'm that weak! This isn't a discussion in the pub. Some people come here to learn, and it makes it a ridiculous situation if we have idiots posting garbage and incorrect meanings.

If we are going to make any headway we need to start reading the same book.

Don't try and change definitions and create new meanings halfway through the discussion when things aren't going your way.

Interesting... that one also shows an increase in the time to exhaustion.

hmmm... I wonder if that makes a case for "big gear" type training? The ability to put out L6/L7 level forces for extended periods of time without the normal strain associated with that work, might be compelling for those of us who have a power profile where the 5min is ~20 rows above the 1min...

My point was to attempt to illustrate how unsatisfactory the argument is. The statement "there is essentially no relationship between the fraction or percentage of maximal force and time to fatigue when said forces are so low" requires no less justification than the statement "there is no relationship between 1 rep max strength and FTP". Anyone who isn't convinced by the second statement will not be any more convinced by the first statement.

I had been hoping that you would respond to my later question, about relative ATP utilisation when comparing two people exerting their respective maximal forces of e.g. 200lb and 600lb, and then when the same two people exert a force of e.g. 50lb. I honestly am trying to understand why there would be zero relationship between 1 rep max strength and FTP, and I am sure that you have the knowledge to be able to explain it in terms that would convince me. I can see that strength training isn't going to train the mechanisms for aerobic production of ATP, which is why I'm thinking instead about ATP utilisation. If it is the case that the quantity of ATP required to exert a given force depends only on the absolute force being exerted, then that's it, the debate is over as far as I'm concerned. If, OTOH, the person with 600lb max strength utilises less ATP to exert 50lb of force than a person with 200lb max strength, then that would appear to be a possible mechanism by which someone with greater strength could have a higher FTP than someone with lower strength if they both have the same rate of aerobic ATP production. I truly do not know which of these is the case, so I'm asking the question to find out the answer, not to make an argument one way or the other.

...at "maximal aerobic power", and in the absence of any increase in VO2max. IOW, the improvement (if real, and due to whatever was responsible for the unexpected increase in efficiency in the control group) is due to an increase in ANaerobic work capacity. Depending on how you look at it, this may or may not be surprising (although it does make me wonder just how many short intervals the subjects wree doing on the bike, and/or the time of year it was conducted), but it does not provide evidence of an improvement in endurance cycling performance.

The ability to "put out L6/L7 level forces for extended periods of time" is a function of the fatigue resistance of your muscles under those conditions, and hence isn't directly related to the concept Mike brought up and/or the notion of "big gear" training. Rather, what Mike mentioned would be justification for doing, e.g., standing start efforts from a low cadence as a means of increasing your maximal neuromuscular power (not how long you can sustain it). In fact, such workouts can be quite effective, e.g., after just six such sessions my maximal power increased by ~10% (cf. the presentation of powermeter use by track cyclists for the data).

Janssen makes the claim that anaerobic energy supply in cycling road races is ~5%, and says: "This by no means indicates that this source of energy is unimportant. On the contrary, in cycling the anaerobic factor is decisive. Being able to make the decisive escape, during 1-3 min, marks the difference between the winner and the rest of the pack."

Do you not agree with this?

Maximal power over 5 sec I assume? The big gear work I'm familiar with basically involves going all-out for 1 minute, in a gear with which you can only muster 50-60 rpms. Are you talking about starting in a low gear and "winding it out"?

No, I would agree with the general premise that anaerobic capacity can be important in determining the outcome of races (although not always, and I wonder how you would ever quantify it), and as I said, I'm not sure I'd label the results of this study surprising (although again, I wonder just how many short intervals the subjects were doing, and I am a bit surprised that they obtained a significant benefit from a program of 4 x 4 RM). Rather, by "endurance cycling performance" I was alluding to sustainable power output, which is 1) what many seem to believe weight training can improve, and 2) is presumably of most interest to those on this list (i.e., triathletes).

Yes.



Pretty much (although if the gear is too low, you'll be able to "wind it out" too quickly, i.e., you'll only get in a few pedal strokes at or below the cadence at which you generate maximal power).

Aren't you married to an exercise physiologist? She should be able to explain this all to you (if not, I question just how much she got out of her degree).

Anyway, to try to explain it one more time: the maximal force that a muscle can generate is dependent upon how many cross-bridges can be formed between actin and myosin. In turn, this means that it is dependent upon myofibrillar "packing" (i.e., what fraction of the myocyte cross-sectional area is occupied by the contractile elements), the overall cross-sectional area of the muscle, and the extent to which the central nervous system can recruit all of the available motor units and their associated muscle fibers simultaneously (which generally isn't a limiting factor, as demonstrated by experiments using the twitch-occlusion method). What it does not depend upon is the rate of ATP utilization, as evidenced by the fact that the specific tension (i.e., force/cross-sectional area) of slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers does not differ, despite the much higher rate of ATP utilization by the latter. Similarly, it (strength) also does not depend upon how the ATP is supplied, e.g., from phosphagen stores or from glycolysis/glycogenolysis.

In contrast to strength, the power that a muscle can produce is ultimately limited by either 1) the rate of ATP utilization (during very short duration efforts lasting only a handful of seconds), or 2) the rate of ATP provision, and especially how it derived (for all other efforts).

If that doesn't make sense to you, I'm not sure that there is much more than I can say, except perhaps to leave you with an anecdote:

Early in this decade, my wife was a national champion track cyclist, with a strength (average effective pedal force) during the pedaling motion at the time of 1100 N, or 112 kg (peak force would have been ~2x this, or ~225 kg for what is essentially a one-legged squat). This strength was the result of 1) large thighs and 2) specific training (lots of standing starts, etc.). Now fast-forward to 2007, where after 5 y of not touching a bike, two children, and a DVT that resulted in moderate to severe post-phlebotic syndrome, she decided to make a comeback in hopes of qualifying for the 2008 Olympic team. Since she had very little time to get fit again, we focussed her training on the primary determinant of performance in her event (i.e., the pursuit), which is cardiovascular and metabolic fitness (i.e., VO2max and LT). In just a few months (i.e., from late February to mid-July), she increased her functional threshold power from ~180 to 270 W, which was actually slightly higher than it was when she won nationals originally. As a result, she set all-time personal bests for power for all durations >17 min. This was true even though her maximal AEPF at that time was nearly 30% lower than before, simply due to "benign neglect" (i.e., lack of training aimed at increasing neuromuscular power).

Could you explain how it is that maximal aerobic power involves the ANaerobic work capacity. Not so obvious to us not so skilled in the nuances of all these technical definitions.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

They measured time to fatigue at (what appears to have been) a fixed power output eliciting 100% of their initial VO2max. The post measurements demonstrate an increase in this parameter, but no change in VO2max itself. Ipso facto, their anaerobic WORK capacity increased (which is not quite the same as saying that their anaerobic capacity increased, or that they produced more energy anaerobically...but you'd have to really understand the Monod model to grasp such nuances).

I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who's ever done a MAP test, which would probably be a lot (most?) competitive cyclists. This isn't a 'nuanced technical definition', it's a pretty common measure of aerobic power. If you understand how MAP is typically tested, you (should) understand how there's an anaerobic component to the test.

Maybe this will help.

I'm not, that was someone else.


Thank you. By far the best explanation so far in this thread.

So, to check my understanding of what you said. The rate of ATP utilization will depend primarily on the mix of fast and slow twitch muscle fibres that a person has. A person with a high proportion of fast twitch fibres (with % of cross sectional area being the important measure) will have a high power output over very brief periods of time, but their 1 rep strength may or may not be high depending on other unrelated factors such as total cross sectional muscle area.

So, a person who has high 5 second power output due to a greater % of fast twitch fibres, would utilize more ATP at e.g. 300W compared to someone with a lower % of fast twitch fibres? Hence, for any given capacity to aerobically manufacture ATP, the person with more fast twitch fibres will have a lower power output?

If I've understood all that correctly, the amazing thing is that 5 sec power and FTP aren't strongly inversely correlated when we look at rider data, especially when you consider the antagonistic nature of the training adaptations involved.

I've just done some searching for more information and found this page very interesting:
http://www.coachr.org/fiber.htm
So weight training will increase the proportion of muscle area occupied by FT-B fibres, which is bad for muscle endurance?

I found this bit from the above page particularly interesting:
"An indirect method that can be used in the weight room to determine the fiber composition of a muscle group is to initially establish the 1RM (the greatest weight that they can lift just once) of your athletes. Then have them perform as many repetitions at 80% of 1RM as they can. If they do fewer than seven repetitions, then the muscle group is likely composed of more than 50% FT fibers. If they can perform 12 or more repetitions, then the muscle group has more than 50% ST fibers. If the athlete can do between 7 and 12 repetitions, then the muscle group probably has an equal proportion of fibers (Pipes, 1994)."

So even at 80% of 1 rep maximum force, a slow twitcher can perform more repetitions.

There is just one bit where he says
"The greater percentage of FT fibers in sprinters enables them to produce greater muscle force and power than their ST -fibered counterparts (Fitts & Widrick, 1996)"
If I have understood what you said above, this contradicts it, as I think you were saying that they would produce more power but not necessarily more force.

Holy cow!!! Coggan using the term strength in a "lay sense", in the same sense many others are using it here. Yet, he is incapable of discussing the concept with these others who use the term similarly.

But, let's forget this, Dr. Coggan, where do you get that peak pedal force is related to 2 x average effective pedal force. That would require the person pedaling in a perfectly even pattern on the downstroke and perfectly unweight on the upstroke. Most people do not pedal that way. Take Armstrong's data for instance.

Further, those "pedal forces" are almost never tangential such that those average tangential pedal forces (I presume your data came from torque data and not direct measurement of pedal forces) such that it doesn't seem possible that peak force is 2x average force for anyone, let alone your wife. Could you elaborate a little more about what you mean? I think all this "we all know that pedal forces are way below maximum force" hooey is based upon these simplistic, but flawed, pedal force determination techniques.

One more question from your example? how is it possible for a cyclist who may weigh 60 kg to generate 225 kg pedal force without popping off the saddle (or further off the saddle, if standing).

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

it is not possible to produce more power without either producing more force or having more speed. Power involves those two components together.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

Not so. I used it to describe the maximal force-generating capacity of her muscles (in the cycling position).

.

By screwing it up again, darn it! IOW, you're right; I don't know why I keep making that mistake (which Robert Chung has flagged me on before).



More like ~110 kg, as you pointed out. As for how they avoid popping out of the saddle, that is what handlebars are for (ever tried doing a standing start in a big gear w/o holding on tightly?).

Well, we know the monod model is not perfect. As discussed earlier in this or another thread it seems to fall down at very short durations (at least the spread sheet does) so does it apply to VO2 max efforts? I Anyhow, it seems that such an increase could also be explained by an increase in aerobic capacity (reaching anaerobic threshold later) or some combination. How can one know which mechanism is responsible?

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

In a word, yes. That is, such efforts are long enough to fulfill the assumption that all of anaerobic work capacity will be utilized (which isn't true at durations shorter than perhaps 3 min).



Based on the data, you don't - that is why I said anaerobic WORK capacity and not anaerobic capacity (the precise communication of precise ideas requires the precise use of precise terminology, and all that). In the Monod paradigm, what the former really represents is "resistance to fatigue during very high intensity, i.e., non-sustainable, exercise" - which is precisely what the study measured.