But, strength might = going faster. (It does seem incredulous on the face of it that people seem to actually be arguing that being "weaker" is better. I can see the book now, "How watching Oprah instead of training made me a better triathlete") If one is stronger then the "same" pushing force when pedaling is actually a smaller percentage of the total. In general, someone who is working at a lower percentage of their potential can continue to do that work longer. Or, is "stronger" and pushes at the same percentage of his total potential as another but at a lower cadence. This also could result in better endurance. Can't you accept that this is possible?

Of course, all these changes, if done poorly, could result in lesser performance. I don't think science has really addressed this question very well yet, especially as regards ultra-endurance events.

I agree with your comment it is all about energy. But, it is more than about simply energy production. It also involves energy conversion and transmission to the wheel. Cadence is involved in this conversion and transmission also (see the recent Chrissie cadence thread). It has to do with how one can get the most power to the wheel for the duration of the race.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

I just saw on TV that Reggie Bush squats 500 lbs at a bodyweight of 200. That is more than a double bodyweight squat, which is impressive. That is way more than Lance can manage (much greater strength to bodyweight ratio). Therefore when Reggie bush pushes on the pedals to go any given speed (let's say 30 mph), it is a much lower percentage of the max force he can generate compared to Lance going the same speed. Who is going to be ahead 5 minutes down the road? Limit strength has almost no relationship to performance for almost any race distance, certainly any distance contested in triathlon.

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Simplify, Train, Live

Is there a correlation between 1 rep max squat capability, and maximal cycling power output?

If there is, is there also a correlation between maximal cycling power output, and 60 second cycling power output?

And if there is, is there also a correlation between 60 second cycling power output and 60 minute cycling power output?

Is it the case that if we look at people with an FTP of e.g. 350W, that the lowest maximal cycling power output we would see among those people, would be higher than the maximal power output of many people who only have an FTP of 250W?

What I'm getting at is, is there a limiting relationship between maximal power and sub-maximal power, such that while cycling for an hour may only require a relatively low amount of force, the person may nonetheless effectively be limited by their maximal power.

To give an example from swimming - there is basically a limiting relationship between 1500m speed and 50m speed. Nobody can sustain more than a certain % of their 50m speed for 1500m. If you take anyone from the Olympic 1500m final and get them to swim a max effort 50m, they will be really fast. Not as fast as the 50m specialists, but very very fast indeed compared to any average competitive swimmer. So while someone might be able to swim 50m at a speed that if sustained for just over 14 minutes, would break the 1500m World Record, they are nonetheless effectively limited by their 50m speed because everyone who can actually swim a fast 1500m is much faster than they are at 50m, and hence is sustaining a lower % of their max speed.

Bush is going to go a lot further than someone watching the game who also has little aerobic training. Put Bush in a sprint distance triathlon and, if he doesn't drown, I suspect he would do pretty well. I don't think anyone is saying a triathlete should train as a professional football player. What some people are saying is there could be some benefit to the aerobic athlete to doing some strength (weight) training. Others think there is no benefit. The issue is whether "science" has answered this question definitively. I think not. People are arguing their opinions, not science.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

If you mean peak one to five second power, then a loose one, but as I've shown with one simple example, I could out squat the world's best spinter of his day, yet his power output at peak would be ~ 600-750W more than me. And there are thousands of people who are far stronger than me (1RM) but I could leave them for dust in a sprint. Perhaps not nowdays since I had a leg amputated.

Not really as 60 second power is a very complex beast, demanding a lot from all the primary metabolic systems (well perhaps not FFA utilisation). One can have excellent 5-sec power but pretty ordinary 1-min power. And one can have excellent 1-min power (because they have phenomenal peak power and anaerobic work capacity) but are not so good over an hour (or any duration which is primarily aerobic, even something as short as a 3-4km pursuit).

No. Think about it, do you see track sprint specialists winning road TTs?

Chris Boardman holds the all time hour record at something over 56km. He couldn't crack 800W in a sprint.

There is definitely no relationship between maximal power (5-sec) and FTP. Absolutely none.

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Training Plans -- Power Meter Hire -- SRM Sales Australia -- cyclecoach.com -- My Blog -- Sydney Turbo Studio

I would disagree. There is a relationship. It is just that it isn't the same in everyone, depending mostly upon their training background.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

No, and you don't see 50m swimming specialists winning 1500m swimming races (you don't generally see them even taking part in them), but if you plotted the 50m & 1500m times of all swimmers in the world who have trained for and competed in a 1500m race on a graph you would see a strong correlation between the two.

I'm not saying that being a fast 50m swimmer makes you a fast 1500m swimmer, not at all. But if someone is a fast 50m swimmer, they are almost certainly capable of a fast 1500m, given appropriate training. And nobody swims a fast 1500m without also being able to swim a fast 50m.

Do you have a link to evidence for that? I'm just sceptical that someone with such a low max power output could be as good as Chris was at short hill climb events.

Is there any data anywhere where the two things are plotted on a graph for a large population of cyclists, and/or where someone has calculated the correlation coefficient? It's just that when I compare my power to people who I know personally, there seems to be a strong correlation, but it's admittedly a small sample. The ranking order of cyclists in my club for short hill climbs seems to be pretty similar to the ranking order for longer time trials, but I don't know what most people can do for 5 seconds.

http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/...ss/?id=strengthstern doesn't state Boardman's max power, but Ric Stern (who has contributed to ST) has worked with Boardman and stated (IIRC) that Boardman couldn't break 1000W (more like 900).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Help me find one then:

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Training Plans -- Power Meter Hire -- SRM Sales Australia -- cyclecoach.com -- My Blog -- Sydney Turbo Studio

I'll have to check with Ric, it might be Ric that can't crack 800W and Boardman is a bit more. LOL

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Training Plans -- Power Meter Hire -- SRM Sales Australia -- cyclecoach.com -- My Blog -- Sydney Turbo Studio

i don't know if there's some 'confidentiality' clause still in operation (so i won't mention the exact power), but CB's lab tested peak sprint power was between 800 and 900 W (towards the bottom end). I can crack 800 W (but as i like to joke in bike races, dead people can sprint faster than me) and i could produce more peak power than CB could as well (we're the same height and mass, or at least were in the late 90's) and we used the same pieces of equipment to test on.

IIRC there was a group of English speaking riders who used SRMs (Boardman and some from the USA) who, when in training, used to try and beat 1KW for bragging rights.

There were some other riders in the Pro Tour who couldn't sprint with a peak power above 800 W, somewhere around the mid 700's. However, these riders were slightly lighter than CB (around mid-60kgs; versus CBs 68kg). I can't recall their name(s) at present, but i think one of them rode for Rabobank at the time.

I'd suggest that once you get over 90-secs maximal effort there's going to be FA correlation between 5-sec power and whatever the duration is. I'd say that ~60-secs limit is likely the best correlation you'll get with 5-secs. Imagine if there was a correlation between peak power and FTP - how frightening would it be to see Chris Hoy thundering up an alpine pass :-O!!!!!!!!!

Ric (back to lurk mode now)

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http://www.cyclecoach.com

Ah, well it is an interesting question whether you should be trying to link power or power to weight ratio as you have done above. Presumably the correlation would be stronger if you were to plot power rather than power to weight ratio.

Thanks to Ric for the data on elite riders with low peak power output, it's very interesting. I find it very surprising, because I have always seen myself as not being particularly sprint-oriented, e.g. compared to most other people I do better in freestyle races as the distance gets longer. However even I have a best peak power of 1237W and have averaged 1121W for 8 seconds (bodyweight 71kg).

Barely:

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Training Plans -- Power Meter Hire -- SRM Sales Australia -- cyclecoach.com -- My Blog -- Sydney Turbo Studio

Still, it's not an insignificant link, 27% of the change in one being explained by the relationship with the other.

I did an analysis of height vs swimming performance a while back, based on published height data for the Australian swimming team. When you look at the distribution of heights of swimmers in an Olympic final compared to the distribution of heights in the general population, it's pretty much indisputable that height is a great help in swimming. Yet the r^2 was only 0.2 for men and 0.25 for women. There were a couple of obvious outliers, Libby Trickett and Eamon Sullivan, and removing those changed r^2 to 0.46 for men and 0.39 for women.

In your data, do you have a mix of people who have different training objectives, i.e. are some of them training to optimise their FTP, and others training for sprints? If so, it would be interesting to separate the two groups. The nature of the link I'm speculating might exist, is that when people have done sufficient training to optimise their FTP, perhaps their ultimate potential is correlated with 5 second power. Clearly there is some limit, because you can't have an FTP of 350W if you can't manage 350W for 5 seconds, but it seems this is not a limit in practical terms, because anyone can output 350W for 5 seconds. It's a bit different in swimming, where the vast majority of the population couldn't dive in and keep up with the swimmers in an Olympic 1500m final for any distance at all. But might there still be some limit in cycling, e.g. 50% of 5 second power, where we could say that nobody with an FTP of e.g. 400W, has ever achieved that without having a 5 second power of 800W?

Well, I said it wasn't the same in everyone. It is not possible to show that relationship using only two points at the extremes of the curve (where the differences would be maximized) comparing a large group of people. If you were to do a scatter plot of the max W/kg of each of these individuals of the 5 sec, 20 sec, 1 min, 5 min, 20 min and 60 min power I believe a relationship would soon become evident and I believe the shape of that relationship would have a lower half of a general parabolic curve shape (turned on its side in the example). So, the general shape would follow a general polynomial equation.
and the individual differences would be defined by the values of a, b, and c that best fit the shape. Another alternative would be the best fit might be a hyperbolic curve shape. Either way there is a rapid power drop off slope as the short time intervals increase and a less rapid drop off slope as the longer time intervals increase. Isn't such a general relationship the basis of predicting FTP60 from a 20 minute test.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

Personally, I think you're on crack. Unless by non-pros you mean sedentary individuals. Nonetheless, i work with one of the guys on that team, so i'll go and ask and find the exact details.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com

Here is an alternative way of viewing this data.

There seem to be three groups. The average group (11 people) that seems well grouped along the new line I have drawn, I will bet that correlation is well above .9. Then there are those who probably emphasize endurance training (about 6 people) who are well above the new line and those who emphsize short term efforts (9 people) who are well to the right of the line. These three different groups would have completely different equations to define their power fall off with time per my previous post. Further, to really know what that curve is like one really needs three points. A curve cannot be defined with just two points.

What do you think?

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

but if one person applies a little more force per pedal stroke to produce the same power

I think a similar relationship exists in that w/kg data also, although the correlation is not quite as good. It would be interesting to me if the data were separated into these three different groups and the analysis run to see what the lines really are and what the correlation is.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

Don't confuse correlation with causation.

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Training Plans -- Power Meter Hire -- SRM Sales Australia -- cyclecoach.com -- My Blog -- Sydney Turbo Studio

I think you like playing fiddlesticks:

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Training Plans -- Power Meter Hire -- SRM Sales Australia -- cyclecoach.com -- My Blog -- Sydney Turbo Studio

You asked us to show you a potential correlation. I thought I saw one for three different groups with different training regimen. I would be interested to see what the computer says the fit should be for the groups I identified and what the correlation might be. If you are not interested, so be it.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

I totally agree, I wasn't suggesting the relationship is one of causation. We know that part of that link between 5 sec power and 60 minute power is a common factor i.e. bodyweight, given that r^2 is higher for raw power than power to weight ratio.

Establishing whether or not a correlation exists is a great first step, but I agree if one is found, we then need to look further to understand what has caused the correlation to exist.

I still think it would be interesting to split the data into groups if the riders have significantly different training objectives. And I will say in advance that if you were to do that, and it showed a stronger correlation within each group, I would not hold it up as evidence that increasing 5 second power will increase your FTP, just as evidence that there is some sort of link that requires explanation.

That is what I was trying to suggest also (after hearing your earlier thoughts) but he doesn't seem to be interested.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks