Yep, and have never said anything different but whats the point? Are you not all trying to consider improvements in our weakest part during the off season?[/quote]



Wait, so here in this thread you are willing to admit that there is an '' off season '',
yet in this thread - http://forum.slowtwitch.com/.../?page=unread#unread
you condescendingly said, " Off season, what off season. I just keep training like I do, all year long. '' ..... ??

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And you wonder why 95% of folks call you out . Well...[/quote]
Well ...

There is never an off season, for me, as I said. I continue my 2 to 3 hours of training all year long.
Do I adjust stuff over the year, yep., For 5 months, I do not swim at all. I do not race much. But I try different stuff.
This year it is bike fit.

So, how is what I am doing any different than what I stated? You term for off season is reducing hours. My term for off season is just changing what I do, but
the hours basically do not reduce.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

No one is insulting you. They do offer constructive help and try to tell you in the nicest possible way that how you go about things will not produce any meaningful data. Pretty much everyone in this 8 page long thread seems to agree on that so why do you think the most logical way to approach things is to do the opposite of what everyone says? It seems obvious that you try to be contrarian just for the sake of it rather than to try and find the best solution to your problem, in which case it's hard to understand why you ask for help in the first place.

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

It is true that there are many ways to skin a cat. However there is a "best" way to skin that poor cat, and there are an infinite number of incorrect ways to skin the cat.

It appears that the feedback you are getting is that instead of using a sharp knife, you are trying to skin that cat with a stalk of broccoli and a spork.

If you are doing your testing in erg mode, what are you measuring? You aren't changes in measuring power output, obviously. what is the dependent variable?

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I guess we just have different experience on what "constructive" help is.

I have had plenty of examples in my life where EVERYONE told me something I was doing was wrong, and guess what, .....

So I am looking at changes based on inputs over the years. Might not be as fast you some would do. Or the order they would do. But, I am trying to collect data on shorter cranks. I will get a bike fit. These are huge changes for me.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Yes, it might work every once in a rare while but do you really think it's the most effective approach most of the time?

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

Naturally smarter or actually willing to learn?

Fixed that for you both. I hope the medical graduate that looks after me (wherever they graduated in their class) is smart enough to understand quote tags.

Great to see you back around Bjorn!

Two things.

1) I still do not understand how moving the seat back as you raise it up for shorter cranks keeps body geometry, since when you raise the seat it inherently is further back, so if you move the seat back even more than the position of your body over the BB is further back than it was initially, which means you are not keeping the same body geometry. I may be wrong but sounds completely wrong logically to move the seat back. If anything it looks like you would want to move it forward.


2) I find it amazing how many people are just ripping on h2ofun for what he is doing. It may not be what you would do, but does that really give you the right to just bash him over and over again. I know this is ST and it happens, but come on people, give it a rest. Out of 8 pages of comments, probably only 1 of them is even remotely decent advise, and the rest just appear to be a bash fest. I say give your opinion, but just stop on the consecutive (only a few people appear to not want to give it up) bashings.

Imagine sitting on the bike with 200mm cranks and having you right foot positioned so that the pedal is forward in the 3:00 o'clock position.

Picture what the your leg would look like when viewed from the side or if someone projected your profile onto a screen and traced it so we could measure the angle of the bent leg.

Now imagine having a set of 175mm cranks plopped into the situation. Yes we would need to raise the saddle 25mm vertically and the would shift the seat back something on the order of 4.4mm with an 80* seat tube angle if my ancient geometry is still working.

Now picture if we just raised the seat 25mm without moving it back any farther than the 4.4mm caused by the angled seat tube. Once again picture the pedal at the 3:00 o'clock position. Imagine the profile view if traced and measured. In this new situation the ball of your foot on the pedal would be moved rearward 25mm due to the 25mm shorter pedal. Raising the saddle would compensate for a bit over 4mm of this as your body would be moved back that ~ 4 mm but your leg is now flexed into a tighter angle due to the rearward moved foot! If we don't want that to happen at the 3:00 o'clock position because we want to maintain the geometry of how the foot pushes down in the position of greatest effectiveness then we need to move the body back an additional 20.6mm. If you move the seat ahead you flex the knee even more.


Or to put it in a shorter form, raising the saddle does move it slightly rearward but not nearly as much as your foot moves rearward with shorter cranks.

Does that help a bit?


In regards to the beating Dave often seems to receive.....all I can say is if you' d been around here as long as some of us have you might better understand;) For a bit of background information it might be helpful if you went back and looked at the thread where Dave originally decided to go to 200mm cranks.

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

There is a ton of great advice in this thread. Most recently from one of the uber biker pros from the 2000s. Waterboy rarely doesn’t receive what he deserves in comments and has since like 2007.

He asked for advice and when good advice was given, he turned around and argued with that advice because it didn’t match what his head said is right. So he’ll come up with any reason what you said is wrong just so that he doesn’t have to listen to it.

When everyone else says pretty much the same thing and then your response is to argue and not agree with it, you’re generally the problem not everyone else.

Dave has been on this board forever, the fact that his position is what it is, is no ones fault but his own. He says he wants to learn but obviously has no interest in it since everything in this thread has been mentioned hundreds of times before in other bike fit threads.

Thanks, I could tell right away that things are very familiar around here when I saw this thread on the first page.. :)

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

This.

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Coach at TriForce Triathlon Team: https://www.triforceteam.com

Two studies that are worth reading:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12183473

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11417428

My summary from my blog post:

"Studies show that crank length may affect maximal power output and oxygen uptake, though efficiency may be more related to pedal speed (i.e. 2π * crank length / cadence). Thus, if you move to shorter cranks and keep your cadence and power constant, the decreased pedal speed is in theory more efficient. However, it’s likely that your cadence will naturally increase when you move to shorter cranks, in which case pedal speed and efficiency will remain constant."

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Coach at TriForce Triathlon Team: https://www.triforceteam.com

...and Dave's true nature is revealed in his own words.

Shit...even when you specifically ask someone to "educate" you on a point that you don't quite understand (i.e. asking for clarification), you STILL won't cooperate in that education process.

Well, at least we know it's not (just) down to Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e. "you just don't know what you don't know") :-/

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Thanks.

I am trying to understand your 1 question also. When I asked, as expected, I was just called dumb

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I can't believe I'm actually participating in this thread. It's like a bad Andy Kaufman skit.

Dave in terms of question 1 read sciguy's post 6 posts above (up there ^). He doesn't call you dumb. He provides a very clear answer.

But maybe those are just his alternative facts. Carry on.

No, when you asked to be educated on why, you refused to participate in the process. That's not being dumb, just willfully ignorant.

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Why do you even bother anymore?

He's already posted 10 times saying there is zero actual data on shorter cranks. Even after you pointed him to your own testing that has already been discussed on this forum for YEARS and is widely known and respected.

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blog

Probably because, like his mentor Frank, it's best to think of him as a "performance artist"...and I'm just playing along with the performance :-)

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

As often as you remind us that you're an engineer, I'm surprised that you think this. With a straight seat tube and the seat clamp centered over the BB, the angle remains constant as you raise or lower the seat. On some tri bikes the seat angle actually gets steeper as you raise the saddle...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

H2O dave is definitely correct on that one. Unless the seat tube is fully vertical (never the case), when you move the seat up, it moves back a little. Doesn t take an engineer to realise that one.

However, when you shorten the crank and raise the saddle to compensate, it goes back by less than the distance your knee needs to move back in order to keep the knee angle the same throughout the power phase of the stroke, hence it is often sensible to move your saddle back. (which is the context being discussed in this thread).

Agreed.
Relative to the bb centre (the usual point of reference), the seat has moved back.
Relative to the pedal centre and if you change the crank length, it is a different story.

Dave said "The seat moves back when raising, which would seem to decrease the angle." On the majority of bikes, the angle stays constant, even though the seat moves back. Raising the saddle 25mm on a bike with a straight 78 degree seat tube will move the saddle back about 5mm, but its still at 78 degrees.

And on bikes where the upper portion of the seat tube is vertical or nearly so (old P3/P4, current Giants, etc), the effective angle actually gets steeper as you raise the saddle...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"