I’ve recently noticed that I don’t “ankle” at all when I’m pedaling. Gerard posted a shot of Tyler TT’ing and it was very obvious that he was ankling. Is this a piece of technique I should be working on, or is it more of a some-do, some-don’t kind of thing?
for the record, my ankles seem to be pretty flexible, I don’t have problems pointing my toes in the pool, but for whatever reason, I seem to lock them out on the bike.
In general, unless you have a really significant problem with your pedal stroke, you will pedal how you pedal and that’s it.
Throughout the history of cycling and, to a lesser degree, triathlon, there are excellent elite cyclists who use all styles. It is largely a matter of body configuration.
Toe pedallers: Indurain, Jacques Anquetil, Armstrong (post cancer).
Heel pedallers: Merckx, Hinault, Lemond.
You pedal how you pedal. Thats about it.
does fore/aft cleat positioning play into this at all?
At FIST school Dan mentioned he felt cleats should be positioned 1/3 of the way back from the toe of the shoe. I think this is a good start poit for a new rider.
Toe pedallers tend to be farter forward, heel pedallers farther rearward. Again, it is a matter of how you are built I believe.
it’s rather personal. make sure you’re comfortable and not injuring yourself. it can be compared to a tennis swing - there are many ways to hit the ball and for the shot to be effective, but some swing styles enable you to do it with smaller chance of injury and look better on top of that.
excessive ankling can lead to sore calves and/or possibly inflamed Achilles’ tendons:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_a.html
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/pain.html
although a very different perspective can be found here:
http://www.cranklength.info/animation/monty.htm
http://www.cranklength.info/animation/ankling.htm
(incidentally, the site http://www.cranklength.info/
has a plethora of very interesting thoughts on cycling ergonomics)
a more quantitative analysis of pedaling styles can be found at analyticcycling.com
keep in mind, however, that all cycling (short of sprinting) is an aerobic activity, in which the performance is limited by cardiovascular capacity and efficiency. that is to say, recruiting more muslce groups or “pedaling more complete circles” isn’t going to improve your cycling performance, because it’s limited by how much oxygen you can supply to those jolly little mitochondria.
…that said, some people look downright graceful and majestic on their bikes (Anquetil, Moser, Cipollini have been regarded as exuding “class” on (as well as off) the bike, while others…
I had a coach (ex-European pro biker, US Long Course Triathlon Champion) move my seat position up and down until he thought I had the right amount of heel drop during the downstroke. He says I use my glutes more when I drop my heel. He never once talked to me about ankling. Notes of potential interest: I have big glutes, he has an exercise physiology degree, he is a big believer in Power Cranks…especially how they improved every one of his client’s running speeds, either stand-alone or after the bike split.
As far as “ankling”, I think it’s like TD says…you sort of do it or not, it doesn’t seem to be a characteristic that is necessarily associated with only the top riders. Purposefully ankling for the sake of ankling? I don’t know if it’s worth trying or not.
But, I think I now do something akin to ankling, because of Power Cranks…since Power Cranks can fry my hip flexors, in order to compensate, I pick up with my toe on the upstroke in order to decrease the height my hip flexors must raise my knee in order to get the pedal over the top. Since my heel is therefore effectively “dropped” at the top of the stroke, I get the dropped heel gluteal involvement, and by pointing my toe a little by the time I reach the bottom of the stroke…well, it looks a bit like ankling. As new PowerCrankers can tell you, sometime the anterior tibialis muscles are as fried as the hip flexors! Maybe this is one of the many reasons Power Cranks work.
Ankling, does it matter?
No.
Max wrote: keep in mind, however, that all cycling (short of sprinting) is an aerobic activity, in which the performance is limited by cardiovascular capacity and efficiency. that is to say, recruiting more muslce groups or “pedaling more complete circles” isn’t going to improve your cycling performance, because it’s limited by how much oxygen you can supply to those jolly little mitochondria.
I’ll have to take exception to your assesment of recruitment of muscles not being worthwhile.
As long as you are referring to LOCAL conditions, you are correct to say cycling is limited by cardiovascular capacity and efficiency. It is also true to say performance is limited by how much oxygen you can supply to the mitochondria. However, just like in a traffic jam, if all the cars (red blood cells) are trying to get to the same place, at some point the roads (capillaries) are at full capacity and moving as fast as they possibly can under the circumstances. You can only deliver so many people (oxygen molecules) to one spot at a certain rate per unit time. (Of course, building more roads, or moving the cars faster, or getting the cars to all carry the maximum number of people, all are good strategies at delivering more people to a certain spot.)
But, LOCAL factors determine the maximal rate at which all of this can occur. NOT the driving force of cardiac output. So, if you have other muscles that can contribute to moving your limb in a way that assists the pedal stroke, it makes perfect sense to recruit those other muscles. Consider pedalling with your quadracept muscles only…if you don’t have at LEAST the stabilizing forces provided by the biceps femoris, and gluteal, and lower back, as well as the guidance forces of the gracillus and other groin muscles, not to mention the transferring of quadracepts power via your calf muscles, you will have a very weak pedal stroke, if you have a pedal stroke at all! You already recruit many other muscles to pedal, guess what…it isn’t your cardiac output that is limiting your power output…it’s local muscle fatigue…in your quadracepts, because they are operating at the highest level they can given the local conditions under which they are operating.
What if you could directly assist the quadracept muscles in making the pedals go around? You do have a set of muscles that do just that…they are the hip flexors. Recruit the normally sort-of-lazy hip flexors, and you lessen the workload a contracting quadracept has to waste just to pick up the opposite leg. You have enough reserve cardiac output to do this, unless you have a heart problem. You definitely have enough lung surface area to move oxygen into the blood, unless you have a lung problem.
Muscle recruitment is a good thing. In fact, it is necessary in order to reach full potential.
I swim with my arms only, ride with my upper legs only (no ankling) and run with mainly my lower legs. Seems to work ! Each muscle group is fresh for it’s own event. Don’t the Kenyans run with a lot of ankle movement ? Ross.
Only if those muscles recruited produce more power than energy consumed (that is, it is “worth it”). Certainly recruiting all those leg and hip muscles to kick in swimming, which adds only a tiny bit of power but consumes a large amount of energy, is not “worth it”. The same might (or might not) be said of using extra leg muscles in the pedal cycle.
Ken Lehner
klener wrote: Only if those muscles recruited produce more power than energy consumed (that is, it is “worth it”). Certainly recruiting all those leg and hip muscles to kick in swimming, which adds only a tiny bit of power but consumes a large amount of energy, is not “worth it”. The same might (or might not) be said of using extra leg muscles in the pedal cycle.
Of course, to be a nit-picker, that first statement isn’t true at all. Muscles don’t produce more power than energy consumed, that’s simply impossible! That would be free energy. However, I know that’s not what you were trying to say 
I think I know what you are saying, and I somewhat agree. But, it depends upon what the event is…in a triathlon, kicking in the swim may not be worth the energy expended…unless it is a sprint, where total energy expenditure isn’t a limiting factor. We’re really mixing up the main point here, but, if the kick gets a swimmer’s body into a better position so that the body isn’t dragging low, the extra energy spent in the kick may be worth it because of the much better swim time. Like I said, we’re really getting away from the main point here.
In my view, people often mistakenly assign a value to a given amount of energy output as the limiting factor in performing a task. I think this is because of how people interpret that studies that are conducted, e.g., a bicycle ergomentry test is done and it finds that 275 watts is the rate of power production a rider can put out for a total of an hour, so people interpret that 275 watts is all the total energy that rider has to offer in an hour long ride. This is simply not true.
275 watts were measured at the wheel, but MUCH more energy has been produced by that rider. Some of this other energy is used to grow fingernails during the ride, cool the rider, process waste in the liver, thinking about what to eat tonight, hold onto the handlebars…etc. See what I mean? There isn’t a limited power output of 275 watts available. There’s much more available. If you use some of this available power to be more efficient…for example, to pick up with your hip flexors so your pushing down muscle power isn’t wasted doing this for the opposite foot, the 275 watts measured at the wheel will be higher than 275 watts. OR, the rider can ride at 275 watts for MORE THAN an hour when using this more efficient pedal stroke.
It’s not simply a matter energy output, or of cardiac output, or oxygen delivery to a muscle that limits power generated for a period of time. There is also waste product removal, or other local factors; such as local blood flow availabilty, or mitochondrial function…including the number of mitochondria in a muscle system, temperature, glycogen present, protein available, gluconeogenesis rates, etc., that are actually the limiting factors in performing a task. But, back to the efficiency idea: spreading the load to other muscle systems, when those other muscle systems are available to be trained to assist in performing a task, is an effective method to perform the task at a higher workload, or for a longer time. I don’t know if ankling adds much to the pedal stroke…but, as noted before, it probably does for some people…depending upon how they are put together.
that 275 watts is all the total energy that rider has to offer in an hour long ride. This is simply not true.
275 watts were measured at the wheel, but MUCH more energy has been produced by that rider.
BTW – Watts are not a measure of “energy”. Perhaps that is leading to some confusion. Joules measure energy, and have to do with watts over time. Watts is a measure of power; force applied at a given velocity. It is an instantaneous measure, not a measure over time.
As for why ankling is meaningless – if you point your toe down as the pedal stroke comes to the bottom, while holding torque/power constant, you do not decrease the load on the quads. You might decrease the velocity of contraction of the quads, but not the force (do the math). Analogies to swimming and running do not apply, because cycling is a fixed mechanical system – muscle actions do not change the way the system provides propulsion. In swimming, if you kick, the whole system changes. In running, if you “toe off”, the whole system changes. In cycling, if you ankle, the system remains exactly the same. Pointing your toe does not “move the workload around.”
Power is power is power. Use different muscles, use them at different rates. In the end, power is power is power.
This has been studied half to death in labs. Ankling is a personal choice, like cadence and crank length and bunches of other things.
I have 2 running styles. 1 for running and 1 for Ironman / Triathlon. The Ironman one includes lots of ankle extension and pushing off of the toes (I actually train like this leading up to races.) I couple this technique with lots of calf raises in the gym. I pedal with a natural dropped heel. This is great pushing big gears but less easy if you want to spin lower ratios. I don’t really want to however as I am comfortable for 5 + hours at 70-80 RPM. I do a lot of my training while touring on a tandem and bigger gears are better on the tandem (it’s a saddle comfort thing). Not everybody has to copy Lance. My calves are therefore nice and fresh to start the run. I also do a lot of non-pullbuoy pulling. I just let my legs dangle and float behind (luckily they do float). Ross (9:35)
Only if those muscles recruited produce more power than energy consumed (that is, it is “worth it”).
Sorry to be a pest here, but power and energy are not equivalent measurements and cannot be compared. Also - even if one could, “produce more power than energy consumed”, one would have violated the laws of thermodynamics.
It might be correct to say that, “If the newly recruited muscles resulted in a net lower energy consumption from all muscles, while holding total power output constant…”. This would be fine, except that ankling has not been clinically demonstrated to do any such thing. In addition, one can model the action and show that there “should” not be any benefit, either.
Thanks for the correction Julian, I mix up power and energy terms incorrectly, and do it quite often. It’s one of my many faults.
I hope the idea comes through, though…that it is NOT total energy expenditure, as calculated by simple heart-rate measurements nor even as calculated by ergometry, that determines how fast one can go in an endurance event. Recruitment of other muscle systems is a good thing. Ankling, though, may not be sufficient to actually add anything to the pedal stroke…again, I don’t know if it is or not, except that if a rider successfully employs this technique, it’s good for that rider.
Power = Energy / time
Energy is measured in Joules
1 Watt = 1 Joule / 1 second
1 Calorie = 4.18 Joules
1 Dietary calorie = 1,000 Calories = 4,180 Joules
Ride at 200 Watts for 1 hour (~20 mph on flat ground) and you’ll have applied
200 Watts * 60 min / hr * 60 sec / min = 720 kJ
720 kJ / 4.18 kJ / Dietary Calory = 172 D.Cal
however, since the body’s mechanical efficiency during cycling is somewhere between 20 and 23%, you actually burn ~800 dietary calories.
incidentally, your body can store ~1500 calories in the form of readily available muscle glycogen to be used at 80-100% of maximum aerobic capacity. beyond that, you’ve to supplement with PowerBars or Gatorade or Bison Urine or whathaveyou.
…I know that to ride at that rate I would be at ~80% of my anaerobic threshold, consuming 56 mL of O2 per kg of my body weight per minute. I suppose I can calculate my mechanical efficiency from that, but I’m pained to do that at the moment.
now, whatever your pedaling style, it has been scientifically verified that aerobic cycling performance is always limited by the oxygen supply rate. period. if you push harder, more little kinesins are recruited in the muslce fibers, requiring in turn more ATP and more oxygen molecules. if you cardio system can’t supply it, the muslce tissue goes rapidly into severe oxygen debt, that is to say, it goes anaerobic, starts producing lactic acid at rates much faster than the body can clear it, and in about 8 seconds that’s all she wrote.
if you choose to recruit more muslce groups in your cycling activity, all that means is that more kinesisns are being put to work (it doesn’t really matter in which specific muscles they’re located, only that more of them are working), requiring more ATP and oxygen. again, the bottleneck happens to be the rate of oxygen supply, which is limited by lung capacity times red blood cell count times hear rate.
…more muscle often means you can store more glycogen though, and bigger muslcels also often allows greater forces to be tolerated, but in the end, you still have to supply oxygen to all that muscle fiber…
read more about this stuff here:
Really good stuff Max. Oxygen supply is generally THE limiting factor.
What I’m trying to get across, is that oxygen supply is not limited by cardiac output, nor lung function, in a trained individual. It is LOCAL delivery of oxygen, and/or removal of waste products, that limits muscle function. Local. Local. Local. Not systemic oxygen debt. Local.
Furthermore, recruiting other muscles that can assist in the motion being studied, is a good thing to do. You CAN burn more oxygen the more muscle you use. If your primary muscles are developed as much as possible, using accessory muscles will be a good strategy to increase performance.
Thanks again for all the good info…
is that oxygen supply is not limited by cardiac output, nor lung function, in a trained individual
au contraire.
On any given day, your muscles can use far more oxygen than is delivered. Race-day limiter is the delivery system, not the cell’s ability to put O2 to work.
if a rider successfully employs this technique, it’s good for that rider
I quite agree. It is a self-selection thing, meaning also that no one should try too hard to convince an athlete that does it to stop; or an athlete that doesn’t to start.
Julian wrote: On any given day, your muscles can use far more oxygen than is delivered. Race-day limiter is the delivery system, not the cell’s ability to put O2 to work.
Good, someone got my point! I ramble so much that I wasn’t sure if I were getting it across.
However, we are probably on opposite poles of the continuum.
I maintain it IS local cellular conditions that limit muscle function, not the cardiovascular oxygen delivery system. If by “delivery system” you are including oxygen field theory, mitochondrial enzyme functions, local energy substrate availabilty, etc., in other words…LOCAL oxygen delivery system functions, then we would be on the same end of the arguement.
Consider this experiment…take an isolated muscle (a frog leg muscle hooked up to a strain gauge is easy enough), hook it’s femoral artery up to a blood flow system that provides normal blood flow rates at normal oxygen concentrations with glucose at normal levels, and stimulate the muscle electrically over and over. Use the strain guage to measure the forces the muscle produces. It generally contracts harder and harder the first few stimulations, peaks, then gradually contracts with less and less force over time.
Repeat the experiment with 1.5 times greater than normal blood flow. Guess what you’ll find…almost exactly the same forces generated. It may improve performance slightly, but that’s all. The arguement is this…why did performance improve? More oxygen delivered? More waste products removed? More energy substrate available? Why did performance decrease with the higher blood flow in some frog’s legs? Either way, there isn’t much difference in performance between the two groups.
If the experiment is continued to exhaustion of the muscle, there is very little difference in time to exhaustion, even at DOUBLE the blood flow.
I’ve done this experiment.
Here’s the experiment I’d like to do…take this same setup as above with one change…also include a hip flexor muscle. There are a couple of interesting ways to experiment with this setup.
Test one: run the test with the same intensity and rate of stimulation as before, but with the hip flexor also stimulated. Observe the forces recorded. My bet is that the forces will be higher when the added hip flexor muscle is included.
Test two: Decrease the intensity of stimulation to this dual muscle system (probably have to do this by making the stimulation shorter, as skeletal muscle has an “all or none” approach to contraction) to the point that the total peak force is the same as the total peak force of the non-hip flexor model. Observe the forces recorded. My bet is that the hip flexor inclusive model will contract for a longer time before exhaustion than the non-hip flexor model.
(These two tests could be done without any extracorporeal blood oxygenation/delivery device hooked up to the femoral artery in order to simplify it.)
Anyway, these experiments will demonstrate that it isn’t systemic oxygen delivery that is THE limiter to muscle function, and that using accessory muscles DO make contractions more forceful and/or able to continue for longer periods of time compared to not using accessory muscles.
Furthermore, the experiments that I would really like to see done, would be to train the muscles for a time, and see what differences can be trained into the muscles. Lot’s of frog volunteers would be required, though! Of course, this would be better done in rats, but much more expensive.