Pc+ct=ups

Triathlon Forum
61

mclamb6, I’m with you on this one. This “did not, did too” arguing is pointless. This is my last post addressing the person so blatantly biased that they name themselves after their bias.

I did find some interesting things that came from people obviously more educated than I, such as TooSlow, as TooSlow brings some very good technical background thinking. Also, TooSlow seems reasonably unbiased, which makes his observations more interesting to me. After all, I am looking for reasons why PCs are helping my performance, I’m not looking for reasons why or why not to train on them. I am, in fact, getting better, so I will continue to train on them.

Why am I getting better? I have a biased opinion as to why…a bias based upon my individual experience training on PCs. I think it is because local neuro-muscular function is THE limiting factor in producing continuous power output for periods of an hour or more, not cardiac output. IF this is true (and I don’t know if it is), recruiting more muscle (such as hip flexors) is a good strategy to use to increase total power to a bicycle drivechain, just like the riders in Group 2 did, even if they weren’t as fast as Group 1, regardless of the fact that Group 2 had 4 less years of training than Group 1 and weren’t Power trained (according to Dr. Coyle) like the Group 1 riders.

I’m interested in science that shows what is actually happening. I’m not trying to prove or disprove anything, I’m just curious. And, I do not sit back and take someone’s word for something just because the person acts informed or authorative about a subject or article.

In any scientific field, if you took every article as “truth”, you’d be jumping from one truth to the next, week after week, depending upon the article du jour. Identical data points can be arrainged to say opposite things, depending upon your bias. A person with an obviously biased point of view isn’t necessarily wrong, but, they have a higher chance of being wrong more often than a person with non-biased point of view, when both people are looking at the same data points.

Like I said before, don’t take my garbage as the truth. I don’t claim to know the truth, I only have a hunch. Don’t take obviously biased points of view as the truth either. If you are interested, read the article yourself, decide for yourself.

In the meantime, not a PCer, why am I doing so much better in real-world racing since being on PCs? That’s the question I’m curious about, more than any study that has been done. Unless you can answer that question, or point me in a direction where I can perhaps find answers to that question, I have no intention of beating the same old dead horse.

63

Mr. Not wrote: "All but one or two of the subjects in the Coyle study had achieved results on the national level - I would say that makes them more “elite” than any of the PC users who have posted here with the possible exception of Francois. If you say that your sample of customers is large enough and spans a wide enough range of experience and ability that it would be comparable to the subjects in Coyle’s study, then I have no choice to believe you - however, I was basing my speculation on what has been reported here. "

Well, at least you now admit it was speculation, that is without knowledge. Now I am taken to task because all the elite users who have found the cranks beneficial don’t post here. Unfortunately, even if some of them wanted to they don’t all speak english. for instance all of my corresondence with Museeuw has been through his agent and I only presumed that he found them useful when, three weeks after he received his gratis pair, his agent wrote back so Johan could purchase two pair for training partners. But, that doesn’t hold a candle to the Coyle study because Museeuw hasn’t posted here (and we haven’t established he is of the “national” elite level of those in the Coyle study). But, what of francois? At least you admit he may be of the level of the Coyle participants yet you ignore his opinion. Why?

So let’s talk bias. as I last understand (at least a year or so ago) that the pair of PC’s that I sent to the US OTC (back in 99 or so), foolishly thinking they might find them useful, still are sitting on a shelf somewhere there. So, if any of them post here what should we think of their thoughts. but, then the Canadian National Cycling team has had 10 pair for over 2 years, but they probably are not at the level of the US participants of the Coyle study and none of them post here. As I am sure Mr. Not will confirm, it is very hard for someout outside of cycling to have any credibility inside this circle.

Perhaps you didn’t attend the Cycling Symposium last year associated with the cycling worlds at Zolder where Mario Aerts coach (Paul Van den Bosch) gave a talk on PC’s. If you did attend you probably didn’t understand because it was given in one of those strange languages used by some of those European cycling nations. Of course, he doesn’t feel it necessary to post here to convince you of their usefulness.

Or what else do you not know about this product that causes you to continue to speculate (guess) about its benefits or non-benefits in either elite or non-elite cyclists, triathletes, runners, or anything else. Oh yes, you have never used it.

Frank

64

NotAPCer, O2 efficiency (if defined as work accomplished per ml O2 taken up) is the least of my concerns. Muscle fatigue can set in even when I am not breathing hard. This may be due to insufficiently developed extensors, but at this point I would rather have some place to use the spare O2 capacity, such as hip flexors. From this standpoint, O2 efficiency if measured in terms of usage/capacity, can be lower with extensors alone than with extensors + flexors. Others’ mileage may vary. There are many complex factors.

66

Mr. Not wrote: "Did it not occur to you that perhaps I was at the worlds cycling symposium in Zolder, heard the presentation to which you refer, and wasn’t convinced by the limited data that were presented?

Has it also not occured to you that there might be a reason why those PCs are apparently still gathering dust at the OTC - such as the fact that Dr. Jeff Broker has done extensive studies of cycling biomechanics using elite athletes, and understands the topic far better than any of us?"

Yes, it did not occur to me. If you were there I can only say I am surprised that you seem so convinced that a single study done many years ago refutes the recent “limited data” accumulated by the coach of a UCI top 50 rider and a top 10 Kona finisher. I would expect someone exposed to this data (presumably with the ability to ask questions personally of coach Van den Bosch (or myself as I was there also) after the presentation) to show a little more curiosity regarding the potential rather than what seems like a complete dismissal without personal experience.

The failure of the OTC to even ride them once suggests to me more of an intellectual pomposity rather than some inate superior understanding of biomechanics. It is part of the human condition that “experts” in an area are very threatened when someone outside the area suggest something “better”. It happens in medicine (and has happened to me I am embarrassed to say) all the time, my own particular area of “expertise”.

Frank

67

Francois- I’ll GLADLY take your second pair of PC’s for a couple of months if NotaPCer won’t take you up on your challenge! :slight_smile:

68

Let’s see how far the line stretches…

69

I say we rotate Francois’ second pair among some volunteers. Each one gets them for 2 months. It’ll be a contest to see who can make the most improvement in 8 weeks. 40k TT before and after.

70

Excellent idea. A library for PC’s. I wonder if they will get mysteriously “lost” like some books do. Maybe we will need a fine system - time added to your TT?- to discouraged this…

71

I like that term: intellectual pomposity. How about pseudo-intellectual pomposity as a further refinement of the term? I’ll be on the lookout to find a situation where I can use that in the future.

Why am I riding faster since training on PCs? Why are so many other people reporting similar increases in performance after training on PCs? Are we lying? Or, is it possible that training on PCs results in actual performance benefits, regardless of the lack of a study that finds this performance benefit to exist?

Consider this analogy alongside the current PC topic:

Open heart surgery to bypass obstructed coronary arteries used to be the only really effective way of re-establishing adequate blood flow distal to the obstruction, but somebody had the idea that balloon angioplasty (and now, stents, and even most recently…drug coated stents) might do the same thing in many situations. There were no studies prior to the new techniques being used that proved the new techiques were beneficial.

Now that these techniques have been around long enough, there is evidence presented in articles reporting that these other techniques do, indeed, work in many situations. Many Cardiovascular Surgeons used to state that angioplasty and stents were worthless, besides, there were no conclusive studies to support them. Well, those CV Surgeons have been proven wrong. They were wrong before the studies were published, just as they were wrong after the studies were published. The presence of absence of a study does not determine the truth.

Real people are performing better after training on PCs than prior to training on PCs. I am one of them. It’s a verifiable observation. My questions are only as to the reasons why…not if…these performance benefits occur for me. I have no vested interest in what the answers turn out to be, except this: Finding out why (again, not if) PCs work may, perhaps, allow me to maximize the beneficial training behaviors, resulting in a maximal performance benefit for me.

72

yaquicarbo - thanks for the acknowledgement.

I could care less if Power Cranks sell or not. Heck I don’t even care if anyone buys a single pair. My wife would freak out if I did :frowning: Agrue about them all you want. My “agenda” is simple.

It seems as though some have made it a mission to dispute this product. You can call it junk if you want. You can say you don’t believe if you want also. You can claim that just because everyone here who has used them improved, doesn’t mean anything. It makes little difference to me. It is the approach used to dispute the Power Crank concept that casued me to respond.

There really is just a few issues here, and they must be acknowledged in order

  1. Is pedalling in circles more mechanically efficient? Is force application which is tangential to a crank more efficient than a force which is not? Do you get out what you put in? It is that basic. If you stand on one pedal at it’s bottom dead center (6:00 position), nothing will happen. No matter how hard you press, nothing will happen. This cannot be misinterpreted as either an effective use of force or a very efficient means of turning the crank. Similarly if you simply push forward on the cranks at 90 degrees (3:00 position), once again nothing will happen. You are merely wasting energy. Neither effective or efficient. This is an inefficient application of force. As long as the force applied at the end of the crank is less than the force that is turning the crank, there is an inefficiency. This is simple physics/math. There is nothing exotic about it.

  2. Do cyclists currently use an ideal pedal stroke? To what degree are their strokes effective? How much room for improvement is there in their pedalling technique? This is a quantifable value and at least one study has proven that cyclists waste significant amount of energy while pedalling. There are measureable gains in levels of mechanical efficiency.

  3. Can the human body apply a pedal force that is a perfect circle? Can the human body apply this type of force consistently? I don’t care if it is efficient in terms of muscle usage. Just can it be done or to what degree is it possible. Until a study is done that takes subjects and attempts to train them to pedal this way, we will not know to what degree this is possible.

  4. After subjects are trained to pedal in such a manner, is this more efficient in terms of the human effort required to do so? If through proper training, the body can learn to pedal more in “circles”. Then a study could be done to determine if this a more effective use of the muscluar abilities and efficiencies. This would require that the subjects be extensively tested prior to the training and then retested after the training. Everyone here has agreed that this type of study has not been performed or if so it has not been released.

These four steps would then determine if “pedalling in circles” is a more effective use of the body. You cannot merely jump to step three and ignore the first two steps. Doing so fails to capture the best mechanical approach at transferring power, the efficiency of energy being currently transferred, it fails to acknowledge the adaptations required reduce this inefficiency, and then fails to accurately measure the affects on the body that this would entail.

Problem, propose solution, develop method for solution, quantify results

Mr. Coyle’s study failed, in my opinion, failed to relate these events. The conclusion should have read “Faster subjects did not always have an ideal pedal stroke”. It by no means should have implied that “To be fast you have to pedal in a certain manner or not pedal in a certain manner”.

73

I learn something every time you post. Sometimes I simply learn that I am very ignorant regarding physics, but, I could follow this post much more easily!

I did it again today. The “it” is riding faster on a course I do almost all my training upon. It is a hilly 3.3 mile loop, in windy conditions, no aero equipment (other than an aero bike position). I rode this course at a moderate to moderately hard effort, and was 1.0 mph faster over **20-**some miles than I have ever done for only 10 miles on this course before…and that previous best was with aero wheels and a hard effort, and little wind. I eased up the final 10 miles, and still averaged the same for 30 miles as my previous best average speed for 10 miles on this course.

This was with regular cranks. It is the first ride on regular cranks that didn’t feel awkward. I’ve ridden about 800 miles since Dec. 20th, and only about 60 of those miles were on regular cranks. I finally felt like my vastus medialis distal edges weren’t being cooked. I could feel my foot move slightly in my shoe as I pulled back and up, and I wasn’t overdoing the pulling up.

After pushing up a long hill, when I got to the top, I could rest which-ever muscle group was the most tired by using the other group, i.e., if I had been pushing hard, I could slide forward on the seat and pull up with good results, and vice versa. I think this one adaptation alone helped bring my average speed up as much as it did. I’ve always sort of done this, just not very effectively, until I had a way to train my hip flexors as PCs force me to do.

My best flat 10 mile TT last year was 24.9 mph in the late summer. Last year, my bike club’s April 10 mile TT was done at 22.5 +/- 0.3 mph (I don’t recall exactly, although I can find out, the results are in my log book and on the internet site of the bike club). I have my first 10 mile TT of the year coming up on April 8th…I’ll post what happens, if anyone is interested, just like I did for my first Triathlon of the year compared to the same course last year. I don’t mind putting my results up for scrutiny.

Many people, including myself, have a hard time believing the degree of improvements in such a short time after training on PCs. I’ll go out on a limb, just as I did in my Triathlon time estimation, and say that by the end of the summer, I’ll hit at least 25.9mph average on this flat 10 mile course…a verifiable feat or verifiable failure, clocked and displayed on the internet by an uninterested party, in case there are people that question the results.

As I stated many times before, my question is not, “Do PCs work?”, my question is, “How do they work, so I can maximize the training behaviors that will be most likely to produce the best results for me?”

Thanks again for your insights and explanations.

74

Mr. Slow,

Your slowness is only relative to the ground. You wrote: "Mr. Coyle’s study failed, in my opinion, failed to relate these events. The conclusion should have read “Faster subjects did not always have an ideal pedal stroke”. It by no means should have implied that “To be fast you have to pedal in a certain manner or not pedal in a certain manner”. "

I would only modify the title to put “ideal” in quotes. As ideal at the time (and still) is presumed to be in “circles” (meaning some forward pressure the entire circle, not equal pressure about the entire circle). Perhaps Mr. Not’s interpretation is right - that “circles” is not the ideal, and that is one, somewhat bizarre, interpretation of this study. I, for one, doubt that is the correct interpretation.

75

While I enjoy reading the different arguments and perspectives on what factors contribute to improved peddling efficiency, I don’t want my main point to get lost in this debate.

If you start using PCs (particularly if you are relatively new to biking), they will almost certainly teach you to peddle more efficiently. If you add a CT to this, the understanding (and learning curve) will be enhanced. You may not have all the horizontal and vertical vectors worked out but you will get much more direct feedback about what works and what does not work than you can with fixed cranks. So far, this assertion has not been argued against nor am I aware of any data disputing it.
Bill