When I read that: “Dr. San Millán says there is a reason the UCI made the Praying Mantis position illegal — it’s very fast.”, I was surprise because we didn’t see that very often on the road in triathlon. At Kona for example, only Sebastian Kienle seems to use kind of position: http://www.slowtwitch.com/Products/Tri_Bike_by_brand/Kona_top_15_men_on_bikes_3223.html
The other strange thing is that there is far less post here on Slowtwitch on that important topic than on bike, wheel or tire that seems to have less impact than that.
There are TONS of position threads, wheel threads, tire threads… just search. And Kienle is not in a mantis position. There have been some threads here from wind tunnel tests that showed some positive results from the mantis position, but iirc it required very precise angle positioning of the bars. If you missed it even by a little it killed your aerodynamics. Not many people have access to a tunnel to dial that in.
It’s only fast if you go to the wind tunnel and test (or are VERY repeatable in field testing). There is no other way to know. Field testing position changes is suboptimal because you will have no way of knowing whether or not you held all the other aspects of your position EXACTLY equal. Variations in head position/saddle-sitting position that are imperceptible to the rider can make a big difference in drag, and in field testing there is no objective view of your position (i.e top/side/front) that can be used to assess whether an increase/decrease in drag can be attributed to the dependent variable or a confounding variable. Drastic changes (particularly to uncomfortable positions) tend to cause the rider to shift around more than they would otherwise.
The guys that have only ever field-tested will probably come on here and try to tell me I’m wrong, but hopefully they will at least stipulate to the mantis positon optimization being something that must be validated by some kind of empirical evidence. Simply jacking your bars up at an angle will not automatically make you faster.
I am not positive, but I think he has opened up his elbows since this shoot. I saw him at Columbia, whizzing past in the opposite direction, and I remember thinking that he looked ‘way more open’ in his chest.
It doesn’t work out to be faster most of the time. According to John Cobb:
The Landis and Leipheimer, ‘raised hands’ positions have to be tied to proper elbow-pad placement to build the increased leverage for making better power. This is a position that it is very critical to work out in a very controlled test environment, 95 per cent of all riders that just raise their hands higher will be measurably slower in a wind tunnel, directing the airflow over and around the shoulders really is critical.
T.J.'s rig and set-up are my absolute favorites in the sport. They don’t get much attention as sponsors and advertisers don’t like people being reminded that you can go just as fast on a discontinued bike from a decade ago as you can with the latests $5,000 high-margin machine. And the aerobar pads must give tri gear marketing managers heart palpitations.
T.J.'s rig and set-up are my absolute favorites in the sport. They don’t get much attention as sponsors and advertisers don’t like people being reminded that you can go just as fast on a discontinued bike from a decade ago as you can with the latests $5,000 high-margin machine. And the aerobar pads must give tri gear marketing managers heart palpitations.
What’s interesting is that TJ is now selling that bike as a high margin not-discontinued machine. I’m also fairly sure that product managers for aerobar manufacturers are not worried about TJ’s one…little…bit.
