Originally Posted by asgelle

You're conflating force (lbs) with power (W). Now I don't know if you're doing this to confuse the issue or you don't understand the difference, but as long as bikes have gears, power is what moves the bike forward and force is secondary. So ignoring the weight lifter who is only concerned with force and focusing on the cyclist, it is not self-evident that a higher maximum power leads to a higher five second (or any other duration) power. Seeing the variation in shape of power-duration curves for several riders makes this clear.

As a thought experiment, given a rider's 5 second power and no other information, how would you determine the average force on the pedals?