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Old 04-04-22, 08:57 AM
  #347  
burnthesheep
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It was someone earlier in this topic that mentioned the muscle mass tied up in the existing heavier weight being lost if someone drops mass too quickly. As I had this same question about a larger rider making power as you do now.

I just think the time scale isn't as quick as losing a few winter pounds if you want to hold the power.

This is all my guess about this.......

If I had to guess, the larger rider at 300w ftp has lots of not-very-dense mitochondria. Because they have a lot of muscle mass, from being larger. When you lose a lot of weight, you also will lose some muscle mass. So you just lost some mitochondria also. A smaller rider making the same power has a much denser set of mitochondria, through the training.

So, if the larger rider loses mass too quickly, they can't do the requisite training fast enough to make the mitochondria more dense to make up for the gross overall loss of mitochondria through the loss of muscle mass.

If you go over to Slowtwitch and dig around the search function for some topics on weight/bike power/running pace you'll inevitably find people that lost lots of weight quickly that came to complain about disappointment with bike power or run pace. Sometimes they got into running injuries.

It can be done, it's just a slow process. And like I said, if done right to keep the power likely just as slow as a rider gaining 20w in ftp in a year as a lighter rider.
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