Trakhak

Here's a track cyclist with legs that are probably as big and powerful as yours, and yet he can turn over the pedals at a pretty good rate of speed. Road riding is something else again, of course.

asgelle

Maybe you should ditch the power cranks and use a standard crankset where the weight of the descending leg lifts the rising one.

badger1

But ... but ... isn't that t' Biek Forms way? "My personal preferences, etc. blah blah blah" are the right/scientifically-demonstrable/universally-accepted 'way' -- the only way to cycling salvation.

Doesn't matter the topic: flat/drop bars; tires; chain lube; frame material; clothing; shoes; pedals; ... whatever. A bunch of recreational cyclists (however 'serious') claiming to know the 'one true way' ... ridiculous. In the end, we are all a bunch of dorks 'playing bikes'.

Me? I don't like to 'mash'; I'm a spinner (80 to 110), therefore all cyclists should be spinners. That about sums up Biek Forms logic.

Oh, and if I could be arsed I'll cite a bunch of "studies" to support that position. But I can't be arsed, so I won't.

livedarklions

His legs are much bigger and I'm sure much stronger than mine. That's also a 90 second ride. It has absolutely nothing to do with the type of riding I do. And I'll bet he has about 3-4 times more fast twitch muscle than I have.

But, yeah, those guys are definitely outliers. That's kind of the point of what they do.

livedarklions

I find in these conversations, I often end up arguing with people who ride like I do in some way when they try to prove it's the only right way to do things.


When the conversation turns to what we eat on long rides, I usually have to give people a "don't try this at home" warning because I think what I do would probably make most people sick.

livedarklions

Maybe I'm good doing what I'm doing.

You understand that means some of the energy generated by the descending leg is going into lifting that ascending leg, right?

asgelle

Maybe you're an Olympic caliber rider. It doesn't change the fact that your understanding of mechanics is wrong.

livedarklions

Says you.

asgelle

Actually, it dates back at least as far as Archimedes, ~250 BCE.

livedarklions

You do realize that pro riders actually do lift their legs some to lighten the load on the descending leg, right? That's pretty basic.

You're wrong, repeating the error isn't making it any better.

asgelle

First of all world class pros do not exert upward force on the rising pedal, https://www.researchgate.net/publica...ng_performance

Second, such an obvious moving of the goalposts fools no one. The issue you raised was energy needed to raise the upward moving leg in the pedal stroke. Other than a slight imbalance between the two legs, whatever force is needed to raise one leg is provided by the weight of the other.

Riveting

I actually don't think I've ever looked at cadence. I naturally have a fast cadence of 90+ and therefore never worried about being a slow cadence masher, so for me, my one metric to rule them all is "3 second avg. power" (power meter required). Power data is EVERYTHING!

Harold74

It might be for me too if I were willing to absorb the significant cost of gaining access to power data. That said, I still like to avoid mashing, regardless of power, for the sake of my knee health.

NumbersGuy

And we’ve found the one who is convinced he’s right and takes the conversation way too seriously in an attempt to prove how someone else rides their bike is wrong…

asgelle

If you can't follow the discussion, maybe it's best you remain silent. I never made any comment on how to ride a bike.

Josepepe

Faaaa

livedarklions

Seriously? Pretty sure the balanced weights of my legs are going to settle at the 9 and 3 position.

Didn't say they pulled up, it's that they don't let their leg sit on the pedal as dead weight as much as lower skilled riders. I could dig out references to this if I thought your argument was worth the time, but you're so far off the beam, it's not necessary.

You don't seem to understand that the descending leg is not falling, it's pushing down against resistance. Even if all of the energy needed to lift the ascending leg is eminating from the descending side, it isn't a matter of balance, the weight of the ascending leg is simply an additional source of resistance that must be overcome by the descending leg to move the pedal downwards. The weight of the legs are going to be constants throughout the ride whether you're spinning or mashing. All I've claimed is that moving that weight up 90 times a minute is going to take more energy than doing it 60 times. You got some fancy math proving that obviously true statement is false? Didn't think so.

TL/DR: It doesn't matter which leg is doing the lifting, doing it 90 times a minute is going to take more energy than doing it 60.

livedarklions

No, you're too busy trying to prove that 90 isn't more than 60.

rsbob 

after reading this thread I have been more consciously monitoring cadence and another screen shows average cadence. I always considered myself a higher cadence rider but was very surprised to see an average of 65 which involved 2000’ climbing some at 15-16%. On flats - I was usually in the 70s but on 1% downhill grades about 85. I tried to push my cadence up by downshifting when I noticed being in the 60s but what came to mind is we pedal at a rate which feel comfortable and the 70s might be it on the flats at 18 MPH. Lots of other factors influencing cadence but for me, my sweet spot is more in the 70s.

NumbersGuy

OK, you told him to change cranks to change how he rides his bike…. So the words didn’t directly come out but it’s still there.

Sorry I’m not nearly as impressed by you as you are. And your link about research proving elite cyclists don’t lift on the upstroke only stated that the elites have the ability to generate higher downstroke power than non-elite cyclists. That does not exactly prove anything about whether either the elite or non-elite groups (a whopping 15 total riders in the entire test) generate power on the upstroke or how much.

asgelle

Seriously? Think about it. Forget legs, put a 20 lb weight on each pedal. What happens when you put them at 9 and 3? Now how about 10 and 4? 11 and 5?

asgelle

You don’t really think I was serious about changing from power cranks do you? It was an ironic device to show the fallacy of the model that muscular effort is needed to raise the upward moving leg. There may be a few holdouts, but virtually no one is riding with power cranks anymore.

asgelle

I guess you didn’t bother to read the entire article.

NumbersGuy

The only thing I know for sure is that you think you’re smart and funny, but that you’re aren’t nearly as much of either as you think.

NumbersGuy

I read what was on the page you linked to. I didn’t request the full text from the author to read more. Perhaps you can provide a link to something that actually makes your point.