Cadence
Comments
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Since you are talking about a predominantly aerobic endurance activity and not one that requries great strength, the same principle would apply - i.e. strength per se is not a determinant of performance, nor an outcome of such training. If the activity more more like climbing cliffs however, then strength would play a role.neeb wrote:
This is really interesting. Do you think the same applies for other (arguably more natural) forms of exercise such as hiking/hillwalking, or will they be more likely to induce adaptations of strength? The reason I ask is that until about 5-10 years ago I used to do a lot of strenuous hillwalking and was pretty good at it (just as for cycling up hills, being light helps!The joint angle and velocities on a bike, even on a hill at a lowly cadence of 50rpm, are still nowhere near what is required to induce adaptations in muscular strength (via hypertrophy - which is the adaptation required for strength).
). Now I am living somewhere with no large hills and nearly all of my strenuous exercise comes from cycling. I'm probably as fit (or fitter) in cardiovascular terms as I have ever been, but I've noticed that this doesn't translate into hillwalking ability. I mean, I can still go up hills OK but I think I could do it quite a bit faster when I was less fit but more used to hillwalking. If I started doing more hillwalking again I'd presumably develop more "strength"? Would this have any negative effects on my cycling performance?
Most aerobic endurance sport fitness is exercise modality specific, so while there would be some genral aerobic fitness carried across from bushwalking/hiking to cycling and vice versa, fitness is specific to each. If you want to get faster on a bike, you ride a bike faster.
Well you can get muscle biopsies taken (no thanks!). But even then it doesn't tell the whole story.neeb wrote:
Is there any easy DIY way to get an idea of where you stand in this spectrum (i.e. without specialist equipment) other than just comparing your relative performance in distance vs. sprinting to others?Also we each have a different proportion of slow and fast twitch muscle fibre, which is one the reasons why some guys are good at going all day and some others are better suited to track sprinting.
A really good method is to conduct maximal pedal force tests on a bike with a power meter or on a similarly equiped cycling ergometer. Using the data from the first 4-6 seconds of multiple efforts high load standing start efforts (with plenty of rest in between each), you can then the plot your pedal force v pedal velocity relationship (it is linear before fatigue sets in after 5-6 seconds) and this helps to determine your "fastwitchiness".
Another simple means is a static floor jump test. How high can you reach by simply jumping up on the spot. There have been studies to show a really good correlation between floor jump test and neuromuscular power. This has been used in talent search programmes in Australia to identify junior women sprint cycling talent. I can't recall the typical heights resached though.
Here is an abstract on one such study which provide correlation data for all three methods.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8891 ... stractPlus
At the end of the day though, if you want to know if you're a fast twitcher - go and do some sprints. Nothing predicts performance like performance itself.0 -
I strongly suspect I'm a slow twitcher. Some of the sprinting speeds people talk about on this forum seem amazingly fast to me (I find it very hard to get over 25-30mph on the flat with no wind!), but I find it almost as easy to maintain an average of 20mph on my own over 60miles as over 20miles, and steeply rolling terrain doesn't seem to reduce my average much at all.At the end of the day though, if you want to know if you're a fast twitcher - go and do some sprints. Nothing predicts performance like performance itself.
I don't think I'm a very good jumper either.. 0 -
A sprinter usually knows it.
If you have to ask if you're a sprinter, you aren't.0 -
If you want to increase leg strength then pretty much do high cadence training the other way around. Start at a low cadence in a gear you can push through without too much leg burn for about a minute, rest, do the same but in a smaller gear, rest, keep moving up through the gears until you're in top(smallest cog). Do this on the flat and you'll notice you're getting a little more torque in your legs which can be handy for do big gear attacks on a sprint.deal wrote:i have the oposite problem, I think my cadence is too fast at times, i often find myself around 100-110 but have been trying to make an effort to push bigger gears but my legs suffer, i think this is due to lack of strength - my legs have been called "ballerina legs"
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The joint angles and velocities on a bike, even on a hill at a lowly cadence of 50rpm, are still nowhere near what is required to induce adaptations in muscular strength (via hypertrophy - which is the adaptation required for strength). Neither are we likely to see recruitment of Type II fibres during prolonged bouts of exercise.
Sustained hard riding up a hill (whatever cadence we do it at) has the effect of inducing training adaptions related to our sustainable aerobic power (increased capilliary density, mitochondral enzyme density, increased VO2 Max and cardiac output, increased muscle gylogogen storage capacity) but not our muscular strength.
I'm not sure that I'm getting this. So the fact that my thigh muscles have got bigger is nothing to do with hypertrophy and it's all sarcoplasmic/glycosomic?0 -
parkaboy wrote:The joint angles and velocities on a bike, even on a hill at a lowly cadence of 50rpm, are still nowhere near what is required to induce adaptations in muscular strength (via hypertrophy - which is the adaptation required for strength). Neither are we likely to see recruitment of Type II fibres during prolonged bouts of exercise.
Sustained hard riding up a hill (whatever cadence we do it at) has the effect of inducing training adaptions related to our sustainable aerobic power (increased capilliary density, mitochondral enzyme density, increased VO2 Max and cardiac output, increased muscle gylogogen storage capacity) but not our muscular strength.
I'm not sure that I'm getting this. So the fact that my thigh muscles have got bigger is nothing to do with hypertrophy and it's all sarcoplasmic/glycosomic?
Dunno. Has your cycling training increased your ability to do, say, squats or leg press with heavy resistances?
But I share your scepticism, to some extent. If your pedal downstroke starts with your upper leg approximately at right-angles to your hip bones, then I would think that the force your gluteal and thigh muscles are exterting at that specific point, in a hiigh gear, are quite high -- much higher than walking up stairs, unless you routinely walk up stairs three at a time.0 -
What's that smell? sniff . I know it's all that Bull Shit again ! All those lumps on all cyclists legs are caused by a disease that is caught by friction with the air. Any similarlity with muscles is purely coincidental. Note that cycling does not strengthen legs neither do you need strength in your legs to cycle. Yesterday a Jelly won a local TT race. You may jest but what an aerobic engine he had.
Bloody fantastic!
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Well, take for instance an 80kg bike+rider, riding at 50rpm uphill generating 350watts with 170mm cranks. That would be VO2 Max inducing power for a Category 2/3 racing cyclist.
Average Effective Pedal Force (AEPF) = (Power x 60) / (cadence x 2 x Pi x Crank Length)
AEPF = (350W x 60) / (50rpm x 2 x Pi x 0.170 metres)
= 393 N
Now the peak forces applied during a pedal stroke are approximately double AEPF, so let's say peak force applied during such an effort = 786N
The force applied when doing step ups = mass (kg) x gravity (m/s^2)
= 80kg x 9.81 m/s^2
= 784 N
So the peak forces involved at 50rpm for this 80kg bike + rider are no more than the same rider doing step ups while holding the mass of his bike (or say a couple of shopping bags).
Given that in this case the rider is riding at a power that would induce VO2 Max, then they would likely last ~ 5-min or so. Then that's 500 "reps" in 5 minutes (250 each leg).
Find me a muscular strength coach that recommends a weight you could manage 500 reps with in 5 minutes. If you do find one, then I'd strongly suggest finding another coach.
And then some of these low cadence intervals are sometimes done over longer periods and by defnition must be completed at even lower power than that which would induce VO2 Max. Or they are done by the vast majority of cyclists that are not as powerful as Category 2 racing level cyclists.
IOW, the peak forces involved would be less than walking up a step.
Yes, it feels hard to pedal up a hill like this. Does it build muscular strength? No.
What else does this tell us? Muscular strength is not a limiter to aerobic endurance cycling performance.0 -
Hi Alex just so we're clear are you saying cycling doesn't induce hypertrophy in the muscles used for cycling?0
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bbtothehead wrote:
If you want to increase leg strength then pretty much do high cadence training the other way around. Start at a low cadence in a gear you can push through without too much leg burn for about a minute, rest, do the same but in a smaller gear, rest, keep moving up through the gears until you're in top(smallest cog). Do this on the flat and you'll notice you're getting a little more torque in your legs which can be handy for do big gear attacks on a sprint.deal wrote:i have the oposite problem, I think my cadence is too fast at times, i often find myself around 100-110 but have been trying to make an effort to push bigger gears but my legs suffer, i think this is due to lack of strength - my legs have been called "ballerina legs"
cheers will give this a try0 -
SunWuKong wrote:Hi Alex just so we're clear are you saying cycling doesn't induce hypertrophy in the muscles used for cycling?
Everyone knows its bollox. Just humour him.0 -
Everyone knows its bollox. Just humour him.
I'm beginning to wonder myself. The comparison of the step ups and cycling up hills is utterly spurious.0 -
I too call bollox.
Before I started cycling I had legs that looked like a flamingo. I also had no real strength in them either.
After I had been cycling some time, the muscles in my legs grew dramatically and the strength I gained in them also grew dramatically too.
You cannot be serious to suggest that cycling hard does not increase muscle mass and strength. If what you say is true then why have my legs grown in size and strength?
At the moment though my legs are covered in plaster (due to the accident) so it makes no difference what size/strength they are at the moment! 0 -
No, that's not what I'm saying.SunWuKong wrote:Hi Alex just so we're clear are you saying cycling doesn't induce hypertrophy in the muscles used for cycling?
What I am saying is that is that pedalling relatively slowly up a hill does not provide sufficient resistance force to induce significant hypertrophy in muscle fibres.
I am also saying that the maximal force the contractions our muscles are capable of generating is not our limiter since the forces involved in endurance cycling are by their nature significantly sub-maximal.
Nevertheless, hypertrophy of Type I fibres can occur through endurance training. But the biggest (and most desireable) changes are in the metabolic processes inside the muscles such as greater mitochondal and capiliiary density, which enable a greater amount of aerobically derived energy to be released per unit time and therefore more sustainable power.
Cycling can involve much higher forces than that which occur pedalling at a steady rate up a hill (e.g. sprints, standing starts) which have the potential to stimulate such hypertrophy of muscle fibres but it's more likely the early gains in muscular strength through such training are more the result of neural adaptive changes, rather the due to muscle tissue hypertrophy. This would be true with weight training as well.0 -
Well I'm not the one who introduced the comparison with steps. I simply showed the calculations to demonstrate the rough equivalence of the forces involved.parkaboy wrote:
I'm beginning to wonder myself. The comparison of the step ups and cycling up hills is utterly spurious.0 -
So you performed a test to determine the maximal muscular strength of your legs* before and after you commenced a period of endurance cycling training. Great!Siechotic wrote:I too call bollox.
Before I started cycling I had legs that looked like a flamingo. I also had no real strength in them either.
After I had been cycling some time, the muscles in my legs grew dramatically and the strength I gained in them also grew dramatically too.
You cannot be serious to suggest that cycling hard does not increase muscle mass and strength. If what you say is true then why have my legs grown in size and strength?
At the moment though my legs are covered in plaster (due to the accident) so it makes no difference what size/strength they are at the moment!
* That would be a 1 rep max free standing squat or a leg press or similar. That would be "real strength".
So, what were the results?
If you didn't, then how do you know? Otherwise I'm the one calling bollox.
And did I say anything about not changing muscle mass? No.
The fact that you are fitter and can cycle faster has nothing to do with your maximal muscular leg strength. Otherwise a power lifter would be winning the world TT championships. Last time I checked, three time world TT championship Michael Rogers didn't look like a power lifter. 0 -
Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:
And did I say anything about not changing muscle mass? No.
The fact that you are fitter and can cycle faster has nothing to do with your maximal muscular leg strength. Otherwise a power lifter would be winning the world TT championships. Last time I checked, three time world TT championship Michael Rogers didn't look like a power lifter.
Maximal? Maximal?
Who said anything about maximal?
Take out the word maximal and then see if it is true. Of course not.
On the other hand I would bet my life that the maximal strength of a cyclist's legs would be higher than that of an untrained person.
If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog, feels like a dog, and barks like a dog. In my book it's a dog0 -
I agree with Alex_Simmons to the extent that, in most cycling training, the forces developed by the leg muscles are no greater than those required to lift a person's own weight.
No complex physics is required to see this: if the forces were greater than those required to lift your own weight, you'd constantly be pulling down on the handlebars to stay in the saddle.
Where I disagree with him is in the ability of those forces to train static leg strength.
Try this simple experiment: stand on a flight of steps with one leg bent almost at a right angle, so that your feet are 2-3 steps apart (depending on the height of the steps). Then, using only the uphill leg, and keeping your torso upright, try to lift yourself up. You'll find that it's extremely difficult without cheating (e.g., by pushing your torso forward or pushing off with your downhill foot). The resistances offered to some muscle groups will be well in excess of your own weight.
On the other hand, if you do the same exercise with your feet only one step apart, you'll find it's relatively straightforward, because the geometry of the exercise makes the forces much more manageable.
I reckon that if you scrupulously performed the 2-3 step exercise, say, in 3 sets of 10 repetitions a day, your static leg strength would increase.
So I'm inclined to think that there are circumstances in which cycling coulld improve static leg strength. At the same time, I think that most cycling, most of the time, does not do so -- because the limb geometry is much more like the `one step' lift than the `three step lift'. But you could, presumably, adjust your bike and your cycling technique to make cycling more like a weight-lifting exercise if you wanted.
But why would you want to? On a properly set-up bike, ridden the conventional way, static leg strength is going to be of very little value to your cycling performance.0 -
Hi Alex, thanks for that clarification. I did re-read your post before putting my question, but it read to me that way so thanks for the reply. I'm not a hater, I have a degree in physiology and understand the adaptation goals of training.
I find the strength training discussion, or perhaps argument, interesting. I don't know of any top level cyclists that do strength training, except via vague anecdote of doing 'some gym work in the winter' which really tells us nothing. But I do know of several elite Ironman athletes that do strength training. I do mean strength and not 20 reps of light weight. Also British Cycling suggest a 4*6, at a high % of 1RM strength training programme for endurance cyclists in their coaching manuals.
Admittedly triathlon puts different stresses on an athlete than pure cycling, but these guys (Ironman) probably race at a lower intensity than road cyclists.
So could it be that the Ironman guys are good despite this or it helps them? I personally feel, from the studies that I have read, that the length of the strength training simply hasn't been long enough. The most I have seen is a 12 week programme compared to a control group just cycling. Why it would help I really don't know and can't see why it would.
I do strength train but that is to correct a muscle imbalance and that improves my cycling by preventing injury, and allowing me to train regularly, but that clearly isn't the same as it improving my cycling directly.
Wu Kong0 -
Siechotic wrote:I too call bollox.
Before I started cycling I had legs that looked like a flamingo. I also had no real strength in them either.
After I had been cycling some time, the muscles in my legs grew dramatically and the strength I gained in them also grew dramatically too.
You cannot be serious to suggest that cycling hard does not increase muscle mass and strength. If what you say is true then why have my legs grown in size and strength?
At the moment though my legs are covered in plaster (due to the accident) so it makes no difference what size/strength they are at the moment!
Of course, you're right. I mean, look at all those pro cyclists - their legs are HUGE! Contador, Rasmussen, they've got massive quads haven't they? With tree-trunk legs like that they'd embarrass Dwain Chambers! Must be all the strength work they do whilst riding up mountains! Jeez no wonder i can't ride fast, my legs are so skinny in comparison 0 -
Of course, you're right. I mean, look at all those pro cyclists - their legs are HUGE! Contador, Rasmussen, they've got massive quads haven't they? With tree-trunk legs like that they'd embarrass Dwain Chambers! Must be all the strength work they do whilst riding up mountains! Jeez no wonder i can't ride fast, my legs are so skinny in comparison
I still stand by my statement that riding hard will increase your muscle mass and strength. As with any other resistance exercise.
How else (other than cycling) did my legs increase in size and strength - cycling was the only thing I was doing different.
Perhaps you need to push harder on your rides to see some improvement rather than spinning like a fairy. 0 -
Woof woof.Mike Willcox wrote:Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:
And did I say anything about not changing muscle mass? No.
The fact that you are fitter and can cycle faster has nothing to do with your maximal muscular leg strength. Otherwise a power lifter would be winning the world TT championships. Last time I checked, three time world TT championship Michael Rogers didn't look like a power lifter.
Maximal? Maximal?
Who said anything about maximal?
Take out the word maximal and then see if it is true. Of course not.
On the other hand I would bet my life that the maximal strength of a cyclist's legs would be higher than that of an untrained person.
If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog, feels like a dog, and barks like a dog. In my book it's a dog
Actually the use of the word Maximal in the phrase Maximal Muscular Strength is a tautology.
Muscular Strength, by defnintion, is already defined as maximal force generation capacity by a muscle or group of muscles.
I just put the word Maximal there to emphasise this point since many forget what the definition of strength is.
If you feel the need to change the defnition, go right ahead, but while you at it why don't you change the defnitions for time, mass, distance, force and many other fundamental measures as well, since what's the point in having a definition for anything in your doggie's book?0 -
What I've gathered from reading and personal experience, is that if you do high power, lower cadence up hill efforts up hill, you'll become good at doing low cadence high power up hill efforts?
I'm only doing these efforts because hopefully it'll make me a bit faster uphill when powering up in the big chainring during a race or TT."I hold it true, what'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost;
Than never to have loved at all."
Alfred Tennyson0 -
Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:
Woof woof.Mike Willcox wrote:Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:
And did I say anything about not changing muscle mass? No.
The fact that you are fitter and can cycle faster has nothing to do with your maximal muscular leg strength. Otherwise a power lifter would be winning the world TT championships. Last time I checked, three time world TT championship Michael Rogers didn't look like a power lifter.
Maximal? Maximal?
Who said anything about maximal?
Take out the word maximal and then see if it is true. Of course not.
On the other hand I would bet my life that the maximal strength of a cyclist's legs would be higher than that of an untrained person.
If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog, feels like a dog, and barks like a dog. In my book it's a dog
Actually the use of the word Maximal in the phrase Maximal Muscular Strength is a tautology.
Muscular Strength, by defnintion, is already defined as maximal force generation capacity by a muscle or group of muscles.
I just put the word Maximal there to emphasise this point since many forget what the definition of strength is.
If you feel the need to change the defnition, go right ahead, but while you at it why don't you change the defnitions for time, mass, distance, force and many other fundamental measures as well, since what's the point in having a definition for anything in your doggie's book?
Call it what you like. You can try smoke and mirrors but it changes nothing. If you believe that leg strength (maximal, minimal, up your jacksie strength or whatever), has no part to play in cycling faster then IMO you're plainly wrong.0 -
Mike Willcox wrote:Call it what you like. You can try smoke and mirrors but it changes nothing. If you believe that leg strength (maximal, minimal, up your jacksie strength or whatever), has no part to play in cycling faster then IMO you're plainly wrong.
I don't think it's `smoke and mirrors' to insist on a term being used in a uniform way. Alex_Simmons is using the word `strength' in the way that most (all?) sports scientists use it. To a sports scientist, the strength of a muscle group is by definition the maximum load (resistance, weight) that the contracting muscle group can pull. From that basic definition you can argue about whether strength should be measured isometrically, isotonically, isokinetically, or whatever; but in all cases the fundamental principle is that strength is a load-pulling ability.
In practice, however, my experience is that most athletes use terms like `strength', `power', `load', etc, in ways different from a sports scientist. This can cause confusion, in the same way that GPs get confused when their patients talk about `chronic pain' (which is rarely used in the `correct' way as a medical textbook would use it).
I think that many athletes use the word `strength' to mean something like `ability to develop power'. And that's fine, but to a sports scientist `power' means `work done in a unit of time', and is only tangentially related to strength in its textbook definition.
I don't think anybody is right or wrong here; we just have to be aware that many words are terms of art in particular disciplines, and have highly specific meanings within those disciplines; while to other people the meanings may be less well-defined or even different.
That's what comes of using words as a medium of communication
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What Alex_Simmons is saying seems logically consistent, but I wonder, could there be a problem in underestimating the value of muscular strength applied for short periods (sprintng, powering up hills) and could this explain the development of leg muscle mass in cyclists?
350W may be VO2 max for a cat2 racer but there will be many brief periods when he/she is applying a lot more power, and these may be important to cycling performance although they are not sustainable. If you're nearing the crest of a small hill, say, you might select a gear that allows you to push as hard as you possibly can for a few seconds so that you can power over the top of the hill and let the legs recover for a few moments on the other side. When I do that it certainly feels like I am applying almost as much force to the pedals as my muscles are capable off, although there's no way I could keep it up for any length of time (just as the power lifter couldn't keep on lifting the same weight over and over again for 3 hours or even 2 minutes!). At (most) other times the force I am applying will be a lot less, although I may be breathing just as hard and generating as much power. You could argue that this sort of brief muscular effort is inefficient, but the fact that (I guess?) most cyclists do it (and have big legs!) suggests it is of some value.
Disclaimer: unlike sunwukong I do NOT have a degree in physiology and am just speculating.. 0 -
Sorry Neeb, I wasn't trying to brag or anything just didn't want Alex to think that my question was a dig at his position on this topic. I merely wanted clarification.
I find how this discussion quickly gets personal every time it comes up a bit weird.
Wu Kong0 -
Oops, my comment must have come across badly! I didn't think you were bragging at all, I just wanted to make it clear that I don't have any expertise so as to cover my back in case I am talking bullsh*t.!Sorry Neeb, I wasn't trying to brag or anything just didn't want Alex to think that my question was a dig at his position on this topic. Certainly not intended as a personal comment! 0 -
Now that hopefully the dust has settled on technical definitions and their misuse we can talk about cadence again? Similar to what Nolf was saying....
Say we have 2 riders A and B who tackle the same hill climb in different cadences. A is a grinder and uses a high gear/low cadence, B is a spinner and uses a low gear/high cadence and both complete the climb in roughly the same time.
A feels that he has to really force the cranks round while B finds it easier. A's goal is to get up the hill using ever bigger gears as he thinks this will help him to learn how to turn ever bigger gears and ultimately benefit his overall riding speed. He feels that he is applying more power by making it up the hill in the big gear, though he may not be getting up any faster, which presumably is the only criterion that really matters? His theory is roughly that once he can get up the hill in a big gear when he tries it again in a lower gear he will find it easy and fly up the hill.
Is there any advantage/ fitness adaptation to either approach? Does one help build a more aerobic base than the other?
Does rider A's strategy have any validity?0 -
What's a low cadence or a high cadence? I find I get up hills in better shape in 39-25 than I do with 34-25, spinning is not always the answer. As long as you aren't struggling away at 30 or 40rpm, I'm finding 70rpm is more efficient uphills than 100 or so RPM is.
My cadence naturally varies from the flat to an incline, I don't feel the need to maintain that 90rpm I find comfortable on the flat, on the incline finding 60-70 rpm in the appropriate gear gets me up the hill faster and in better condition.
I think it's because I spend most of my time on the drops on the flat, meaning that my position is not the best for pushing hard gears, whereas when I'm climbing I'm on the tops and more upright meaning I'm better able to push a higher gear at lower cadence.0
