Power but Watt?

meanredspider

Sorry - shocking pun

And sorry if it feels like we're going over old ground.

So Alex, in particular, talks a lot about training for "power" and, if I've got my terminology right, that's loosely a combination (product) of AEPF and RPM (cadence)

So which bits of that do you develop? Clearly cadence is relatively simple but, with as with any rotating system, power peaks at a certain RPM.

AEPF I'm guessing is split into
- the scale of the force applied and
- how effectively it's applied
and I'm also guessing that this is what the world of quadrant analysis is about.

I'm going to steer clear of the S word as there's a whole thread (and more) out there, but what work is done on the "scale of force" bit of AEPF? From what's been said, I could be forgiven for believing that we don't care about that bit. That has to be wrong though, doesn't it?

But I'm also interested in how you set about improving pedalling technique and the effectivity/efficiency bit.

Where, in those 3 broad elements (cadence, force, efficiency) does the "bang for the buck" come from?

P_Tucker

Jesus, you're overthinking this a bit. Just ride yer bike.

meanredspider

P_Tucker wrote:

Jesus, you're overthinking this a bit. Just ride yer bike.

Nope - I just wanna learn. I've got 10+hours a week on my bike - mostly in the dark atm - gotta think about something.

jibberjim

Concentrate on producing power, how you do it isn't that important - or rather your body is likely to work that out for itself and you'll get more training benefit just producing as much power as you can for the duration as opposed to trying to tailor specific areas.

With more time, rather than less there may be some reason to spend time isolating more specific areas, but even then that's open to quite a debate and most people will still say concentrate on producing power. That still means splitting it up in a few different ways, but it doesn't mean trying to develop weird drills to isolate something.

Anonymous

I've spent a while concentrating on my pedalling motion and have really reaped the benefit of that.

I'm now not as utterly sh1te as I was!

meanredspider

jibberjim wrote:

Concentrate on producing power, how you do it isn't that important - or rather your body is likely to work that out for itself and you'll get more training benefit just producing as much power as you can for the duration as opposed to trying to tailor specific areas.
.

That's basically the same as saying "concentrate on riding faster" - seems a bit vague.

I want to, as far as possible, fit my "getting faster" into my commute. From what I've read, the 2x 20 at sweet spot thing would fit reasonably (so long as I don't warm up much). Any guidance on how to do that?

a_n_t

meanredspider wrote:

the 2x 20 at sweet spot thing would fit reasonably (so long as I don't warm up much). Any guidance on how to do that?

http://tpks.ws/Ohwp

Easy on the turbo with a powertap, not so easy on a hilly commute!

Do you know your FTP? the sweetspot:

SBezza

meanredspider wrote:

I want to, as far as possible, fit my "getting faster" into my commute. From what I've read, the 2x 20 at sweet spot thing would fit reasonably (so long as I don't warm up much). Any guidance on how to do that?

If you haven't got a PM, then you will need to try and do this with HR. You have a nice climb everyday, go at that very hard, and try and get your HR to about 90% of you MaxHR. You need to ensure your MaxHR is accurate, and accept that you will be in the ball park but might not be the best you can do. I guess you realise that there will be HR drift, so at first it will be a bit of trial and error.

It doesn't have to be 20 mins, you could do shorter intervals, or even go for 1 longer time interval, there is nothing magic about the 20 mins.

I wouldn't worry too much about cadence, you will ride at a cadence you find natural, which may get quicker as you get fitter. Efficiency you can't really change much, so as jibberjim has said concentrate on pushing down harder on the pedals for longer.

meanredspider

a_n_t wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

the 2x 20 at sweet spot thing would fit reasonably (so long as I don't warm up much). Any guidance on how to do that?

http://tpks.ws/Ohwp

Easy on the turbo with a powertap, not so easy on a hilly commute!

Do you know your FTP? the sweetspot:

Cool - that chart is fantastic BTW - a picture paints a thousand words.

No - don't know my FTP. That was what I was struggling with when I read up on sweetspot training. Seemed to be some suggestion that the power zones/levels correlated with HR zones but I wasn't sure how. I have mountains of HR data collected from my Garmin over the last year but that's it.

Turning the question around, if you were doing my commute, how would you use it to become faster at doing my commute? I do it every weekday when I can (my son's chemo is an enforced recovery every 3 weeks atm) - it's net downhill to work, uphill from work. There's almost no reason to stop the entire ride (couple of brief pauses in Inverness)

meanredspider

SBezza wrote:

If you haven't got a PM, then you will need to try and do this with HR. You have a nice climb everyday, go at that very hard, and try and get your HR to about 90% of you MaxHR. You need to ensure your MaxHR is accurate,
.

Now, I used to be sure that MaxHR was my MaxHR (ie, for me, running up that same hill). Then, whilst reading around, I read that MaxHR was sport specific. So, should I be using absolute MaxHR (for me, 183bpm) or cycling MaxHR (nearer 175 IIRC) - it makes a bit of difference at 90%?

Team Banana Spokesman

watts tell you how much work you are doing per unit of time.

cadence does not change how hard you work. you do.
cadence does not affect the rate that time moves.

meanredspider

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

watts tell you how much work you are doing per unit of time.

cadence does not change how hard you work. you do.
cadence does not affect the rate that time moves.

Power = force x rpm (angular velocity)

P_Tucker

meanredspider wrote:

a_n_t wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

the 2x 20 at sweet spot thing would fit reasonably (so long as I don't warm up much). Any guidance on how to do that?

http://tpks.ws/Ohwp

Easy on the turbo with a powertap, not so easy on a hilly commute!

Do you know your FTP? the sweetspot:

Cool - that chart is fantastic BTW - a picture paints a thousand words.

No - don't know my FTP. That was what I was struggling with when I read up on sweetspot training. Seemed to be some suggestion that the power zones/levels correlated with HR zones but I wasn't sure how. I have mountains of HR data collected from my Garmin over the last year but that's it.

Turning the question around, if you were doing my commute, how would you use it to become faster at doing my commute? I do it every weekday when I can (my son's chemo is an enforced recovery every 3 weeks atm) - it's net downhill to work, uphill from work. There's almost no reason to stop the entire ride (couple of brief pauses in Inverness)

If that was my aim, I would ride to work steady, then from work I'd warm up for 5-10 minutes before BLAMMING it as fast as I could until 5 mins from my door, at which point I'd start my cooldown.

That's about as scientific as you need to be. Don't worry about cadence, force, newtons etc, when you're near the limit of what you can do your body will find the optimum quite naturally - because it will hurt the least.

Alex_Simmons/RST

meanredspider wrote:

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

watts tell you how much work you are doing per unit of time.

cadence does not change how hard you work. you do.
cadence does not affect the rate that time moves.

Power = force x rpm (angular velocity)

Power = torque x angular velocity.

Which is how we typically measure power on a bicycle.

However it would be fallacious to think that we can independently choose to control just torque or cadence. When cycling, they are not independently controllable*.

What we do have control over is the effort level (power) and the gear we choose to use.


* except perhaps on power controlled ergometers which adjust to maintain a power level irrespective of pedal / wheel speed

Alex_Simmons/RST

meanredspider wrote:

So which bits of that do you develop? Clearly cadence is relatively simple but, with as with any rotating system, power peaks at a certain RPM.

AEPF I'm guessing is split into
- the scale of the force applied and
- how effectively it's applied
and I'm also guessing that this is what the world of quadrant analysis is about.

While QA tells you the scale of the force applied, it is by definition an average of the forces around the pedal stroke so interpretation of pedaling forces with QA is limited by that.

That's not the "fault" of QA - it's just the reality of most commercially available power meters which don't typically report any more than the average of pedal forces (or data from which it can be inferred).

Hence QA can't tell you the "effectiveness" of the force application, if there is such a thing as "effectiveness" in a pedal stroke (I would suggest that sustaining a higher power output is more effective irrespective of how it's attained).

What QA does do is give us some insight into the neuromuscular demands and "how" we produced the power. It can help us for instance to match training with racing demands.

In order to examine the detail of the pedal forces around the pedal stroke, you need special pedal force measurement equipment.

There has been research done on that over many years and so far the evidence demonstrates the most powerful riders simply push down harder. It might seem counter intuitive to some, but the most effective (i.e.powerful) pedal force plots for roadie/TT riders are those that have the least "circular" or even pedal torque profiles.

If you want to better understand what QA can tell you, then have a look here:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/ ... lysis.aspx

There are also some other cool uses, particularly when examining maximal PF-CPV data.

meanredspider

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

watts tell you how much work you are doing per unit of time.

cadence does not change how hard you work. you do.
cadence does not affect the rate that time moves.

Power = force x rpm (angular velocity)

Power = torque x angular velocity.

Yeah - sorry - I was being sloppy with my terms using "force".

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Which is how we typically measure power on a bicycle.

At the risk of falling into a battle of pedantry, you never actually measure power but calculate power having measured some other things (strain, rpm etc)

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

However it would be fallacious to think that we can independently choose to control just torque or cadence. When cycling, they are not independently controllable*.

What we do have control over is the effort level (power) and the gear we choose to use.

Yup - for sure. And that's my point I guess. When ploughing up my hill everyday, I get plenty of time to think about this: where's my "shift point" (to steal from my racing terminology)? Do I want to be working on my spinning (which seems to drive my HR up) or do I want to work on the "mashing" end of my cadence range (which leads to muscle fatigue). I'm guessing we have a power curve that we want to be as high and flat as possible in the cadence range for each gear. For sure, the more I ride, the higher the gear I'm in when I arrive at the crest (the faster I'm going - the more power I'm generating). That means I'm delivering more force to the pedals (speed's up, power's up, cadence is down).

P_Tucker is right, I'm probably over-thinking this - but start talking to an engineer (especially one that plays with engines and drivetrains) about power and power meters, and this is where it leads....

Alex_Simmons/RST

Searching for "optimal" cadence is a fruitless exercise.

Focus on effort (power) and choose a gear that feels right.

meanredspider

P_Tucker wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

Turning the question around, if you were doing my commute, how would you use it to become faster at doing my commute? I do it every weekday when I can (my son's chemo is an enforced recovery every 3 weeks atm) - it's net downhill to work, uphill from work. There's almost no reason to stop the entire ride (couple of brief pauses in Inverness)

If that was my aim, I would ride to work steady, then from work I'd warm up for 5-10 minutes before BLAMMING it as fast as I could until 5 mins from my door, at which point I'd start my cooldown.

That's about as scientific as you need to be. Don't worry about cadence, force, newtons etc, when you're near the limit of what you can do your body will find the optimum quite naturally - because it will hurt the least.

Yup - it's not very sophisticated but you're probably right. It actually works very well as you describe. As I hit the bottom of Kessock bridge (the lowest point of my ride - close to Sea Level) my ride is pretty much uninterrupted for the 700ft net climb (1200ft of climbing). Then, once I've crested the hill, I can begin the warm-down (though a blast down the hill is too tempting after 10 miles of seemingly endless climbing).

Is there a HR (or zone) I should be aiming to be in? My average (round trip) HR is around 155 (vs absolute max of 183 and an RHR of ca 60)

meanredspider

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Searching for "optimal" cadence is a fruitless exercise.

Focus on effort (power) and choose a gear that feels right.

Cool. Thanks. And thanks for your (mostly ) patience with me 8)

maryka

meanredspider wrote:

Yup - for sure. And that's my point I guess. When ploughing up my hill everyday, I get plenty of time to think about this: where's my "shift point" (to steal from my racing terminology)? Do I want to be working on my spinning (which seems to drive my HR up) or do I want to work on the "mashing" end of my cadence range (which leads to muscle fatigue).

I've found that by varying how I ride hills in training, I'm more comfortable in races adapting to any situation that comes along. So it depends really what you want to accomplish. Cadence is to a point natural but at the same time it's trainable I think (meaning that you can train yourself to be comfortable and powerful either side of your preferred cadence, whether that's mashing or spinning).

Climbing at a higher cadence in the saddle for me is my default climbing position, so this is what comes most naturally to me and what I do the most. Being good at that means I have more punch in my legs to stand up and drive over the top, attacking or following an attack in a race.

But for steep short hillclimb TTs and rollers I've been better served by learning to stand and climb powerfully rather than sitting and spinning, and my legs have responded to that by getting stronger at it.

Cyclocross racing has forced me to get comfortable sitting and mashing at a lower cadence otherwise I'll spin out in the mud. So as tough as that was at first to master, I now have the ability to do that when I hit something really steep into a headwind where I just don't have the gears but don't want to stand up the whole way either.

Basically I've improved as an all-around climber by getting used to climbing different ways. Where 2 years ago I really hated anything steeper than 12-13% because I couldn't sit and spin up it easily, I now feel more or less fine on any grade hill.

rokkala

meanredspider wrote:

Now, I used to be sure that MaxHR was my MaxHR (ie, for me, running up that same hill). Then, whilst reading around, I read that MaxHR was sport specific. So, should I be using absolute MaxHR (for me, 183bpm) or cycling MaxHR (nearer 175 IIRC) - it makes a bit of difference at 90%?

Use the max HR from cycling.

Team Banana Spokesman

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

It can help us for instance to match training with racing demands.

if cadence is a red herring: why bother trying to match race demands? if you do this you admit it is actually not a red herring. matching the race power demands is more important.

jibberjim

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

It can help us for instance to match training with racing demands.

if cadence is a red herring: why bother trying to match race demands? if you do this you admit it is actually not a red herring. matching the race power demands is more important.

Thing is matching cadence in training with cadence in races is often not the same thing anyway as the generally much higher speeds in racing (less so if you're TT'ing of course where you're just looking at the difference between your full aero gear and training gear) means that the inertia of the situations are different too.

This may be an argument for motorpacing of course.

lochindaal

To liven things up :twisted:

Quote from Andy Schleck, ""Less bike, more gym," he said. "More power does not mean more weight, but because the weight is identical, it means more watts uphill. Stretching and mobility exercises for the back should help in the time trial. I have room for improvement. The results will be seen only during the season. It's a long process."

Alex_Simmons/RST

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

It can help us for instance to match training with racing demands.

if cadence is a red herring: why bother trying to match race demands? if you do this you admit it is actually not a red herring. matching the race power demands is more important.

Cadence per se is a red herring.

QA helps to assess the neuromuscular demands by examining the pedal speeds AND forces in play. Simply examining pedal speeds (cadence) does nothing to help you. It has to be in context with either the pedals forces or power.

doyler78

lochindaal wrote:

To liven things up :twisted:

Quote from Andy Schleck, ""Less bike, more gym," he said. "More power does not mean more weight, but because the weight is identical, it means more watts uphill. Stretching and mobility exercises for the back should help in the time trial. I have room for improvement. The results will be seen only during the season. It's a long process."

Perhaps if he spent more time on the bike he would know how to change a gear