JeniCincinnati

I had a picture up on my fridge for a long time that had the picture of a leg, broken down by it's muscle groups with a wheel that showed which muscles were engaged depending on where you were in the pedal stroke. With some help, I was able to find this diagram but the one I had was color coded. The actions were the same color as the muscle groups. Can anyone help me out?

Jeni

Looking for the colored version!

pedal stroke.jpg

ZeCanon

Got this back after doing the latest round of athletic testing (sorry, cant' show all the numbers at the bottom ) The circle thing on the left is my exact pedal stroke though, in case you were looking to compare. I'm 50/50 balanced and have weak hip flexors (though I have no idea how to get that data from that picture, thank god for coaches)



also thank god my butt doesn't actually look like that... i'd take the quads though any day


pm me if you need a larger copy.

aprilia4life

Considering the size of pictures posted on this forum, I don't see the point in not posting up the full size pic... ?

DrPete 

I ask only because I have no idea--how is your muscle activity measured at any given point, and what does it tell you besides "thanks for the money?"

Just never seen a pedal stroke analysis like that one.

krazyderek

That would be the study of biomechanics, the body is just a series of bones and muscles tendons and fascia(connective tissue), they all work together just like the crank shaft in an engine. And just like any mechanical object you can freeze it at a certain point and if you know one or two forces, like, the force on the pedals, and the weight on the saddle, you can work out exactly what muscles must be firring to produce sed force. After you analyse a couple of cyclist's you start to see a general pattern for when what muscles fire to do what.

Or you could just put your hand on someone's leg and ask them to grind for a minute, most of the muscles are big enough that you will physically feel when they activate.

As for what it tells you well.... you know exactly what muscles to work on during the winter in the weight room, especially if you have trouble spining a good circle for example, you now know what you need to target.

Thanks for the diagram, my massage therapist will love it

krazyderek

I resized, the color image, reset the aspect ratio as best i could and put in the text labels from the black and white picture.


That's still one bubbly butt!

LSPlo

Which muscles are missing, and what exercises can you do to strengthen those muscles? Muscle imbalances can lead to injuries, can't they?

ZeCanon

There ya go, a bit bigger. It's coming out of an excel file so it's just a print screen. Like I said, anyone who wants a bigger copy can pm me (with your email address).

slvoid

Wait a minute, so most of my power comes from my ass???

aicabsolut

The dorsiflexion / plantarflexion part looks off. Dorsiflexion somewhere between 12-3 and possibly around 6. Plantarflexion on the upstroke. I'd also think you'd start using your knee extensors earlier.

I think there are sensors you can attach that measure this sort of thing. At least there are ones you can run with to test for biomechanical abnormalities in the running gait (allows you to look at snapshots I think).

Duke of Kent

Between legs, yes. But your quads and glutes will always be far, far stronger than your hamstrings. So only worry about it if you've noticed that one leg gets fatigued quicker than the other one, or if there is a visible size difference between them.

After that, for medical advice or "what to do" about it, well, I'm not qualified. Go see a sports med doctor, and they'll recommend some exercises to improve that imbalance.

DrPete 

The body is a series of bones and tendons and muscles? Really?

It makes sense, but none of the methods you mentioned seem particularly accurate in actually quantifying a specific muscle group's contribution to a motion or effort. The only way I could think of actually putting an accurate number to that is EMG, which I'm guessing a lot of folks wouldn't be so keen on doing.

I'm not saying it's not worthwhile or anything--the methods just don't make sense.

Psimet2001 

Yes. I too have been known to pull some power out of my ass on occassion.

krazyderek

This may be the thin line that divides engineers and doctors lol....

One muscle i don't see on that diagram is just below the butt on the back and to the inside of the leg, not sure if that's just the upper inner hamstring where it connects or if it's in the abductor group but it sure gets soar for me when i do long seated high intensity efforst like threshold intervals or TT's.

idleuser

Biceps femoris short head? Gracilis? Maybe some thigh adductors. A nice site with muscle diagrams...
https://www.getbodysmart.com/ap/muscu...menu/menu.html

ZeCanon

The nationals squad at my school got this testing done, i think they called it 'deficit' testing. They then gave us lifting plans etc to work on our deficiencies over the winter. Most of us are coming off our lifting now (I finished about 2 weeks ago) so we'll see how much of a difference it made. We got 'potential' numbers and current numbers. I'm at something like 41% of my potential, but apparently people rarely get beyond about 65-70%. We got the testing done with Kevin Younger outside of Fort Collins, CO. He's a great guy and definitely knows his stuff - I would highly recommend him to anyone looking to get testing of this sort done.

dmotoguy

If your hamstrings and quads to not stay somewhat proportional as far as strength you will run into problems, it happened to me and caused severe pain in the knee. It was pulling my knee cap out of the groove or whatever and was grinding bone against bone.. not fun, i could barely walk after any sort of ride for a few days.. but the sports med doctors fixed it in a few weeks of therapy.

spinnaker

Is it copyrighted? If not, why not just post the Excel file?

euphoria

what caused the imbalance? too much focus in one area of the pedal stroke? what kind of therapy did you do?

donrhummy

There are so many muscles, it's much more worth getting an anatomy chart if you want to go that deep. (For example the semitendinosus which extends the hip and bends the knee -- it attaches basically from under the pelvis near the hip to the back inside knee to the tibia) However, it's not really worth training these muscles individually, that's impossible (without electric stimulation I guess). Instead, think of them as groups: hip flexors/extensors, knee flexors/extensors, plantar/dorsi flexors, etc.

aprilia4life

ZeCanon

Because in the excel file are many hundreds of dollars worth of testing that I'm sure my coach would not appreciate being posted on a board of this size. Posting the entire excel file gives you all my power numbers for various tests and a full scheduled weight training program. I'm 100% certain that my coach doesn't want that available to the public.

Everyone please remember that that chart applies to ME. Don't take it as anything else. I have my own deficiencies and strengths, and you may have some that are completely different. Posting the rest of my power numbers and weight plan... what does that do for you? You should not be using my plan and you don't have the same numbers. Only benefit I see is that you could compare yourselves to me. How badly do you really want to compare youselves to an 18 year old cat3/semi-pro?

ElJamoquio

Man, the sorry state of our medical universities today, when a graduate has to go online to do basic research.

Here's something helpful in case you have to do brain surgery.

mx_599

i think DrPete understands this

mx_599

+1

seems slightly dubious to me. not totally...but not totally accurate either. still wouldn't mind having an analysis of me!