Originally Posted by
Bacciagalupe
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Burke does suggest that some elite sprinters are capable of, and might even benefit from, effective forces on the upstroke. But it's clear that:
1) Even in those situations, it's a small amount of power.
2) No one reading this thread is in that league.
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1) it is a lot more power than you are willing to address. Direct experience: takes precedence over some study published by inexperienced academics funded by pocket change with test subjects numbering in the single digits drawn from a pool of people hiring out the researcher's coaching services (mostly triathletes and aging rich guys).
2) I'm in this league. If your point is limited to triathletes, then you should probably admit to as much.
You are committing the primary amateur sin of extrapolating data outside the context of the study. The data in the study addresses
only the parameters tested in the study. There are many different types of pedal strokes a cyclist might use, depending on his or her need for efficiency vs. power. The research was testing "cruising" pedal strokes, apparently; pedaling technique aimed at steady state power and efficient delivery. Basically only testing steady state cycling. But anything involving hard accelerations was evidently not tested in the studies you believe in.
Originally Posted by Burke
Cyclists of all abilities exhibit negative effective forces (i.e., forces applied to the pedal perpendicular to the crank but in opposition to crank rotation) during the upstroke (180º to 360º) in steady state cycling. As we have recognized at the Olympic training center, cyclists correctly sense that they lift or pull the leg up during recovery but do not lift the leg as fast as the pedal is rising. Thus, the pedal actually helps lift the leg.
Highlighted is the key limitation of the results. These results
do not apply across the entire spectrum of cycling.
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"If you’re new enough [to racing] that you would ask such question, then i would hazard a guess that if you just made up a workout that sounded hard to do, and did it, you’d probably get faster." --
the tiniest sprinter