Originally Posted by
achoo
Except that you're really never anywhere near your max leg strength. Run the numbers. Even say you're putting out 600W at 50 rpm with a 165mm crank arm. Those numbers will maximize the amount of force your putting out, and I'd bet it's not all that much force.
Think about it - on a bike, you're going to have to output that force hundreds if not thousands of times. It can't be anywhere near your max strength, otherwise you couldn't do it that often. In fact, it's far enough from your max strength that your max strength pretty much doesn't matter except in extreme situations - a standing start in some track events, maybe the first second or so of a sharp acceleration - MAYBE.
Yeah, low cadence/high force can do a lot for you, but one thing it's not going to do is improve your max leg strength. Muscular endurance? Yeah. Ability to climb? Yeah.
FWIW, I ran some numbers (I assume they are correct - the calculations are not complicated) with the following parameters.
RPM - 60
crank - 172.5mm
PowerOut - 600w
The average force required here is 125 pounds. It seems reasonable to me (based on my own uninformed opinion which is based on my own cycling which is hardly something to be admired) to think that out of the saddle lugging up a hill requires a peak force of 3x the average. So that comes out to 375 pounds.
Probably not a max output but 'not all that much force' doesn't seem to apply either. Or maybe I made an error here. I spent about 3 minutes on the problem.
dave