From the article that started this discussion:
Effects of Pedal Type and Pull-Up Action During Cycling, G. Mornieux, B. Stapelfeldt, A. Gollhofer, A. Belli, International Journal of Sprits Medicine, December 19, 2007
If 90° is the maximum downstroke, then 270° should be the maximum upstroke (which is pretty low, even in the case, dotted line, where they were trying to pull up).
However, there are several things about this chart. First of all, they averaged all the cyclists, and do not supply error bars or standard deviation. So, this doesn't mean that some cyclists could have been better than pulling up than others, while the average is still low.
The study was done at 90 rpm. It may well be that it is more difficult to pull up at 90 rpm than 40 rpm.
Originally Posted by
Stucky
Yes, but you know what? Any "up power" you're generating on the upstroke is likely be neutralized by taking that same amount of power away from the downstroke on the other side. In other words, it's a ero net-sum "gain".
Again, bad interpretation of at least this data. If you fix the power output at 60% effort (say 250W), then either tell a person to pull up or not, while generating the SAME power, then the downward force must necessarily decrease as the upward force increases.
In the case of standing hill climbs, my interpretation is that one is already at 100% of the possible downward force of the pedals due to standing (plus or minus a little from pulling on the arms). Now, say you pull up with some weight on the offside (10 or 20 lbs?) That effectively increases your weight on the onside, so you get benefits on both sides. This may well be true even while seated, but perhaps not as significant.
Now, what I don't know is whether pulling up uses efficient body dynamics. Some studies indicate slower cadences are problematic, although others seem to indicate that varying one's effort is appropriate. It seems to me that the more muscles one uses, the better, within reason. Again, several studies seem to be doing the testing while controlling the output, so one would expect that pulling up would not show significant gains over not doing it for the same output. And, in fact, if you ride at 250W, one would expect the O[SUB]2[/SUB] consumption and Lactic Acid production to be pretty consistent over a range of styles. Your maximum effort may also be largely limited by your lung and circulatory capacity, although, at least for short efforts, one can go anaerobic (does that benefit from using more muscle groups?)
It would be fun to play around with some power pedals. Anybody want to bet the cost of a pair of Look Keo Power Pedals, or Garmin Vector pedals and recording equipment that I can't pull up in a standing hill climb? You get the pedals if there is no positive upward pull on the hill climb.