Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Actually that truism about "all studies" being contrary is not true. I only know of one study where differing pedaling styles were studied, this one:
http://www.radlabor.de/fileadmin/PDF...MSS_-_2011.pdf
which confirms exactly what I'm talking about. Note that this study was done with untrained pedalers who almost instantly showed improvement in endurance. If they continued working on that constantly, for years, imagine the further improvement.
I'm thinking of studies like
Effect of Pedaling Technique on MechanicalEffectiveness and Efficiency in Cyclists which found a decrease in efficiency when cyclists were instructed to 'pull up' or pedal in circles.
The study you linked was interesting but had the cyclists ride for 45 min at 75RPM in order to induce fatigue in their legs. I suspect the results may have been different if the cyclists would have pedaled at a more normal 90-100 RPM. I also noted that even with the feedback there was still significant negative torque on the upstroke. Better cyclists tend to unweight the pedal on the upstroke and perhaps that is what you are really advocating.
My original point was that even with all this feedback, torque is not close to constant and looking at cyclist's upper body doesn't allow one to make any conclusions about how smoothly they're applying torque.