Originally Posted by
Trakhak
How much and how hard you ride have almost no effect on quad size. In fact, if you look at the podium at the end of any major European stage race, you'll see that the professionals who are capable of winning and who do the most mileage in training look almost emaciated, including having small quads. Road and track sprinters can have very big quads, but they end up sprinters because of genetics, not because they're doing more or harder riding than the climbers.
When you see the podium at the end of any major European stage race, you are looking at genetic exceptions just like you are with sprinters, and their quads generally are quite large in proportion to the rest of their bodies. See e.g.
https://m.psecn.photoshelter.com/img...n-Vialatte.jpg
https://todaycycling.com/wp-content/...n-der-poel.jpg
https://www.letelegramme.fr/images/2...6x354p.jpg?v=1
The only parts of those bodies that aren't skinny are the quads.
In any event, the notion that big quads are a sign of bad pedaling "like kicking a wall" is absurd.
And yeah, I'd describe sprinting as a special kind of very hard riding. The stage race winners are, by the nature of the event, selectively smaller people for reasons of endurance, but if you're claiming that they don't get larger quads than they'd have if they didn't ride so much, I ain't buying it.