powercranks - any one use them?
 

at the risk of being flamed to death by Raiyn (flinch - braces for impact) amongst others

As a powercrank virgin I thought, given my lack of coordination in other areas (can't catch and can't kick - hence I play prop), there would be a fairly steep learning curve but...
Suprise 1 - I am a smooth pedaler - even managed to crank them up to 150rpm+ for a couple of seated sprints.
Suprise 2 - while they definitely work more muscles (back, stomach and inner thighs - would you believe) they're not as hard work as expected.

Now I just have to practice my starts and stops before I brave London traffic with them.

Anyway the point of all this is to find out how many others have used powercranks and their thoughts on them.

Thanks

What are powercranks?

If you've never been to slowtwitch.com, check out that forum. They had a long thread about Powercranks which included a lot of posts by the inventor of the device. I'd love to try them, but after dropping >$1,000 on wheels and accessories this year, I'm afraid that's not going to happen for me :(

Genec - have a look at www.powercranks.com

Sprocket Man - yeah, while I was doing some research before purchase I came across that and some of the archived bike forums stuff too. Some of the opinions expressed were quite strong.

I can see how they would work... I found rollers to be quite good at smoothing my stroke.

Lotsa bucks though.

god their explanation is excessively wordy.

Sounds cool though.

Anyone willing to ride powercranks on the streets is all good in my book.

Dood, you are good! Keep me informed on how it works for you out there.

I've used powercranks for short intervals of time, and I might get them at some point down the road.

Powercranks on rollers... that might be something too...

Koffee

catatonic - the verbiage is pretty painful to plough through but then again who ever heard an MD simply say uuuuuuhhhhhmmmm, you're sick, take these.

Koffee - thanks, don't know about good wait and see (watch out for that bus oops too late). I just want a running substiute so cycling to work on these should do the trick

anyway peeps there must be more of you out there so please share your experiences - good/bad/other.

true, but they covered so much irrelevant crap.

They should have just said:

"Proper pedaling motion is a perfect circle amade with both feet at a 180 degree relative point in rotation. What this product does is ONLY transfers power when both feet are in their proper places int hat rotational pattern. This will help with pedaling technique through both positive reinforcement, as well as the tactile feel of either transferring power, or not transferring power. It does this via a special clutch....which works liek this....."

He didn't have to breeak it down into basic physics and the history of the crankarm :p

To those who aren't sure what they are... Powercranks are crank arms that are each equipped with a ratcheting mechanism that allows each crank to drive the chainrings, but not drive the other crank. Normally when you push down with one leg, you are lifting up the other. With power cranks, when you push down with one leg the other crank remains still. "Pulling up" on the upstroke is no longer an option, but a requirement. The idea is that this will prevent biomechanical laziness, so to speak, and provide a powerful training aid.

Its interesting, like a sort of extension of the fixed gear concept, removing aspects of the bicycles function in order to prevent biomechanical laziness, and get your body working on muscles it doesn't normally use.

Sounds neat, but not 800$ neat. ;)

peace,
sam

When are you going to start riding with the powercranks? I was thinking about ya today during my ride!

Koffee

I disagree. With fixed gear you can cheat because the rear wheel will push the pedals over for you because of your forward speed (or backwards). With powercranks no such thing exists. The real benefit of fixed gear is that you MUST be pedalling all the time everywhere (unless you take you foot off the pedal).

Koffee - thanks I'm going to try cycling in to work tomorrow. The practice on the turbo and stop/start practice on the soccer field at the back of the house seems to be going ok.

Something I have noticed, not scientific/measured/accurate, it seems that I get 2-3kph extra for the same perceived level of effort. Hip flexors are pretty stiff though.

Yeah seems like they're excessively sure of themselves too. I can see why there are so many strong opinions...

Definitely a painful site to have to read just to figure out what they are.

Those powercranks do make you work the hip flexors more than you usually would with cycling.

Good luck. Report back!

Koffee