He pretends to be scientific...But declining to explain his experiments (= declining to help others replicate them to test his results) is pretty much the opposite of scientific. As I know you know.

Let's assume for a moment that this idea is true. With the proliferation of power meters, why hasn't this effect been observed by both amateur and professional bike racers, or non-racers that are data geeks?

I have no definitive answers, and I haven't even read all the posts. However, it is an interesting discussion.

I think that there might be a way for planing to work. Because a bike only has two wheels and the pedals are not on the centerline, pushing a pedal tilts the bike in addition to powering the drivetrain. Based on nothing more than that, I have to accept the possibility that some bikes more than others might harness this tilting movement to help provide the correct tilt on each subsequent stroke exactly when the rider needs it.

Of course, even if this effect is real, it may not be worth more than theoretical interest. Worse, a bike that feels faster to a particular rider might actually not be.

Jan has become less doctrinaire in his bike choices over time as he realizes that everyone else wasn't wrong in their bike choices after all. I have always thought that "planing" just reflected his appreciation for low trail bikes. Personally, I find that bikes with low trail feel lighter and more responsive. For approximately 5 miles, then they feel like any other bike. Weirdly, going to a higher trail bike doesn't have the reverse feeling. My gravel bike has a ridiculous amount of trail and the only thing that it takes some time to get used to is the flop.

As far as raising ftp, it probably does for the true believers. Cognitive bias is a real thing. The rest of us just need to try to believe.

​​​​​​https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000...ea10993ab8da80

In a fairly early Rivendell Reader, Grant Petersen describes how a cyclocross bike with a high bottom bracket felt when he first rode it---"like I was sitting on a flagpole," or some such.

Then, a half-hour or so later, he realized that the feeling had disappeared and the bike felt normal. He rode the bike for a few days and then went back to his usual bike.

Now that felt weird to him, for a while, but again, the weird feeling didn't last.

Good for him for reporting it, since it could be construed as presenting a case against the fabled Rivendell design choices being uniquely beneficial.

It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.But perhaps there is a key: the key is that cycling is an aerobic sport so if you could raise your FTP by X%, you should be consuming very close to X% more oxygen. That X% can come from an X% greater A-V O2 difference, or X% more oxygen-carrying capacity in the blood, or X% greater blood transport, or X% more efficiency in the mitochondria. But I'm not sure how the bike affects those things. Hmmm. It's a conundrum.

You’re right, I didn’t remember a single, not very compelling test that he blogged about years ago. And I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of Jan’s writing over the years (because why would I?). But this is just an appeal to authority on your part - “oh, you haven’t read everything Jan has written on planing so you aren’t qualified to dispute it.” I have read Jan’s public posts on planing. I’ve already explained my problem with them: what you insist is “explanation in depth,” isn’t. It’s hand waving, nonsequiter, and argument by analogy without a sensible justification for that analogy. If there are posts or articles out there by Jan that shed new light, i.e. an actual specified mechanism for how optimized frame flex allows a rider to put out over 10% more power, I beg you to produce them. I will read them with interest. If he thinks he’s describing a mechanism with the profound implications of a 10% power increase, the onus really is on him to persuade the critics, in public. I think people would be very welcoming of dispositive evidence. So far, it doesn’t seem to exist.

I think the inescapable conclusion is: planing = doping.

Or planing = F1ATPase hyperactivation.

When I first heard the term, I thought it was supposed to be analogous to hydroplaning, but without the water.

Several problems with all of this:
1. You first have to accept that energy can be temporarily stored in the frame. This seems pretty obvious to some people, but with enough skeptics you can't even get to the next part:

2. Planing may be something some riders have never felt or could even imagine, while other folks have experienced it plenty without it registering as more than "I love the way my Colnago C-40 rides."

3. Jan Heine, like Grant Peterson, seems to absolutely love being a contrarian. Which pisses a lot of people off in general, and many more because his ideas are in opposition to the racing bike standard. And, he is also clearly full of BS sometimes, which makes the times when he's right harder to detect.

4. Planing is not necessarily easy to reliably accomplish, which Jan essentially admits by pointing out all the factors that go into it. What if you don't pedal at cadence that works well with your frame? What if you weigh too little to preload the frame? Fit, tires, crank length, etc.

5. Given the above, why would a bicycle company want to open this can of worms? "I'm sorry you aren't planing on your new $12K bike, sir. No, we don't offer refunds for non-planing." If they wanted to design such a bike, who are they using as the model for the rider?

6. And also given 4, how do you quantify what you think you accomplished? We already consider 'laterally stiff, vertically compliant' as marketing drivel, yet we expect a company to summarize "planing" and how they perfected it in two lines or less? Why bother when you can instead say "our stiffest bottom bracket ever!"?

7. Some people can't feel anything. These are the same people that ride on broken bikes or with squeaky chains despite being dedicated cyclists - because they are oblivious. And we all know someone like that. They aren't going to feel planing any more than a pea under their mattresses.

we are all just dust in the wind

The question is not whether energy can be stored in the frame, it's whether energy can be stored in the frame and then subsequently put back into the drive train in a beneficial way, and do this in a way that is more efficient than simply putting all the energy directly into the drive train. Offer a mechanism by which this can happen, and you might have a case. (Hand waving analogies don't count.)

You stated he didn't have data, which is clearly wrong. You continue to state he has not explained the mechanism, also wrong. It's one thing to expect someone to have read everything an author has written, it's another to expect someone to at least be aware of the principle experiment he performed to test his theory.

The fact that you dismissed the experiment as "a single not very compelling test that he blogged about years ago" because you either forgot about it or never knew about it in the first place shows your lack of knowledge and insight into this matter.

Lucy! You got some planing to do!

What is the mechanism?

I already described that mechanism at length.

To those who are thinking about posting to this thread or who have posted. please, please click on the link which seypat has posted for you.

I'll condense the 10 or so pages of that thread for you: One can evidently argue forever about the benefits of particular frame stiffness. There is, however, one fact which is indisputable: Pros have all gone to much stiffer frames. They are faster. "Vertically compliant and laterally stiff" is the mantra. There are no "planing" frames in the peloton. Jan Heine is full of it. If you haven't ridden a modern carbon frame, hard, please do so. You'll be amazed.

That said, many folks like the softer feel of a flexible frame. I got sick of it and finally went carbon because I was after speed and comfort at the same time.

I'd like to see some data supporting this. From what I've seen from TOUR Magazine, this assertion doesn't track across the board. Some bikes are stiffer, some aren't. Many manufacturers seem to change stiffness back and forth over time. We don't really know what the pros are riding - given the misrepresentation about LAB71, admission of custom layups, etc. Planing never meant soft or overly flexible and there have been several carbon bikes reviewed at BQ that "planed" apparently.

The Tarmax SL5/6/7 became less stiff over time in all the test metrics. The Emonda SLR was given a stiffer fork but a more supple frame, for example. Not sure if I'm motivated to put this in a chart and order it by stiffness/year, eyeballing it to argue with low-information/high-opinion posters is probably fine as it is.

https://i.imgur.com/PJBfrnx.png

Are there other stiffness databases for modern bikes? Anyone have TOUR data from 2021+?

Pros have not gone to anything but corporately produced bikes. When pros did select their own bikes, they had custom Calfees, ti, TVTs and steel bikes made for them and badged to match their sponsorship. Now they ride exactly what they are told to.

You might as well talk about what kind of engine NASCAR drivers choose to race.

The question I have is this: Can "planing" be formulated as a hypothesis, and tested?

In the book he hints that there might be a way to do this, which is why I brought up the isospeed coupler in the Trek Domane.

If someone who believes in Planing can first tell us if the Domane is such a beast, then I am hoping the adjustable iso-speed coupler might provide a way to turn it on or off, or change it from being in phase to out of phase, with something that can easily be controlled. You could then do something pretty close to at least a single-blind test, if the rider doesn't know what setting the coupler is on. It would be a start, even if it isn't quantitative.

If more flexible frames could really give riders a 12% power advantage, pro racers would be clamoring for them, and manufacturers would gladly produce them and capitalize on the PR. The idea that both the riders and the manufacturers can't figure this out is laughable.

I wouldn't expect a damper - which the Isospeed thingy appears to be - to have anything to do with planing, which seems to be about an active spring. Dampers eat energy, springs store and retransmit energy.

Which isn't to say that a damper is a bad thing or that it can't make your riding nicer. But it doesn't seem related to the subject of this thread. And maybe a Domane can plane just fine despite having a damper.

Clamor, how exactly?

"My current sponsored Trek sucks and is too stiff. So even though I've never ridden anything but stiff carbon bikes, I'm going to ask Trek to make me something that rides like a Bicycle Quarterly article."

Does any of that seem likely? Some 25 year old raising a stink about something he might never even have heard of - especially given that he's never even ridden a steel or ti bike at all?

Come on.