Power Cranks Final Report 2000
Phil Holman
with the Power Cranks for the last 7 months.
For those not familiar with my training and reports, I was a skeptic of the
claims made by their inventor Frank Day and volunteered to train with
them and report on my findings. The cranks work by going out of phase
if you do not pull up on them (each crank has its own freewheel so to speak)
The constant feedback forces the rider to modify their pedal stroke and
always provide positive torque to the cranks with both legs.
My final conclusion is that they worked for me.
I've been a life time sports and fitness enthusiast and have been cycling
competitively for the last 10 years. I'm 50 years old so for me to see the
improvement in my performance over the last several months has been
totally awesome.
Winning a Bronze Medal at World Masters Track has been a real kick. Its been
almost 3 weeks and I'm still grinning.
The following is a list of observations/hints that I discovered when using
the cranks and may be useful to some in obtaining maximum benefit.
1/ Pulling up on the cranks is best achieved at a lower cadence (80 rpm). At
this speed the hamstrings and hip flexors get a good workout but expect it
to take a couple of weeks for these muscles to be strong enough for you
to pedal continuously for a couple of miles at a time.
2/ Modification of ones pedal stroke with increased pull-up tends to
diminish the magnitude of the downstroke. Someone actually reported
that they deteriorated overall after using the Cranks.
This is noticeable when climbing out of the saddle or trying to
accelerate quickly with a pedal stomp. What I did to counteract this was to
do a few 10 minute sessions of climbing a week using my quads only to
maintain their power and strength.
3/ The Power Cranks require good discipline to use as they are more awkward
to get in and out of the pedals and are less user friendly when freewheeling
and riding in traffic. I choose a 10 mile loop with light traffic and a
cycle lane to do most of my training.
It had several good climbs in it and was ideal.
It may be difficult to ride them on a group ride especially if you are out
with a bunch of hammer heads.
Make sure you maintain this kind of ride in your workout program if it is
already there.
4/ I did notice increased leg strength after using the cranks not only when
riding but also when walking around. I seemed to have more spring in my step
5/ My training sessions got faster especially intervals on the track.
My pursuit pace for training improved from last years 30 mph to 32 mph this
summer.
6/ My top speed improved from around 35mph to 38mph.
7/ Although I didn't ride any TTs this year (missed Nats with broken arm) my
30min power workouts on the trainer improved to equal my best ever without
having to do my killer TT intervals.
8/ My AT heart rate improved from my usual (low 150s) to 160.
160 was normally my max yet I was able to sustain it for 30 mins......wow.
9/ Most good weeks I put in around 100 miles with the cranks. After several
weeks I noticed that I was automatically pedaling with the same action on my
race, rain and track bikes with regular cranks.
10/ The sound of my trainer has gone from whir....whir....whir....whir to
....whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I look forward to continue training with the cranks in the off season and
hope to do a PR in the 40k TT next season. Masters Nats in is in my
home state (WA) for 2001.
Regards
Phil Holman
Peter Cole
news:e#DqjwEJAHA.345@cpmsnbbsa09...
> This will be my final report for 2000 having trained fairly consistently
> with the Power Cranks for the last 7 months>
> 8/ My AT heart rate improved from my usual (low 150s) to 160.
> 160 was normally my max yet I was able to sustain it for 30 mins......wow.
I don't understand how Power Cranks could have improved cardio-vascular
function. Could you elaborate on how this might be possible?
philh...@my-deja.com
was seeing, and this is only my opinion, was an increase in leg muscle
utilization that taxed my cardio-vascular system to a greater degree.
Some people beleave that cycling is limited by cardio-vascular capacity.
If this was true then we could take an athlete from another sport (say
rowing) and expect an almost similar level of aerobic power output when
cycling.
Obviously this will not happen but at what point can we say that the
cycling muscles have reached a trained state for the cardio-vacular
system to be the limiting factor. It seems my 10 years of competitive
cycling at between 100 and 200 hundred miles a week didn't get me there.
The PowerCranks are getting me closer to it.
Anyone else care to comment.
Phil Holman
Phil Holman
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Jobst Brandt
>> I don't understand how Power Cranks could have improved
>> cardio-vascular function. Could you elaborate on how this might be
>> possible?
> An interesting question but I'm not sure that they did. What I think
> I was seeing, and this is only my opinion, was an increase in leg
> muscle utilization that taxed my cardio-vascular system to a greater
> degree. Some people believe that cycling is limited by
> cardio-vascular capacity.
That is probably correct and that would also produce poorer net
output, each muscle beyond the minimum needed having its own overhead,
would reduce net output over using the primary muscles at the same
aerobic rate.
> If this was true then we could take an athlete from another sport
> (say rowing) and expect an almost similar level of aerobic power
> output when cycling.
That is a non parallel comparison, however if you compare two athletes
skilled in bicycling, I believe you would see a decrease in
performance for the rider who engages extra muscles, the rider who
was conditioned on power cranks.
> Obviously this will not happen but at what point can we say that the
> cycling muscles have reached a trained state for the cardio-vascular
> system to be the limiting factor. It seems my 10 years of
> competitive cycling at between 100 and 200 hundred miles a week
> didn't get me there. The PowerCranks are getting me closer to it.
> Anyone else care to comment.
I don't think you are a suitable specimen to evaluate whether there
are merits to this method for general application. I believe to
validate this, young racers who are well trained should try it.
Racers in retirement years have often invented uncommon positions,
special handlebars, unconventional cranks and the like, claiming great
advantage when in fact the device was an accommodation of their
declining athletic ability.
Jobst Brandt <jbr...@hpl.hp.com>
Phil Holman
>
>I don't think you are a suitable specimen to evaluate whether there
>are merits to this method for general application. I believe to
>validate this, young racers who are well trained should try it.
>Racers in retirement years have often invented uncommon positions,
>special handlebars, unconventional cranks and the like, claiming great
>advantage when in fact the device was an accommodation of their
>declining athletic ability.
>
>Jobst Brandt <jbr...@hpl.hp.com>
The problem with young racers is that you do not know if they would have
improved anyway. In my case any improvement is not so easily explained.
The cranks are a training device and I do not see a parallel with the
devices
you mention. Until I'd tried them for a while, I too was sceptical.
Phil Holman
Jay Beattie
Phil Holman wrote in message
<#6F4mI0JAHA.66@cpmsnbbsa09>...
Although, without a control, it is rather hard to
say whether your improved fitness resulted from
the cranks or from following a strict training
regimen -- or from something else. Is there any
testing where a similar populations followed the
same training routine using standard cranks? --
Jay Beattie.
Phil Holman
>say whether your improved fitness resulted from
>the cranks or from following a strict training
>regimen -- or from something else. Is there any
>testing where a similar populations followed the
>same training routine using standard cranks? --
>Jay Beattie.
>
weight but my goal was to see if they worked for me
without any increase in training quality or quantity above
what I normally do. It would be impossible to do a blind test
so a scientifically controlled study would be very difficult.
I haven't heard any other explanation that I would consider to be
plausible for the improvements I have experienced.
As far as Jobst's contention of declining athletic ability,
I have yet to experience this as far as cycling goes.
The hounds of the inevitable are not yet snapping at my
heels.
Phil Holman
Peter Cole
<philh...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8qo73i$67a$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <5wLz5.16528$tn.2...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>,
> "Peter Cole" <pete...@mediaone.net> wrote:
> cardio-vascular
> > function. Could you elaborate on how this might be possible?
> >
> An interesting question but I'm not sure that they did. What I think I
> was seeing, and this is only my opinion, was an increase in leg muscle
> utilization that taxed my cardio-vascular system to a greater degree.
It would be nice to be able to separate the cardio-vascular improvement from
strength improvement. It could be that all of the gains you've seen are
cardio-vascular performance based. If that's true, and the Power Cranks did
improve that capacity simply by enlisting more muscle groups, and through
that making your training rides more cardio-vascular intensive, rather than
retraining muscles and/or strengthening or enlisting new muscles, then
theoretically, similar gains could be achieved with any mechanism that would
get the same c-v workout.
Tom Kunich
differently and became stronger because of the riding and not the power
cranks. Fitness in athletes over 45 or so is a strange thing that is
difficult to achieve. As Jobst pointed out, older athletes invent all sorts
of things that are nothing but accommodations or sugar pills designed to
fool the senior athlete into performing better. Hey, if they work that is
fine, but I wouldn't subscribe the improvement to a (in my opinion) silly
crank idea.
I first saw these things on a Hamilton (I think) back in the late 80's or
early 90's being ridden by Hamilton himself. He swore that they gave him a
lot more power but it was also plain that he was as strong as an ox and he
would have pulled away from the lot of us if he'd been riding a kiddy car.
"Phil Holman" <phi...@email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:O2YmMf1JAHA.324@cpmsnbbsa09...
philh...@my-deja.com
to gain any improvement using the Cranks. For whatever reason I did just
that as honestly and accurately as I could. According to Jobst my
performance should have deteriorated. I agree that maybe you cannot make
a general statement that this will work for everybody. As for you
thinking that I've been kidding myself into performing better.....
highly unlikely but I do have a possible US record for the 2K TT and a
Bronze at World Masters....what I want to know is how I can kid myself
into a Gold.
Phil Holman
In article <8qqh1s$j0m$1...@news.cadence.com>,
philh...@my-deja.com
harder. I think I ride that train as far as it will go anyway.
I appreciate your serious intent in trying to analyze what is happening
but I think, short of controlled performance testing of all attributes,
we are only speculating.
Jobst Brandt
>> I don't think you are a suitable specimen to evaluate whether there
>> are merits to this method for general application. I believe to
>> validate this, young racers who are well trained should try it.
>> Racers in retirement years have often invented uncommon positions,
>> special handlebars, unconventional cranks and the like, claiming great
>> advantage when in fact the device was an accommodation of their
>> declining athletic ability.
> The problem with young racers is that you do not know if they would
> have improved anyway. In my case any improvement is not so easily
> explained. The cranks are a training device and I do not see a
> parallel with the devices you mention. Until I'd tried them for a
> while, I too was sceptical.
I guess I failed to mention the obvious but unless you are in the top
echelon of bicyclists, almost anything can be claimed as an
improvement and still be a lot worse that someone who never tried it
or follows any non standard training regimen. Against what are you
measuring your results?
I was thinking about these cranks as I rode over the Sierra Nevada
last Tuesday and Wednesday covering the canyon of the Tuolumne, Tioga,
Conway, Devil's Gate, Monitor, Ebbetts, Pacific Grade passes and the
canyon of the Stanislaus. I wonder what these cranks could possibly
have done to make that faster or easier. We had a great ride but
gratuitous muscle activity has never been on the bill. As many times
as have taken these rides, I have never seen anyone spin while
climbing even a short distance. I find these exercises optional and
contrived by riders who have not ridden to limits of endurance.
I've been doing these rides since 1958 and have seen a lot of riders
come and go. When it came to climbing the hill it all boiled down to
doing the work with simple downstroke force and pulling straight up.
All this over the top, round pedaling and scraping shit of the sole is
in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has 24% and Sonora 26% grades.
Jobst Brandt <jbr...@hpl.hp.com>
Alan Quincy
Tom Thompson
Jobst Brandt wrote in message
<snip>
>I've been doing these rides since 1958 and have seen a lot of riders
>come and go. When it came to climbing the hill it all boiled down to
>doing the work with simple downstroke force and pulling straight up.
>All this over the top, round pedaling and scraping shit of the sole is
>in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has 24% and Sonora 26% grades.
Ouch! If I tried to "scrape the sole" on those grades, my hamstrings would
end up coiled around my ass.
Tom "flatlander" Thompson
Tim McNamara
<jbr...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about these cranks as I rode over the Sierra Nevada
> last Tuesday and Wednesday covering the canyon of the Tuolumne, Tioga,
> Conway, Devil's Gate, Monitor, Ebbetts, Pacific Grade passes and the
> canyon of the Stanislaus. I wonder what these cranks could possibly
> have done to make that faster or easier. We had a great ride but
> gratuitous muscle activity has never been on the bill. As many times
> as have taken these rides, I have never seen anyone spin while
> climbing even a short distance. I find these exercises optional and
> contrived by riders who have not ridden to limits of endurance.
I dug out the atlas and looked around for these places. Looks like
"fun." :-0
Actually, from what I've seen of photos of the area, it does look like
fun as long as everyone is willing to wait for me to plug my way up the
hill. My mental picture of California tends to be of the Beverly
Hillbillies (seriously), L.A., San Francisco, Monterey or Big Sur,
which are not representative of the range of terrains and ecosystems in
California. I spent two months in Big Sur (without a bike, dang it) in
Feb-April 1981; wonderful area and I've always wanted to go back and
ride the Nacimiento Road from Hwy 1 into the hills, if it still looks
like it did then.
> I've been doing these rides since 1958 and have seen a lot of riders
> come and go. When it came to climbing the hill it all boiled down to
> doing the work with simple downstroke force and pulling straight up.
> All this over the top, round pedaling and scraping shit of the sole is
> in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has 24% and Sonora 26% grades.
Those sound like pretty extreme climbs- pretty much 9,000 foot walls-
and spinning would simply not be possible. You'd need about a 24 x 32
to even try, and at those pitches you'd just be popping wheelies trying
to sit and spin. What *do* you use to get over those things, anyway?
The local 25% hill just about pops my eyes out of my head in a 39 x 23,
and it's only 250 feet tall!
Robert L. Frazier
>I was thinking about these cranks as I rode over the Sierra Nevada
>last Tuesday and Wednesday covering the canyon of the Tuolumne, Tioga,
>Conway, Devil's Gate, Monitor, Ebbetts, Pacific Grade passes and the
>canyon of the Stanislaus. I wonder what these cranks could possibly
>have done to make that faster or easier. We had a great ride but
>gratuitous muscle activity has never been on the bill. As many times
>as have taken these rides, I have never seen anyone spin while
>climbing even a short distance. I find these exercises optional and
>contrived by riders who have not ridden to limits of endurance.
>
>I've been doing these rides since 1958 and have seen a lot of riders
>come and go. When it came to climbing the hill it all boiled down to
>doing the work with simple downstroke force and pulling straight up.
>All this over the top, round pedaling and scraping shit of the sole is
>in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has 24% and Sonora 26% grades.
>
It is difficult to make out the argument here. It can't be that there
there aren't better or worse ways to do things, e.g. pedal. That would
be too silly for words. It would be seem to be this: if one does
something long enough, and the cost of doing it is high enough, then one
ends up doing it as efficiently as possible. Ops. This one is pretty
bad as well.
Best wishes,
Bob
--
Robert L. Frazier email: robert....@chch.ox.ac.uk
Christ Church www: kant1.chch.ox.ac.uk
Oxford OX1 1DP, UK (PGP Public Key is at this site)
Treasurer, The British Society for Ethical Theory
Jobst Brandt
>> I've been doing these rides since 1958 and have seen a lot of riders
>> come and go. When it came to climbing the hill it all boiled down to
>> doing the work with simple downstroke force and pulling straight up.
>> All this over the top, round pedaling and scraping shit of the sole is
>> in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has 24% and Sonora 26% grades.
> Those sound like pretty extreme climbs- pretty much 9,000 foot walls-
> and spinning would simply not be possible. You'd need about a 24 x 32
> to even try, and at those pitches you'd just be popping wheelies trying
> to sit and spin. What *do* you use to get over those things, anyway?
> The local 25% hill just about pops my eyes out of my head in a 39 x 23,
> and it's only 250 feet tall!
Some details are at:
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Recreation/SierraSpring.htm
http://www-math.science.unitn.it/Bike/Countries/Europe/#Jobst
Jobst Brandt <jbr...@hpl.hp.com>
Phil Holman
>I guess I failed to mention the obvious but unless you are in the top
>echelon of bicyclists, almost anything can be claimed as an
>improvement and still be a lot worse that someone who never tried it
>or follows any non standard training regimen. Against what are you
>measuring your results?
Against my previous racing and training records over the last 10 years.
Credit me a enough competence in being able to detect an
improvement.
>
>I was thinking about these cranks as I rode over the Sierra Nevada
>last Tuesday and Wednesday covering the canyon of the Tuolumne, Tioga,
>Conway, Devil's Gate, Monitor, Ebbetts, Pacific Grade passes and the
>canyon of the Stanislaus. I wonder what these cranks could possibly
>have done to make that faster or easier. We had a great ride but
>gratuitous muscle activity has never been on the bill. As many times
>as have taken these rides, I have never seen anyone spin while
>climbing even a short distance. I find these exercises optional and
>contrived by riders who have not ridden to limits of endurance.
The training purpose of the cranks is to enable the user to push bigger
gears at a lower cadence. If your riding technique has enabled you to
condition the muscles that pull up on the pedal stroke then the cranks
will do very little for you.
>I've been doing these rides since 1958 and have seen a lot of riders
>come and go. When it came to climbing the hill it all boiled down to
>doing the work with simple downstroke force and pulling straight up.
>All this over the top, round pedaling and scraping shit of the sole is
>in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has 24% and Sonora 26% grades.
There is nothing easy about training with the cranks. Sure you can do these
rides ....you are well practiced but I doubt that the "pulling straight up"
you refer
to is sufficient for you to pedal these cranks for more than a couple of
minutes
at 20 mph on a flat road.......no shit. Speculation on your part is no
substitute
for trying them.
Phil Holman
Jay Beattie
Jobst Brandt wrote in message
>Tim McNamara writes:
>
>>> I've been doing these rides since 1958 and
have seen a lot of riders
>>> come and go. When it came to climbing the
hill it all boiled down to
>>> doing the work with simple downstroke force
and pulling straight up.
>>> All this over the top, round pedaling and
scraping shit of the sole is
>>> in fact just so much shit. Ebbetts pass has
24% and Sonora 26% grades.
>
>> Those sound like pretty extreme climbs- pretty
much 9,000 foot walls-
>> and spinning would simply not be possible.
You'd need about a 24 x 32
>> to even try, and at those pitches you'd just be
popping wheelies trying
>> to sit and spin. What *do* you use to get over
those things, anyway?
>> The local 25% hill just about pops my eyes out
of my head in a 39 x 23,
>> and it's only 250 feet tall!
>
>
>http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Recreation/SierraSpr
ing.htm
>http://www-math.science.unitn.it/Bike/Countries/E
urope/#Jobst
Are you sure about the grades? IMO, Pacific Grade
(from the east) is harder than Ebbetts, although
much shorter. BTW, Tim, the grades are manageable
for a decent climber with a 39/26 unloaded. That's
what I used on the Death Ride(s) when I was in
shape, and it seemed to be a pretty popular combo
for people who were trying to keep up a good pace.
Touring the same passes loaded was a different
issue, although even in a granny, I never popped a
wheelie. -- Jay Beattie.