The only joke is a poster who thinks his personal experiences are more valid than a wealth of research on the matter. In your last futile rant on the subject it was pointed out that the research on the subject is pretty clear cut.

For every personal anecdote I have several of riders with strong cores or massive gym based strength totals who look awful and uneconomical on the bike and can't sustain that power for longer than it takes to perform a squat or deadlift. They look forward to the day when the 25m sprint is introduced!

Get your position dialled, have a well planned training programme, use an appropriate cadence and most people will be fine. For those who are not I wouldn't jump the gun that more strength or stronger core is the first thing I would pull out of the toolbox.

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Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach

Oh, there's a joke in this thread alright

But, as always, thanks for your contribution rusty. Always detailed and full of facts.

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"Physiology is all just propaganda and lies... all waiting to be disproven by the next study."
"I'm not a real doctor; But I am a real worm; I am an actual worm." - TMBG

I feel that training and racing are more complicated than this, and that's why we get into these circular arguments. To me personal anecdotes remind us of the randomness and oddness of humans - they show that its not always the vanilla plain training that was required at the time for a specific individual.

There is a gulf between the "high level and general" advice which is broadly applicable to most people (that which tapeworm advocates), such as increase your FTP through 2x20's, and the specific requirements of a single individual at a point in time, which tends to be described in hindsight as personal anecdotes, especially when they are a little out of the ordinary.

If I look around my club I see people from all sorts of fitness backgrounds with a huge range of strengths, weakness, deficiencies and over-developments. There are some general principles relevant to all, but there is not necessarily one true path that we all should follow. Training is about finding what works for you at this time. Tapeworm (picking on him as he's by far the most voluble!) makes broad general statements as if they were truths relevant to every specific individual; to the extent that if you do not agree with these general statements in every specific case then you are ignorant or lazy. I rarely, or have ever, seen a caveat of "in general..." or "for many people..."

I saw gains in 1 minute and 5s power over 2 months when I just doing level 2/LSD rides coupled with core stability work (from 570 to 640w at 72kg). This was absolutely and totally against my expectations - I did my power test expecting much poorer numbers at the end of that period and was gobsmacked when I hit a new pb. My hindsight rationalisation is that my poor core stability (and it was poor!) caused me to tense my abs to hold myself steady - which in turn meant that I had difficulty breathing. The core work meant that I was more relaxed on the bike at high efforts and therefore could put out more power.

I would never give the general advice that someone should do core work to increase power, but at the same time I would never belittle someone that has seen gains from core work (or any other training approach) in their specific experience.

jon

The contradictions within your anecdote are staggering. And highlights why I am so voluble about clearing up myths, misconceptions and generally incorrect training advice.

As I have stated many times, knock yourself out with weights, yoga, pilates, salsa dancing or cribbage, but don't try tell it boosted your power.

I'd be happy to actually discuss/argue the physiological reason why or why not some may think the reason why doing X has or has not lead to Y but there are lots of anecdotes, very little reasoning.

_________________
"Physiology is all just propaganda and lies... all waiting to be disproven by the next study."
"I'm not a real doctor; But I am a real worm; I am an actual worm." - TMBG

Tapeworm and myself advocate evidence based practice.

I have tried a lot of different training methods and some worked and some didn't. I had a massage therapist who used reflexology and when my hip flexor was tight he would massage my foot and it would come right.

But what is missing in all these personal experiences is the chance that it came right for some other reason. This is why we compare a group of cyclists training one way verses another way or a particular therapy against another and use as many subjects as possible so we can remove the chance that some third variable was at play.

I have some riders who came to me looking awful on the bike. I have performed every core test I know and they pass with flying colours. Some positional changes and video feedback was all it took to get them sitting more comfortably on the bike and producing more power for longer.

Maybe your time doing L2 was the cure to overtraining and this is why your performance improved. I see this in countless riders who get hung up on hard miles or just solely doing heavy interval work. They are in a hole and trying to dig their way out by training harder. L2 work is at times the best therapy for this and performance will improve.

But they could have done it right the first time.

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Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach

Potential for strength and endurance training to amplify endurance performance
R. C. Hickson, B. A. Dvorak, E. M. Gorostiaga, T. T. Kurowski, and C. Foster
+ Author Affiliations

Department of Physical Education, University of Illinois, Chicago 60680.
Abstract

The impact of adding heavy-resistance training to increase leg-muscle strength was studied in eight cycling- and running-trained subjects who were already at a steady-state level of performance. Strength training was performed 3 days/wk for 10 wk, whereas endurance training remained constant during this phase. After 10 wk, leg strength was increased by an average of 30%, but thigh girth and biopsied vastus lateralis muscle fiber areas (fast and slow twitch) and citrate synthase activities were unchanged. Maximal O2 uptake (VO2max) was also unchanged by heavy-resistance training during cycling (55 ml.kg-1.min-1) and treadmill running (60 ml.kg-1.min-1); however, short-term endurance (4-8 min) was increased by 11 and 13% (P less than 0.05) during cycling and running, respectively. Long-term cycling to exhaustion at 80% VO2max increased from 71 to 85 min (P less than 0.05) after the addition of strength training, whereas long-term running (10 km times) results were inconclusive. These data do not demonstrate any negative performance effects of adding heavy-resistance training to ongoing endurance-training regimens. They indicate that certain types of endurance performance, particularly those requiring fast-twitch fiber recruitment, can be improved by strength-training supplementation.

Copyright © 1988 the American Physiological Society

Hello

CoachFergie says "Tapeworm and myself advocate evidence based practice."

This is a noble sentiment. I'll highlight though that although you both may aspire to this, you rarely reference studies or post objective data to support your assertions. Tapeworm habitually goes down the route of "studies show..." without reference to said studies, while CoachFergie, as in the previous post (and somewhat ironically) often falls back on personal experience. The story about some riders that came to him carries no more or no less weight than my story; yet is used to belittle my experience as just an anecdote, while his experience is evidence of his truth

If both of you want to advocate evidence based practise, then pony up with the evidence! I think its tough though, much tougher to relate academic studies to real life scenarios than you guys allow; you talk the talk without attempting to walk it - stuff from the journals is rarely cut and dried and specific cases often diverge or at complete odds with the general truth (my granny lived to 105 and smoked 40 a day, etc, etc).

People are strange and physiology is complex; I am only advocating that you keep in mind that the specific is not the general; that it is possible that core stability (for example) could be the key to getting a specific rider to perform better, but even if that is the case, it does not mean there is a general rule that core stability will make any given rider perform.

As for my anecdote, as I said I'm not clear why a diet only of Level 2 LSD and core work boosted my 1 minute power; I have a theory given the data available to me. I can attest that was not due to overtraining (as I had a couple of months off prior to this bloke - while the old 1 min was my previous pb) , but I'm happy to hear what other "evidence based" theories you guys would put forward. On "The contradictions within your anecdote are staggering." I'm afraid dont follow - this feels like a cheap shot to belittle me, mainly because I've given so little information that there's little there to contradict! Regardless - fire away, give me the two or more contradictions and we'll see if either of us can learn something

Cheers

jon


btw - there's references to core stability and athletic performance here: http://tinyurl.com/7zxj64e" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (just the link to the reference pages of the elphinston book on google books). The journal of strength and conditioning paper on cycling mechanics is interesting: core fatigue basically led to riders knees wobbling around, but no difference in power during the short testing that they took part in. More re$earch required

Re Rick's posted abstract

Do we know the training level of those subjects? Do we know the endurance training regiment details? Could be useful...

Guys are often pointing to studies, only thing is when the same old boring debate always pops up it becomes anoying to always dig for references while people could use the sesrch function and/or actually take the time to read posted abstracts/study.

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2013 rocky mountain vertex 29er
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www.cyclingtrainingnuts.blogspot.ca

> How to you measure a "more efficient Pedal stroke"?

You measure the power input (how much power do your muscle generate) and the power output (how much power actually contributes to forward motion). That was easy.

None of the subjects were competitive cyclists and there was no control group or group that performed interval training where the gains from a 10 week programme are substantially greater. Similar studies using short interval training on non competitive subjects using shorter time frames have seen improvements in time to exhaustion of up to 100% (studies by either Burgomaster or Gibala).

But then we don't ride to exhaustion we pace ourselves over the duration we ride and set the power accordingly.

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Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach

http://jap.physiology.org/content/98/6/1985.short
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 12094/full

I have access to most full journals as we often know the abstract does not tell the full picture.

Within reason I can post summary of objective power data showing improvements in power from riders who don't use weight training or achieve a more powerful aerodynamic position from bike set alone without any gimmicks or core training.



Nice little strawman. My examples are used as illustrations not as evidence.



Yes a typical low quality study seen in JSCR.

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Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle#Efficiency

Of course only one aspect of the performance equation.

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Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach

https://physsportsmed.org/doi/10.3810/psm.2011.09.1933

A recent study that dispels the myth that muscle atrophies with age.

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Hamish Ferguson
Cycling Coach

The studies that you've posted show intervals can be beneficial to cycling performance; I doubt that there is anyone that would disagree with that position. I'm interested in the studies on which you base your evidence-based view that an improvement in core stability cannot improve 1 minute power in a specific individual at a specific time.

Your "strawman" statement doesnt detract from the fact that you're ready and willing to use personal experience stories when it suits you, but claim that they are worthless and belittle others when they follow suit.

jon

Ok let's have a look at what you posted:-



So to start.

1) How did you ascertain your core was unstable? Did you notice your spine flopping over when you walk? Could you walk up stairs? Where you leaning to one side, forwards, backwards? Hips rocking? Was it an assessment by a physio? Video movement analysis? Muscle biopsies?

2) So you were using your abs to hold you steady.... Once again, how did you ascertain this? And when in a forward facing position (like on a bike) the "abz" are there to cause flexion (bend forward) in the the spine. I would hazard a guess that it wasn't your abs.

3) What "core" work did you actually do?

4) After doing "core work" your muscles were more relaxed, so relaxing made you more stable? Or was it the "core strength". And once again, how was this ascertained?

_________________
"Physiology is all just propaganda and lies... all waiting to be disproven by the next study."
"I'm not a real doctor; But I am a real worm; I am an actual worm." - TMBG