On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 4:30:59 PM UTC-7, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Thu, 21 Mar 2019 09:54:33 +1100, James
wrote:

On 21/3/19 9:09 am, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 1:51:54 PM UTC-7,
wrote:


Jay, you said that you raced professionally in one of these
postings. Was that a joke or were you serious?

I raced with professionals on occasion, but I was never a
professional -- unless my staggering winnings as an amateur elevate
me to pro status. I once won a crate of Kettle chips, some water
bottles, prime change and some free swag that everybody got. I got
some t-shirts that didn't fit. I suppose that's not good enough to be
considered a pro.


Same here!

And yes, I know about pedaling technique and am tired of hearing
about it since it changes every ten minutes -- along with fit. Pedal
circles, scrape dog **** off your sole, pedal up and down, etc., etc.
I'm waiting for someone to chime in again about the mystical pedaling
technique of Jacques Anquetil. We had that long thread about 15-20
years ago with that guy who was going on about Jacques Anquetil. I
think he was trying to sell a book. Apparently there are still some
dark mysteries about Jacques' pedaling technique.


I trained and raced with a fellow who had a very ordinary pedalling
style, to the point I've seen his legs stop at the dead spots and cause
the freewheel to clunk as his legs start moving again.

He won several big races as a masters competitor.

Quite a while ago, probably during the era when Lance Armstrong was
winning, I read a test made by (I think the same lab where Lance was
tested) of professional pedaling and it was found that during normal
riding the majority of the professionals tested applied the majority
of the pedal pressure on the down stroke and diminishing amounts on
the "back stroke" ,and normally, very little, if any on the "up
stroke". Out of the seat "sprinting" was a bit different with larger
amount of force applied on the "up stroke" but only for a limited
amount of time.

But, of course, this was nearly 20 years ago and perhaps "modern"
cyclists do it different now.

--
Cheers,
John B.

If you observe the physiology of the human body you'd discover that the human leg musculature is designed to pull the mass of the human body upright and hold it there whereas the muscles on the forward part are less heavily loaded.

So yes, you always pull up more lightly than you press down. And you cannot "retrain" the leg muscles to be what they weren't designed to do. But that doesn't mean that pedaling circles isn't very helpful since it does keep certain muscle groups from tiring so rapidly. As I said elsewhere, I haven't found that you don't tire overall any slower - I tend to eat and drink little on long rides and it is quite noticeable. When I'm riding a century they have rest stops and that allows you to eat and drink and so I find that I don't get tired as rapidly. But it is the same process of using up the blood and muscle lactase.