LBP power to weight values?

[-Adam-]

Hi Rob/Jeurg,

If you can share the data, would it be possible for you to post some test info on some of your elite athletes?

I would be interested to see how those you have tested so far compare...

Cheers,

Adam

[Michelle]

Adam said

[quote]elite athletes

[Robh]

Hi Adam,

Juerg will be able to answer this question better than myself.

Will wait for Juerg to reply.

Rob

[Juerg FaCT]

This infor is for Adam , Sorry Toks it is in swenglish and late of the day so better don't start to read , as it is long, complicated and bad english, and I don't like that your headache medication bill is going through the roof .

We use this power to weight ratio in our bigger camps to help the client to make his own decision on a specific day , in what group he likes to ride and what the intensity will mean for his own zoning.
So the group leader will have a power meter ( and a HR monitor for himself) on his bike and will ride as an example 240 watt avarage over the 150 km. So, for a person of 80 kg this would be a ratio of 3.0.This client may like to do a LBP +- intensity ride.
His LBP ratio may be 3.0.
Average time on this tour based on other years with 240 wattage with a break by 75 km would be 6 hours.
Training on LBP +- 5 beats is from our point of testing in the glucose energy supply zone. So 6 hours would empty even with glucose supply during the ride his storage out, which is no problem, if he does not ride the next day. But in camps the go every day 120 - 220 km so "overload" like crazy and he can't refuel the glycogen storgage in this 12 hours left as rest time.
So 2 choices if he likes to stay in this group.
1. Stop by 75 km and return with the bus
2. Stay the full 6 hours , but the next day go in the 160 wattage group ( his ratio 2.0 which may be in the STF zone for him.
Now here some ratio ideas.
a) from 1500 cyclists tested in one camp the average ratio over all was 3.0 +- 0.5 ( 2.5 - 3.5 )
The advanced group was between 3.5 - 4.5 ( perhaps 15 % of the clients , and this where often riders racing in regular events over the summer.)
If we test national team member we have ratio :
Road cyclists : 5.5 + -0.5 with 2 olympians on the road 6.0 +- and one by 6.6.
Olympians MTB are somewhat lower 5.5+- 0.5.
So ratio on 4.0 is already a very good and fit cyclist with a job besides cycling and no kids and no family commitement.
For womens 2.5 - 3. is often very good already . Top female junior rider and pan am champion in MTB 5.1.
This are tests all done on the same wattage Taxc trainer and the ratio may vary from equipment to equipment.
The taxc was adjusted to a power tap we used than on the road to compare.
We tested on the same unit with the same athlet power tap /SRM/ and taxc wattage to see the difference with a former Discovery channel client.
Hope this will give you some inside view ADAM.
Congratulation Toks you made it down all the way , good for you and I knew you would be a fast secret learner with some own ideas and grey matter knots up there ( smile ).
You may remember Dr. Lindt and the Vit . C story , well it took the Vatican much longer to accept Galileo's idea of "the world is round (over 500 years in fact.) So lot's of time left for anybody to get some more reading into Rob's testing in the UK.

[Robh]

So far both Stu and Geroge have got up to 325 watts on the ramp test @ PE of 8 (which is subjective).

Was looking at a website earlier from a level II coach that Juerg knows. His name is Steve Neal. On his site there's some info on one of his athletes, doesn't say about their watts @ LBP but shows the person hitting 350W @ 184HR don't know if this is max effort or @ PE of 8.

Scroll down his webpage and you will see the test info :-

http://www.steveneal.ca/

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_a2qqQdAIyqo/S ... G_0258.JPG

[-Adam-]

Thanks Juerg.

So an Olympian at 6.6w/kg at LBP??? I thought 6.7w/kg for 1 hour was meant to be the mecca for a Tour cyclist. Isn't your LBP power supposed to be sustainable much beyond 1 hour?

Also, I'm being picky, but could you use more lines between your sentances. It's just when you write 25 lines in one go with no breaks, it makes it quite hard to read! Thanks.

Is w/kg at LBP an important factor in the FaCT methods?

[quote="-Adam-"]So an Olympian at 6.6w/kg at LBP??? I thought 6.7w/kg for 1 hour was meant to be the mecca for a Tour cyclist. Isn't your LBP power supposed to be sustainable much beyond 1 hour?

[Robh]

Juerg,

The ex-discovery channel rider, how does his LBP wattage compare to his 1 hour time trial power?

How long can he ride at his LBP wattage/HR before their is a drift?

From what Andrew was saying to me in Mallorca this person's LBP is the 170bpm mark.

Thanks Rob

[Juerg FaCT]

Rob. Here is the problem with the idea of comparing datas., That's why I hate to offer infos on athletes.
Here just a very general observation over all this years.
. Most of the top athletes we have tested or have exchanged infos under test centers show wattage output between 320 - 460 wattage during TT (TT ranges from the short 5 km up to 50 km.)Equipment used SRM. ergonomo or power tap, so it is possibly with an error accepted of +- 10 %
During longer stages in small groups in the front like a road race in the olympics or a stage from the Tour they show wattage levels of 280 - 320 watts over longer period of the stage.
As mentioned the power to weight ratio in a test situation is in top athletes by 5.5 - 6.5 on a trainer at LBP .( 360 - 440 with an error of 5 % +-5 )
Interestingly enough but not surprising is the fact , that in the real world on the race and the road the power outputs seem to be higher and we see differences , where we tested athlets where LBP wattage was 350 ( lab), but in a TT it was up to 400.
It seems that the ability to "work" the bike on the road with the whole body as in comparison to the testing in the lab can , depending on the athlete , change the power output by 10 - 15 %.
Last but not least we see , that over a short period we can change the LBP with specific intervention ( possibly a re-adjustment of the CGM) and can move LBP HR up by 5 - 15 beats.
Problem again here is , that we look at a very small elite group.
In our real world of cyclist with no specific interventions we see LBP wattage somewhere from a ratio of 3.5 -4.5 with 4.5 considered already a very good rider.
So the avaerage LBP HR of the above athlete in the off season is 155 +- 5 and in specific race situation we can move it to 165 +-5.
The actual physiological connection , why we can do that, but why we can't hold it there for very long, is still a mystery and one of the reasons , why we shift much of our testing efforts for the moment into live cardiac assessments to see, how SV, LVET and EDV correlate with respiration , RPM and even position changes on the bike.
There are some very interesting research paper now out , who show , that women react differently to areo position than man .
There are datas out from TT of the Tour (L'alp d'Huez ) where there were wattage output measured of 475 - 500 watts ) which would show up as a ratio of app. 6.5- 7. over a duration of 40 min. ( data from Dr. S. Padilla form the athletic club de Bilbao , Basque Country ( Spain )
When we review our data from the Taxc trainer and compare it with SRM output, than we see in higher intensity an overestimation from the taxc compared to the SRM of 10 % +- 5 , depending on the level of wattage. As higher the wattage as more of we are. So for example 400 watts on the taxc will be closer to 360 on the SRM. 300 on the taxc is about 290 on the SRM and by 250 - 300 we are pretty much equal. (tested on the same bike at the same time. )
The wattage info we have from real races are either from SRM or powertap and again the calibration can be off by 5 % +- 5 easy depending on outside temperatur.
So for our testing purposes the important part is , to use alwasy the same setup and only compare intra-individual as we look at trends in performance lines and recovery lines.
Last but not least:
We make all the mistake to compare watts , without understanding , that even high tech equipment has an accepted variation of 5 % , even in very highly accepted lab tests.
For us the comparison is on a much simpler scale. Go and race against each other and you see , who on that specific day has all the different variables best mixed together to win.
Best example is the nonsense of comparing VO2 max values.
2 racers ( real numbers) VO2 max 85
New york marathon
Time from the winner just below 2.10
Time from the other world class athlete just below 3 h. If the would have changed the sport to cycling it would have looked the opposite.