The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
http://www.bikecalculator.com/
I guess I don't know OP's position on this issue, but I've definitely heard this from Crossfit/Hyrox types who were all about the Ranger panties, which struck me as a more or less indefensible distinction.
I have been digging into this a bit recently and while I think the smart money is broadly on "freely chosen cadence and pedal how it comes naturally", I've seen a couple of interesting results that I'll use this as an excuse to infodump:
-Hansen et al 2006 tell trained cyclists to pedal at energetically optimal cadence (much lower than freely chosen cadence), subjects report lower perceived effort and exhibit same or better performance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16906415/
-Cueing subjects to unweight their hands while pedalling, without changing position, can improve hip extensor recruitment and potentially performance. I learned about this from this podcast with Jim Martin: https://spotify.link/dwetkKwcSXb Apparently the researcher's name is Ernie Rimer, though I can't find a published paper or presentation.
-Single-leg cycling with a counterweight to smooth out the pedal stroke may be a useful way to overload the musculature of the trained leg relative to what could be done double-legged, see e.g. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.01247.2010 and the podcast I linked above.
My attitude to cycling clothing so far has been similar to my attitude towards cowboy western wear: one item at a time is fine, two is pushing it, three is a costume. So I feel fine wearing the jersey when I'm casually riding around by the river in track pants, and on a longer ride I'll wear the shorts or bibs with a t shirt or windbreaker, but somehow wearing them together just feels too costumey for me, like I'm pretending I'm a much better cyclist than I am. And then I'm not even sure if the jersey and shorts I bought off theblackbibs is even what we're talking about here in terms of aerodynamics. My wife claims the zip up cycling jersey looks sexy, I feel like an overstuffed sausage.
I suppose at 100 miles I'll probably get over that feeling, since at that point I'm really doing something.
To be fair, I take this attitude with most hobbies. A year of BJJ and I still refuse to buy a rashguard.
I was gonna mention this, but I don't actually know how and when these are worn.
It's probably most of the way there. I don't readily know how much energy is saved by going from a Lance-era fit to a present-day fit, but I suspect it's small compared to the difference between baggy t-shirt and Lance-era fit, and you may already have fewer wrinkles than a Lance-era fit.
Kek. Good rule for western wear (though I think you gotta discount jeans, unless worn conspicuously high and tight), but I absorbed more or less the opposite rule for cycling kit at a formative age; there's no reason not to wear a t-shirt over trishorts or bibs but I feel goofy as hell doing it. My dad did some amateur racing in the 80s, so maybe I got it from him.
It's just a tight fitting stretchy shirt for grappling, it gets caught minimally, while also giving you more friction than bare skin. I'll probably pick up a couple this year, but up until now I've gotten along ok in a regular athletic material long sleeve shirt. Partly because the aesthetic on most rashguards is disgustingly stupid, and it clearly has no use outside bjj.
I also sweat like a whore in church, so my game has somewhat developed around being very slippery.
Jeans are generally free, though degree of stitching also plays a part. I'm mostly thinking in my own closet of denim shirt, large belt buckle, cowboy hat, roper boots; they all have their own score. The stetson is obviously tough to begin with, I'll wear it occasionally to stay dry in the rain or snow anyway, but it takes up all available points. The belt buckle is a fun detail with a normal outfit, the boots just look like plain leather shoes normally, combine them and I look like I'm going line dancing or I'm running for Congress in Texas.
I suspect the difference is "at a formative age" you were cycling. I was not, I'm coming at it sucking at it in middle age, and I feel like a full kit wanker if I'm struggling up a hill in my neighborhood dressed like a serious cyclist (to a non-cyclist eye). Idk, I'll probably get over it for the big ride next time, by mile 40 I'm just moving through the world like a selfish ghost anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Re cycling clothing vs athleisure clothes:
There are three major factors at play that make areo cycling wear look goofy while competitive exercising clothing makes you look hawt.
Re. calculator:
I think I was confusing that calculator, this calculator, and plugging in various Cd⋅A from random wind tunnel reports I'd seen. But yeah, I think it's generally in the right direction. Anything that makes you more aero without sacrificing comfort, or reduces rolling resistance, is free speed, and it's not even necessarily negligible speed.
Re. cadence:
I'll have to take a look at the paper when I can get access, since it's paywalled. Based on the abstract I think we're, more or less, on the same page. It looks like their average OPR and FCPR for trained cyclist was well within my 70-110 RPM range I quoted. @FiveHourMarathon was talking about 60 RPM, which seems a bit on the low side, but I assume it will creep up into the 70 with more experience. From there I suspect it depends mostly on individual physiology and ride type. Since the paper was from 2006 I assume that short cranks hadn't been "discovered" yet. My intuition is that higher RPM is more efficient the shorter the cranks, but this adaptation would occur without any explicit cuing.
Re. Single leg:
I see they are talking about much higher intensity than I was. My logic for warming up with single leg drills was:
Additionally, it's easiest to do the drills when using a stationary bike or turbo trainer, since you don't have to worry about traffic or balance. Single leg stuff introduces some novelty which might slightly combat the extreme boredom from training indoors. Also, depending on configuration, the inability to freewheel will highlight dead spots in the pedal stroke. The gain is probably too marginal to be worth the expense or hassle of counterweighted or split cranks for us mere mortals. On the other hand, there isn't a whole lot of cost to warming up on the trainer with single leg drills. I think it's unlikely it's harmful, and there might be some small marginal benefit.
You know, this might actually be the explanation. I was really only thinking of wearing the stuff while doing the thing or maybe immediately après--the actual Soffe Ranger Panties are pretty impractical for non-training wear due to lack of pockets and arguably bare upper thigh contact with common seating areas, so I for one would not wear them out and about any more than I would cycling kit.
I prefer a somewhat thinner one than industry standard, but as far as I can tell this is essentially unavailable in bib form.
Well, the usual finding (replicated here) is that energetically optimal cadence is substantially lower than freely chosen cadence, which is somewhat interesting in its own right, imo. But the interesting part of this paper specifically is that they took trained cyclists who presumably had had a reasonable amount of time to get used to pedaling and find a preferred cadence range (and I tend to believe that that shouldn't take all that long, it ain't rocket surgery--this is also tangentially addressed in the podcast), told them to lower their cadence quite a bit at the same power, and not only were various performance measures improved or unchanged but the subjects actually reported that they weren't working as hard. If they're not choosing their cadence based on what feels easiest, how are they choosing it? (insert some handwaving about being better able to respond to pace changes in mass start racing, etc.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link