Friday, November 04, 2005

Power Cranking a Year Later

A little over a year ago in August of 2004 I started to train on power cranks. Power cranks are essentially a training tool that work to improve on bike efficiency by forcing the cyclist to spin perfect circles. To do this the cranks are attached via clutches at the bottom bracket this connection makes it possible for each crank to deliver power independently. In neutral position both crank arms hang down at the 6'oclock position. For more background on them check out www.powercranks.com.

Now on to my experience. If you have read the literature/marketing on the power cranks website you will see some pretty amazing claims. Huge power improvements through massive improvements in spin efficiency. The question, are these improvements real? When I first started training on the cranks I got lots of questions, do those things really work? My answer at that time was, that I wasn't really sure, I'd just started training with them so it was basically to soon to see. But my initial impression was that their impact on my cycling could be substantial. Before starting to train on power cranks, I was easily riding a 100+ miles a day, but after putting power cranks on my bike I could only manage 5 min on the bike before I was in too much pain to continue.

I persevered and after a week on the cranks I could manage a very difficult hour and by the end of a month I was up to a very hard 80 mile days. I continued to train on the power cranks all through the winter, and spring, it continued to get easier. I only switched back to normal cranks right before RAO.

The training philosophy behind the power cranks is that they force you to improve your pedal stroke. But what happens when you go back to normal cranks? Do you revert the older less efficient style or does power crank training successfully make a physiological modification to the pedaling style that carries over?

For the entire summer, I jumped from one race to another, RAO, NWTTS, Fireweed, ROF, and as such the power cranks only found there way back onto the bike this last week.

Tuesday night as I was tightening the crank arm bolts down I thought to myself, this will be the real test did my pedal stroke change? If it had reverted, my hip flexors should have atrophied, and they should be again very difficult to pedal. But, if I hadn't reverted back, then it should be relatively easy to turn over. This was going to be the real test; did last years power crank training have a lasting improvement on my pedal stroke?

To be honest, I was prepared for the worst; I expected it to be very difficult to turn the pedals. It took me a little longer then when I was in the heart of my power crank training last year to get started on the rollers, but once started it was relatively easy. My pedal stroke was vastly better then where it had been a year ago! Yes I'm convinced that power crank training does improve the pedal stroke and with a training the improvements carry directly over back to regular cranks! At least it did for me.

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