January 14, 2021
Sweet Spot Training for Every Rider: Part 2
By Coach John Hughes
In part 1 Sweet Spot Training for Every Rider I described the benefits of Sweet Spot workouts improve a rider’s sustained power. This means that at a given level of effort you’re going faster. Even if you don’t use a power meter to measure it, increasing your sustained power improves your general riding, climbing and riding into a headwind. Read more.
Basic & Obsessive Chain Care
By Jim Langley
No doubt you’ve heard of the cobbler whose children are without shoes because he’s too busy fixing everybody else’s to attend to his own family. That’s kind of like yours truly’s chain care program. A bit like the soul man, I’m busy enough working on other people’s bicycles that I have less time for my own. So, I follow the most basic clean and lube chain care procedure on my everyday ride. Read more.
Take Training and Fitness to the Next Level
By Rick Schultz
In Southern California, the “racing” season never ends. Due to cycling-friendly weather, “racers” go hard all year long. Creatures of habit doing the same rides 3-4 times a week. Same cyclists, same distances, same level of effort. After just a month or so, fitness levels plateau. Read more.
Kitsbow Lory Merino Top Review
By Sheri Rosenbaum
I was not familiar with the Kitsbow brand when their rep approached me to review a few of their products. The founders originally started the company to produce mountain bike gear they couldn’t find on the market. They soon realized that the gear they were producing could be worn both on or off the bike. That’s exactly what the Lory Merino Top is all about. Read more.
Are My Bike Pedals Safe?
QUESTION: I get your emails and I have a question that I’d love to see addressed. There’s been some press about the company Peloton has had a recall of their pedals which reportedly have caused a number of accidents by shearing off. Read more.
5 Easy Homemade Energy Gel Recipes
By Marc Sexton
Traditional energy gels may be convenient to purchase, but the cost can add up pretty quickly. Plus they’re often a pain to deal with while riding, creating sticky hands and pockets and producing a lot of garbage. For rides lasting longer an hour or two, I prefer to fill a small, reusable, semi-rigid gel flask. Read more.
Quick Tip: How to Check Your Carbon Frame
By Rick Schultz
I bought a used carbon frame to use on the trainer. A Neil Pryde that I got for next to nothing. The previous owner dropped the chain so it scuffed up the drive-side bottom bracket area (no structural damage), but he couldn’t tell since he couldn’t get the bottom bracket out. And I think this was the reason for him selling it so cheap – looks like he tried to use a screwdriver to remove the BB? Read more.
Cycling Past 50, 60 and Beyond: Training with Intensity
Cycling Past 50, 60 and Beyond: Training with Intensity explains what happens to your body as you age and the physiological benefits of riding with intensity. Coach John Hughes gives you five progressively harder levels of training and gives three to five examples each of structured and unstructured workouts for each level of training, a total of almost 40 workouts.
Sponsored: Best Masks for Cyclists (and Runners too)
By Lars Hundley
Finding a mask that works well during exercise can be extremely difficult. A bad mask can require constant adjusting as it keeps falling off, or make it too hard to breathe to be realistic for hard efforts because you can’t get enough oxygen. Read more.
Question of the Week
Do you make your own energy drink or energy gels?
Other Cool Stuff to Read
Washington Post: His bike was stolen in Virginia. His response was to collect bikes to fix and give away to people in need.
Bicycle Retailer: Man sues Trek for $5 million and claims that WaveCel helmet claims are exaggerated
End Note
What follows is not related to the above, but this is the only I can to submit a question.
Due to old injuries as led to severe arthritis in an ankle and knee on the same leg, my right leg is dominant.
To get some bio feedback towards better balancing my respective leg work while cycling, I purchased a power meter for my non drive crank arm. So far, I’ve been able to determine that while my weaker leg still has decent power, I don’t recruit it very well in the Zone 2 range in particular.
Now I am wondering if I can somehow also use the power meter to analyse my weak leg power through the entire 360 degrees of rotation, knowing I am not a very smooth pedaler.
The power meter is a 4iiii Precision Pro. I have it connected to a Cateye Stealth Evo+. I realize the Cateye is not capable of the analysis I hope to be able to do.
I’m wondering if I could pair the 4iiii to my laptop, with some software that could interpret the 4iiii output such that I could see what my pedaling is like.
Any suggestions or ideas?
Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated
Here are two articles that I think might be helpful for you in general:
https://www.roadbikerider.com/isolated-leg-training-single-leg-drills/
https://www.roadbikerider.com/how-can-i-remedy-a-weak-leg-d3/
Thanks for the two links, both being very helpful in general.
I’m still hoping there might be some subsequent commentary or advice re using my 4iiii to somehow analyse my weak leg pedalling.
I just got some good info from 4iiii:
In addition to measuring power and cadence, the Precision also measures and transmitsTorque Effectiveness and Pedal Smoothness, which can give an indication of your power output through the crank rotation.
Other commentary from them tells me strongly that my Cateye head unit is incapable of interpreting anything other than Power and Cadence.
My conclusion is that I need a more sophisticated head unit, which in turn has to be patched to a proper computer running sophisticated software in order for me to be able to see anything beyond simple Power and Cadence.
So, I’ve already made some distance re overall understanding and path forward, but I still that RBR and RBR Reader resources can add more and make some suggestions.
Regards,
Sandy
It seems to me that the one legged pedaling exercises are going to be the same for strengthening a leg power discrepancy regardless, so more information from software will not really change what you do to improve it. My Garmin unit will show leg power balance at the end of every ride, so switching to a Garmin might be helpful in general so you can check each ride at a glance. Training Peaks WKO software might also work: https://help.trainingpeaks.com/hc/en-us/articles/360030603392-Diagnosing-And-Correcting-Pedaling-Asymmetry-Using-WKO
Thanks very much for the added commentary and additional information. I now see my priority should be doing the single leg pedaling exercises. I did some long track speed skating today and my left leg weakness was screamingly obvious. I will commence the one leg work this week on my trainer, as well as much more single leg gym work. I’m still interested in analysis, but it’s now a distinct second to the leg work that needs to be done.
Your help is greatly appreciated.