Upper-body training for cyclists

[Ryo Hazuki]

Re: Re:

what's the problem? we are talking about male cyclists. good luck finding any woman that are bulky except when seriously roided

I thought we were talking about whether it's possible to be strong and muscular without being bulky.

About MEN obviously. what have woman to do with this? they are never bulky unless roided like I said

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

Tbh Ryo has got a point here for me. A female body tends to be way more petit than a male one. Pauline Ferrand-Peraud is a very powerful western European girl. You really need a guy like Rasmussen here, with his small bones and muscles, to equal her naturally thin but athletic body shape.

But it's relative to the field they compete in. PFP is clearly somebody who is naturally thin and athletic, but she's not an extreme case like Rasmussen, far from it. Pauline has always been slim but she's never looked like she's unhealthy. Somebody like Abbott is a better comparison to Ras, because she has at times been excessively thin (even though her natural build is also thin, as with PFP) and people have legit worried about her at times. If you compare PFP to some of her fellow stage racers and climbers among the women's field (Moolman-Pasio, Niewiadoma, Stevens, Lichtenberg) she isn't unusually thin (whereas Rasmussen, as with the examples picked in the OP - Brajkovic and Feillu - is an outlier among the men's bunch even among the mass dieters). Yes, you could argue that there are some of the bigger stage racing names who you could argue she is slighter than (Anna VDB, ELB) but a) Anna VDB is the best time triallist of those riders so you would expect that anyhow, and b) they're still clearly all-rounders, they're both clearly able to climb, and are built accordingly; the less specialized nature of the women's péloton and the smaller team sizes meaning less time spent in the group with everything under control does mean that with only a few exceptions (Cauz, Abbott) most of the climbers are at least puncheur-capable and most of the sprinters need to be physically versatile enough to be able to compete in smaller groups over a range of terrain (see d'Hoore and Lepistö, even before we get to the full on all-terrain riders like Vos, Johansson and to a slightly lesser extent Armitstead), so the advantages of being a physical outlier at either extreme is less.

 

[cantpedal]

any better? although with the silliness maybe this one

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

The woman has slim shoulders and slim legs. A clear example of strength without bulk.

Yes ofcourse, but a male climber has broad shoulders compared to a male cyclist. Still they in no way look like a pumped up gymguy. They carry no bulk at all.

There are many different body types among climbers, some a pretty muscular and have a style that is based around their explosiveness and then you have guys like Adam Odra who are rather skinny.
Just compare Ondra to a guy like Dani Andrada:

 

[LaFlorecita]

Did anyone else see Berto's shoulder muscles flexing in that slowmo they kept showing ? No? Just me?

 

[Brullnux]

Re: Re:

The woman has slim shoulders and slim legs. A clear example of strength without bulk.

Yes ofcourse, but a male climber has broad shoulders compared to a male cyclist. Still they in no way look like a pumped up gymguy. They carry no bulk at all.

There are many different body types among climbers, some a pretty muscular and have a style that is based around their explosiveness and then you have guys like Adam Odra who are rather skinny.
Just compare Ondra to a guy like Dani Andrada:

Andrade just has massive pecs, his shoulders and arms are average sized.

 

[memyselfandI]

Re:

Did anyone else see Berto's shoulder muscles flexing in that slowmo they kept showing ? No? Just me?

Some decent guidelines:

http://www.wenzelcoaching.com/blog/cycling-body-weight-chart/

 

[jens_attacks]

Best thread since the schlong one.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

The point of BMIs is that, if raw bodyweight was a decisive factor in GT success as some users have posited, then we would see a clear correlation in which GT winners are clustered at the lower end of the BMI scale and GT non-winners are clustered at the upper end. We observe no such thing. Instead, we see a fairly random distribution within the limits of healthy BMIs.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Re:

The point of BMIs is that, if raw bodyweight was a decisive factor in GT success as some users have posited, then we would see a clear correlation in which GT winners are clustered at the lower end of the BMI scale and GT non-winners are clustered at the upper end. We observe no such thing. Instead, we see a fairly random distribution within the limits of healthy BMIs.

save for cadel evans every tourwinner of the past 10 years(when cycling was cleaned up after 2006) had a very low bmi: rasmussen/contador, sastre, contador/andy schleck, froome, wiggins, nibali

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re: Re:

The point of BMIs is that, if raw bodyweight was a decisive factor in GT success as some users have posited, then we would see a clear correlation in which GT winners are clustered at the lower end of the BMI scale and GT non-winners are clustered at the upper end. We observe no such thing. Instead, we see a fairly random distribution within the limits of healthy BMIs.

save for cadel evans every tourwinner of the past 10 years(when cycling was cleaned up after 2006) had a very low bmi: rasmussen/contador, sastre, contador/andy schleck, froome, wiggins, nibali

Evans had a BMI of 22.1 around the time of the 2011 Tour de France.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Re: Re:

The point of BMIs is that, if raw bodyweight was a decisive factor in GT success as some users have posited, then we would see a clear correlation in which GT winners are clustered at the lower end of the BMI scale and GT non-winners are clustered at the upper end. We observe no such thing. Instead, we see a fairly random distribution within the limits of healthy BMIs.

save for cadel evans every tourwinner of the past 10 years(when cycling was cleaned up after 2006) had a very low bmi: rasmussen/contador, sastre, contador/andy schleck, froome, wiggins, nibali

Evans had a BMI of 22.1 around the time of the 2011 Tour de France.

that's why I said SAVE for evans everyone had a low bmi. meaning structurally low bmi's are what tourwinners have

 

[RedheadDane]

Re:

The point of BMIs is that, if raw bodyweight was a decisive factor in GT success as some users have posited, then we would see a clear correlation in which GT winners are clustered at the lower end of the BMI scale and GT non-winners are clustered at the upper end. We observe no such thing. Instead, we see a fairly random distribution within the limits of healthy BMIs.

Well... Quintana, one of the recent GT winners with a somewhat "high" BMI is actually lighter than a guy like Froome, who has a rather low BMI, meaning that at the end of the day he still has to haul less weight over the mountains that Froome does. It's just that Quintana is somewhat on the short side of things, so he can have a raw bodyweight that is lower than Froome's.
Besides, you could argue that since Froome won both times they went head-to-head, then that's proof that having a low BMI is important.

Again, I'd really like to know what you seem to care so much about this. Couldn't you just be "Well, I personally think it's stupid that they don't have big bulky upper bodies, but they're the GC specialists, the probably know what they're doing."?
Of all the close to 300 GTs that has been won throughout the years, has any of them been won by a guy with a big bulky upper body?

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re: Re:

Again, I'd really like to know what you seem to care so much about this.

Dear RedheadDane, this is a forum, and as such I'm surely entitled to state my opinion as long as I do so respectfully, am I not?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

Of all the close to 300 GTs that has been won throughout the years, has any of them been won by a guy with a big bulky upper body?

The 90s-early 00s TT machine era of riders like Ullrich, Big Mig, The AITORMINATOR© and Armstrong is probably the closest we got to that since cycling became fully professionalised, you can draw your own conclusions.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re: Re:

that's why I said SAVE for evans everyone had a low bmi. meaning structurally low bmi's are what tourwinners have

That's precisely the point. Evans won the Tour once (and came very close on a few other occasions) despite having a BMI of 22.1 when people are repeating the claim that more weight equals poison.

According to their theory, Cadel should have been nowhere near the podium, let alone on the top step.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

that's why I said SAVE for evans everyone had a low bmi. meaning structurally low bmi's are what tourwinners have

That's precisely the point. Evans won the Tour once (and came very close on a few other occasions) despite having a BMI of 22.1 when people are repeating the claim that more weight equals poison.

According to their theory, Cadel should have been nowhere near the podium, let alone on the top step.

The exception proves the rule. There are always outliers in statistics.
I'm sure if you would make a list BMI's of the top-10 of the giro, Tour and Vuelta in any given year, and do the same for the top-10s of Milan-Sanremo, Ronde and Paris-Roubaix, you'd find that classics riders generally have a significantly higher BMI.

 

[hrotha]

I'm sure Evans was as skinny as he could manage without losing power.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Re: Re:

The point of BMIs is that, if raw bodyweight was a decisive factor in GT success as some users have posited, then we would see a clear correlation in which GT winners are clustered at the lower end of the BMI scale and GT non-winners are clustered at the upper end. We observe no such thing. Instead, we see a fairly random distribution within the limits of healthy BMIs.

Well... Quintana, one of the recent GT winners with a somewhat "high" BMI is actually lighter than a guy like Froome, who has a rather low BMI, meaning that at the end of the day he still has to haul less weight over the mountains that Froome does. It's just that Quintana is somewhat on the short side of things, so he can have a raw bodyweight that is lower than Froome's.
Besides, you could argue that since Froome won both times they went head-to-head, then that's proof that having a low BMI is important.

Again, I'd really like to know what you seem to care so much about this. Couldn't you just be "Well, I personally think it's stupid that they don't have big bulky upper bodies, but they're the GC specialists, the probably know what they're doing."?
Of all the close to 300 GTs that has been won throughout the years, has any of them been won by a guy with a big bulky upper body?

quintana doesn't have a high bmi at all. he is 167 and 52 kg

 

[LaFlorecita]

The official Movistar website has Quintana at 58kg. But I'm sure you know better.

 

[meat puppet]

The skinny game is a function of there not being an unlimited supply of O2 anymore and (IMHO secondarily) course design. Third, lets just say that there have been some innovations in the field of getting light whilst maintaining power quite recently. The game will continue to be a winning recipe as long as these parameters persist. Now it is perfectly fine to have an opinion about this trend, I know I have a rather negative one. But, as a DS or a physio coach or trainer whose livelihood or reputation etc is on the line, I sure as hell would not bet against this recipe.

There will be variance amongst individuals. But I will be surprised if riders other than ultra skinny start dominating GTs in this environment.

BMI is a lousy metric here, too.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Re:

The official Movistar website has Quintana at 58kg. But I'm sure you know better.

the movistar website is wrong like they are on more cases. but if you actually look at it with your eyes open you can see quintana is much skinnier and thinner than a betancur with same bmi according to website

 

[movingtarget]

Re:

The official Movistar website has Quintana at 58kg. But I'm sure you know better.

No way he looks 58 kgs. That has to be wrong.

 

[movingtarget]

They probably do a lot of stretching for the neck and lower back but the majority of them look like boys as far as the upper body goes. There is little muscle at all.

 

[Kwibus]

Re: Re:

Again, I'd really like to know what you seem to care so much about this.

Dear RedheadDane, this is a forum, and as such I'm surely entitled to state my opinion as long as I do so respectfully, am I not?

That's not what he's saying. He's asking you care so much? He's not saying you are not allowed to have this opinion.