Seadito you are more handsome, huh, they tell directors and coaches to the climbers who still read mythical stories of how Alberto Contador was able to stand on the bike, dancing on the pedals, for a quarter of an hour for at least in the great ports of the tour. Two decades later, the reference is another. Now everyone wants to look in the mirror of Tadej Pogacar, which accelerates sitting and wins in walls of 20% in Flanders, Huy and La Redoute de Lieja. And four days later, the gigantic Valladolid of the Movistar, Iván Romeo, almost two meters of stem, sprint, the ass stuck to the saddle, in the repes of the prologue of the Tour de Romandía. Callejeo, slopes, 180 degree curves … three and a half kilometers in four and a half minutes at 45 per hour. He does not win the race for only three seconds, he, who is a longer breath cyclist, but surpasses the great specialist Remco Evenepoel.
It all begins with the wind tunnels, increasingly popular, cheap and accessible, as well as the computing capacity of fluid mechanics thanks to the cloud, which makes the very expensive supercomputters unnecessary. There the bicycle designers measure and measure the aerodynamic coefficient of the frames, the wheels, the tubes, which cannot be planes such as the wings of the airplanes, which only have to do one thing, lift the device in the air. They place the paintings at different angles in front of the fan because in reality the wind never comes directly and outline the tubes seeking to optimize them, which are aerodynamically efficient in almost all wind conditions. And the wheels, tires of different profiles change them, and even measure the bikes of the competition to know how to do them better than them. And always looking for efficiency, change the geometry of the paintings, more closed angles, lower wheelbase, more advanced position for the corridor, which is almost vertical. The handlebars are narrowed and the connecting rods are shortened. Less air resistance, more cadence.
Although before it was decided, also uploading aerodynamism influences, and if it accelerates 450 watts, it greatly influences. “It is clear that sitting favors a lot at the aerodynamic level, it is much more efficient than going standing on the pedals, there is no doubt,” explains Ivan Velasco, engineer and performance director of the Movistar team. “To Iván, although it measures 1.93m, this year we change to 165mm cran Sitting, more vertical. ” When Velasco was a cyclist in Euskaltel, 20 years ago, the indurain trend was still followed, which measuring 1.88m used 180mm cranks, so long.
The cyclist adapts to the new discoveries and designs, and goes faster, and in almost all races of the year historical medium speed records are beaten. 45 per hour is the new normality, and ascend the ports at 23 or 24 per hour. And the best do everything sitting.
New geometry, new pedaling, new training. Like sprinters, climbers and broad -spectrum cyclists, and those who are always quickly, such as Pogacar, throw more and more hours in the gym working the muscles, buttocks, dorsal muscles, quadriceps, large groups. The Slovenian once possesses photos by uploading weights in the gym, or ascending stairs at full speed with a backpack of enough kilos. Iron legs and buttocks. Accelerated pedaling.
“Strength work is necessary,” concludes the director of Movistar. “We have our own gym protocol that we try to maintain all year.” One of the team’s coaches, David Barranco, from the European University, listens to cyclists who get bored in the gym, investigates, proposes and publishes their result in a scientific journal. “Well -trained male cyclists were randomly assigned to incorporate two weekly muscle training sessions into the gym (complete squatillas) or on the bicycle (complete efforts made against very high resistance and, therefore, to very low cadences) for 10 weeks volume and intensity, ”says the study of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exerciceand the old fans relive an image that was recorded 30 years ago, that of the Russian cyclist Pavel Tonkov ascending navacerrada at less than 10 per hour, pure strength, well sitting, minimum cadence, dragging a heavy trailer on his bicycle. “Both the group of gym and the one that made musculation on the bicycle increased the specific strength parameters of squat and pedaling after the intervention compared to the control group.”
The study concludes that the new strength training proposal on the bike is an effective alternative to conventional training to improve the general and specific muscle strength of pedaling, power and muscle mass. And thus places the last piece in the puzzle that makes it inevitable to finally climb sitting.
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