*groan*
Yeah I know.
Don't worry. They have a place both of them. They are important. I asked myself at one point last night "where would sports be without coaches"
And then I started wondering two lines of thought:
Team sports. You need someone in charge
Individual sports. You need experience you won't have till you are past your physical peak.
Both call for coaches.
I wondered though. In 10 years will J. Friel be saying "ya know, now that I've been doing this data thing for so long, It really was best before we even had a HRM." Will he?
I see this whole broad coaching plan "train like this, do this, don't do that" and advice in general to be much like the damn how to eat. Don't eat this. Don't eat that. Butter is bad. Eat this synthetic chemical product that only looks like butter and acts like butter. (20 years later) No wait, that product will kill you, better to eat butter.
Fortunately or not I don't have time to expound on this. Probably a good thing to leave it as a seed of an idea the nugget of coal to fuel a train of thought... best not to shovel the whole coal car into the furnace at once.
heddwch
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But the final word on this came 36 days ago. I'm so confused. Does this mean that no doesn't mean no either?
I guess that all depends on what your definition of is is.
If the best reason for going without a HRM/Powertap you can come up with is an analogy to food products, then you probably don't have a very compelling argument.
You could basically take any sort of advice and "invalidate it" with this analogy -- i.e. "Sure they say smoking is bad for you, but they said butter was bad too 20 years ago. I think smoking is just resistance training for my lungs."
You're ostensibly a scientist. So a HRM/SRM is just a tool for measuring the output of a system, right? When you're trying to understand how a system (the human body works), how could having additional measurements about its status (hr, power data) be a bad thing?
The decisions you make from that data can be bad ones, sure -- but having the data is the first step to making better decisions. No coach will ever yearn for the days of having less information about their athletes.
yeah - 36 days - good counting solobreak.
I can't help what pops in my head - this helps get it out. Just feeding the soap opera for jb.
The food one is a bad analogy. Just the one that came to my head.
Measuring output is far simpler than understanding how specific combinations of fatty acids affect your health.
Power is power.
Knowing, as a coach, what your athlete is doing is pretty darn effective to gauge if they are following the plan.
Powermeter is probably the least fallible method.
For coached athletes. They cease being a toy. And become a tool.
There is a bit of complexity along the same lines that using food (for those trying to eat in a healthy manner) relating to a prescribed training plan.
And yes - when I do start thinking with my fingers I often remember - stick with food dumbass, people don't get nearly as pissed off.
Which is REALLY flabbergasting.
People get their panties in a bunch over a damn toy that costs maybe 1000-1500 new. And then shovel what ever food they feel like eating, falling back on the retarded notion of Greg lemond "it is all fuel - cheeseburgers tacos or pasta no matter" (loose quote).
How much do ya spend on food? But attacking spreadable fat substances other than Butter is okay.
It is a retarded notion that you are healthier eating a synthetic food stuff like margarine or fake butter or butter blend or who knows what the hell you are spreading. Totally retarded. Vegans eating butter appearing substances. Hell just use palm oil or something. At least it is unprocessed beyond being extracted.
Saying "this is the final word" is like tempting a wino by leaving a case of thunderbird in a back alley. I probably won't ever be able to leave it alone (talking about training and measures of power and stuff like that).
oh and there are lots of reasons to go without...
most of the better ones are taken...
i'm just picking at a fading scab...
In the right hands, the gifts of modern technology and sports medicine are God killers. In the other 98% of hands, it seems the only thing killed is the fun.
s.
"For coached athletes. They cease being a toy. And become a tool."
For once some truth about power meters instead of complete dismissal! Cool. But..
Please describe to me (anyone) how one would perform 3 minute intervals at an intensity equal to FT +10%, with a HRM.. Let's not get into the effectiveness of such a workout- that's already been proven. Just tell me how to do it without a PT but with the same precision and accuracy as a PT.
Say your FT heart rate is 173 as mine is. Do you believe that shooting for a HR of 173 plus x is the trick? Considering that it would take all of three minutes to wind up to that HR.. how is it even remotely possible? It's not, because input data (HR) is junk during such a workout. Output data is what we need to pay attention to and frame our efforts around.
Murat, I don't think anyone completely dismissed the usefulness of a power meter. It is you who continues to completely dismiss the effectiveness of training without one. Even Friel, Allen, Lim, et al don't make the kind of claims you do regarding the necessity of a power meter. Friel specifically notes the usefulness to a coach. A coach cannot tell how you feel. A self-coached athlete knows exactly how hard he/she went, because he/she was the one actually doing it.
To answer your question, no, you can't have the exactly 10% above FT precision/accuracy without a power meter. So what? The efficacy of such a workout is not dependent on being precisely 10% above FT. You can argue that all you want.
Answer this - when you first took your 20 minute FT test, how did you know how hard to push yourself? Your claims purport that one would simply be lost without a power meter to guide you, and thus you would be unable to perform the test at all. And how do you do it now? With one eye on your power output, comparing it (consciously or otherwise) to your last test or expected value? Then it's not really a blind and valid test, is it.
If after 20 years of riding, you need an instrument on your dashboard to tell you how hard you're training, and how long you're going to be able to sustain a given level of effort, then you could not have been paying too much attention to your body the past twenty years. You'd have no hope of ever being a runner or a skier, would you?
Relax and enjoy your training with power. No one thinks less of you for it. Hell, if they were a bit more reliable and a lot cheaper, I'd surely use one. If you want to continue to belittle others for training without one, go right ahead. It will just be that much sweeter when I drop you...
:o)
I'll counter it makes little difference how precise you are in your intervals.
Pain is pain. Suffer for 3 minutes.
Sure using a powermeter helps make consistent intervals. But there are plenty of pretty decent (at least as strong fact wise) studies showing it matters little *how* intense the effort is, *how* long you rest between.
Just that you do them.
With enough practice and knowing your body you should be able to after a few tries be able to do a 3 minute interval almost as consistently as you can w/a PT. HR is pointless for intervals. Everyone knows that. Good data to record or track afterwards.
Ya don't need the PT to do intervals.
x% FT is just minutia - excessive. Not Needed. Extra complexity that sucks the life out.
But then, you'd probably get a kick out of a performance device to measure how good the sex you have is ;)
damn - there we go - someone else saying stuff more eloquently than me.
much better points too...
It's just two slightly different ways of saying the same thing. However, personally I object to references such as "suffer", "pain", "mental toughness", etc. I think that's just as much bull as thinking that spending $1500 on a power meter and $150/month on a coach makes you a more "serious" athlete (sorry, it doesn't, not one itty, bitty, teeny, tiny little bit. zilch.) When you're riding, you can slow down whenever you want. That's not torture. Pain, yeah maybe, but it's good pain. For every second we're out there, we're doing something we chose to do. You can stop whenever you want.
Good point on the word use. too much Tim Krabbe influence historically.
But on the flip side I tend to find those words not so much filled with negative connotation.
Self inflicted "pain" "suffering" is very different. The fact that you CAN stop makes it in a different class of emotions.
But what ever you call it, training or suffering, the reward for the racer - amateur, poseur, or pro is there for the taking.
1. You're putting words in my mouth. I do not dismiss the effectiveness of training without a power meter. As you point out, I myself did it for 20 years. FOR ME, it's a lot more fun to use one!.. and effective too!, especially when training time is limited and you want/need to optimize your workouts for maximum benefit. I do not train hard because it's fun and enjoyable. That's why I race (for fun). Successful training makes racing a lot more fun.. Do the math.
2. When I took my first 20 minute TT (as part of my first Field Test) I did not even know what the numbers meant, or how to record intervals or how to even view the average power on the readout. It was the first day I ever used the thing and I just let it run like a flight data recorder while I did the best 20 minutes I possibly could.
3. I have never aspired to be a runner or a skier.
4. I do not belilttle those who train without a power meter. If I come off that way, it's just reciprocation 'in-kind' of the attitude towards power meters, which prevails.
5. There's no shame in being dropped by you, SB. PT or organic training.. no shame.
And Ge: Not all 3 minute intervals are alike. Needless to say, you can take FT and add/subtract whatever percentage is necessary to get the desired stress/workout.
"Pain is pain. Suffer for three minutes." says a lot about your approach to training!
It might be fine and dandy for you to just hit the broad side of a barn.. for me personally, I want to hit a much smaller target because I'm looking for a very specific result from the training.
SB: Your opinion of "seriousness" towards the sport of bike racing is offsides and irrelevant.
Enjoy your power-less training! I respect that you are able to train by "feel". I'm trying it differently for the past 10 months and having a good time..
Murat, it's relevant. I don't want to be accused of putting words in your mouth, but somewhere in the archives (which I'll never find) I recall you saying you needed the pm because you were serious about your training, implying that not using one means the opposite.
Ge's recent assertions about any random training being good enough for most of his readers (and I'm paraphrasing big time here) are what brought me to raise the "seriousness" issue. As we've touched on, the more "elite" you are, i.e. nearing the limits of how good you can get, the more important the structure of your training program is becomes. As we've noted, any training will benefit an untrained subject, whereas the further you get toward the other end of the scale, the more critical "doing it right" becomes.
What my "seriousness" point is all about is that most of the local masters and low-category riders I know vastly overestimate where they themselves are in relation to their physical limits, and thus they begin to think they need some incredibly structured and scientific training program to improve. For most of them that is BS. From there they can debate (as you do) that as busy professionals they need to "optimize" and thus the structure and content of the program is critical. That's fine and true, but why only focus on one area (the efficacy of your intervals and the output of your training efforts)? I don't care how precise your intervals are, if you're 15% body fat and can't touch your toes, then you're not serious about reaching your physical potential.
Now go get in the winning break at Bethel Sunday and shut me up.
solobreak gets it - atmo
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