The Bigger You Are The Faster You Go? Weird Cycling Science!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ม.ค. 2022
- Sprinters and Time-Triallers tend to be much larger than climbers - why is that? Join Ollie and Alex in an especially nerdy video, as we go through all of the maths to explain it and arrive at one shocking conclusion: Ganna is going to destroy the hour record and win the Paris Roubaix 😱____________________
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Are you built like a sprinter or a climber? Does your build match the type of cycling you enjoy the most though? Is Ollie’s hot take too spicy? Let us know in the comments!
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Leave us a comment below! - กีฬา
Do you have a sprinter or climber build? And, more importantly, do you prefer sprinting or climbing? Is Ollie’s hot take maybe a little too spicy? Let us know…
I’m 2m tall and weigh about 90kg, I’m much faster than anyone around me on the flats, and I can sprint pretty fast, but my speciality is a high average speed over a long distance. I typically try to keep a pace of 24mph over an hour of riding. None of my friends can keep up with me unless we are going up steep hills. I ride an Aeroad if that makes a diff
Naturally climber. Since adding a lot of iron supplements to my training regime some decades ago, more sprinter with excess bodyweight on th eupper body that doesn't do much for cycling at all.
Basically was ery weedy. Started lifting and got bigger all round not just where it helps cycling. Meant I stayed rougnhly the same speed during the change while using the same bike.
Now I have changed bies a few times to better ones. This combined with age related deterioration has meant I am basically the same speed, but there are now more people faster than me.
while im a natural sprinter, the challenges of riding uphill are fun. im currently trying to convert myself into an all arounder. i do 1000 watts up hills at 10%. right now my 20 minute FTP is 500 watts.cutting weight to see if i can increase my watt per kilo.
I'm more of a Gollum build. Climbing in theory if I had any strength.
@@paulm9079 im more of a world's strongest men build
Now THAT'S content! Not an ad for a mega-brand in sight, just Ollie speaking clearly (which fearfully few athletes are able to do) about how to make sense of all that data we're apparently collecting about our watts and weights. I'd be properly pleased to see a lot more science-forward content from GCN in 2022.
Yep....Ollie is a class presenter....a rare clear speaker!
"not an ad in sight", they are only wearing castelli gear... Content is great though
@@felixjansson3139 And the wall of Park Tool behind them inside. I'm FINE with them having sponsors and such, no complaints about ANY product placement...let them make money! But yeah. It's there. :)
It does get tiresome how people complain about free advice and content and the use of ads. Pay for GCN properly and you can lose all this, otherwise it's here to stay. If you don't pay for the product, you are the product. I agree some use of ads have been more heavy, but I'm not paying anything!!! Now, I just hope 'all' staff get a decent salary for the offset of sponsorship.
it's been long since gcn did anything good. this was good. no badly disguised ads, no sponsors. this is why I started to follow you guys
Thanks GCN.
I conducted some in depth testing relating to my power output, size and weight on various terrains.
I established that:
A. I was slow going uphill.
B. I was fast going downhill.
C. I was past caring whilst on the flat.
Conclusion: If you're a lard arse like me, just get out there and enjoy the ride.
Kinda the same to me, but as I know I'm not that fast uphill I compensate on the flat. I might not get an actual KOM, but I've got to try on those flat and false flat segments.
Yeah I'm right in that boat, luckily a lot of the trails by me are flat so me and my 100kg old fat ass can still fly whenever I want
🤣🤣🤣amen. I'm always playing catch-up with the string beans on the group rides
I agree. But work on those descending skills. It's a great deal different at 70 vice 50!
Alex and Ollie together are a dream team imo. They first crack you up with the jokes, thencrack your brain with the science.
Loving the way comments on every video endlessly troll Ollie for getting dropped…even while he casually presents to camera at 4w/kg without breaking sweat. 99.9% of the commentors would be dying on their arse at this point!!!
However, the difference in strain in their voices just after they put those 4 W/kg down was enjoyable. Not saying that I can put down 4 W/kg myself for more than a few minutes.
@@ComedyTVWeb that's your perspective, look outside your bubble and you'll find a very significant percentage of sport cyclists actually do chase speed and nerding out about it is part of enjoying the hobby. GCN isn't exactly aimed at people who prefer to pedal trough the countryside without breaking a drop of sweat
Absolutely brilliant. Duly shared with my biology and physics teacher colleagues and hope to hear Alex and Ollie’s voices coming from the classrooms very soon 😀
Haha Ollie mentioning Angewandte Chemie as his favorite journal made me happy
niche reference that i knew at least 1 person would get 😂😉
I bet you, he has a paper in it ;-)
As a smaller rider (60.2KG dry weight) I can climb pretty well. I love smokin' people up the hills, but it's all I've got. When I try to maintain with bigger riders on the flats they kill me and I eventually watch them ride off into the sunset. Thanks for the demo and the science!
When your this light you learn never to wait at the top, but rather let the regroup for you happen at the bottom.
As a female, this has been a source of frustration on group rides on Zwift that are sorted by w/kg. I either have to go down a category or be resigned to eventually getting dropped on flat courses due to being a literal light weight. I understood the general idea, but It was interesting to hear a clear explanation of the details.
Don't ride flat courses (:
Male vs female physiology is a whole other topic for discussions. Obviously in cycling given similar weight female riders are at a tremendous disadvantage compared to male riders.
wouldn't being light help you if they are sorting by w/kg?
@@finndegraaf2707 No, because although she's the same w/kg as the other riders in her league when considering only her own body mass, the weight of her bike is largely the same as the other riders and the Zwift speed equations ultimately take that into account
On group rides smaller riders are very difficult to draft, while bigger riders are essentially a wall. Obviously this doesn't apply to Zwift, but the difference is so marked that larger riders are almost always the slower riders.
Regarding the container ship analogy, longer ships are faster due to wave making resistance. As the ship moves through the water, it creates a wave at the bow with subsequent crests along the length of the hull. The waves travel at the same speed as the ship. In deep water, the speed of the waves is proportional to the square root of the wave length. If the ship has enough power, it will reach a speed at which the second wave crest is at the stern. In order to increase the speed further, the ship will have to leave the second wave crest behind and climb up on the bow wave. Smaller powerboats often have the power to climb the bow wave, but large ships generally do not. As a consequence, large ships are constrained to travel no faster than a wave that is the length of the hull. This is referred to as "hull speed". The equation that is typically used is V = 1.34 * sqrt(L) where V is the hull speed in knots and L is the length of the hull in feet.
11:58 Awesome 💪! I’m the right height for the Tour de France and the perfect weight for track sprinting! 😃 🤔
In my three years of cycling pre-pandemic, I gained ~10kg. My times up the local mountain were pretty unchanged (12km, 900m, ~1 hr +- 3min), but for the big annual Fondo (120km, 2000m), my times went from 6h:45m to 5h:00m to 4h:10m
@Simon Dowsett any of my trousers without some stretch in the fabric do not fit any more, and I went up a size in the jeans I wear most of the time.
I've always had somewhat proportionally thicker legs for my general build but a pretty lean upper body, so I think my legs gained more density than bulk, but my upper body is more noticably larger.
You gained weight cycling? That's weird
while I would like to naively presume that it was muscle gain from mostly riding a track bike in a hilly city, my thirties and eating all the carbs were probably big influences.
My FTP in watts per kilo had a small but steady increase along with my weight though, and I didn't really change my non-cycling activity (less long hikes, more yoga).
"If you wonder why I'm dropping Ollie" where have you been? That's what we do around here 😉
Allometric Aerodynamic Scaling is going to be the new thing in cycling's "marginal gains" phrase book! Great video, massively impressed!
It's hard to apply though. I'd laugh to keep my muscles and still lose 15 kg but that's not gonna happen lol
UCI should change the bike weigt rule from 6.8 kg to 10% of rider's weight.
Great video, Alex and Ollie are a great pair. They actually got the allometric scaling right, and I'm someone who has actually published in the Journal of Applied Physiology!
What confuses me, is i thought watts/kilo were constant. 2 riders going at for example 2 watts per kilo on a flat would be going at the same speed...irregardless of power or watts.
Alex and Ollie are the absolute nerd dream team. Very, very interesting content. Thanks!
The clip of Alex shouting “Bingo” needs to be the new recurring clip used for all things good on GCN
One of the best videos i have seen from GCN for me recently. Thank you Alex and Olie, brilliant...
This is why Pidcock's sprint and TT is even more impressive
Also why seeing Remco sprinting to win a race probably won’t happen.
Both Remco and Pidcock have different types of power. Remco has incredibly high steady state power whilst Pidcock has explosive power which enables him to punch. You’ll probably find both athletes have world class cda
@@JonReid Yeah, no shit. Pidcock is a classics rider who can outsprint WVA. Remco is a TT rider who can climb too of course.
Thats because there are so many variables with an athlete ,
Fabulous! One of the best GCN videos I have seen. This is well done and informative. It also helps me feel more confident as a bigger rider. Thanks Ollie and Alex!
12:22 beautiful way to close things, and it definitely is the beauty of bicycles.
This has been an interesting one, been a while since it was this good. Cheers this was great work
Will have to watch sit again to fully understand it, but one of the best videos I've seen from GCN.
Also, it just reminded me of how Ganna will surely crush the hour record, whenever he has an afternoon free and gets around to it.
Congratulations Alex you have finally helped make a quality classic GCN video.
Fantastic video guys. I’ve wondered about this for decades & thanks to you I finally have the answers. And it was entertaining too! Well done 👍
That was a great video guys! Well done. Ollie giving us more insight into what all the number mean and how they interact on the road not just the paper. I love when Ollie gets into it like that.
Thanks! Being 157.5 cm tall, I'd always feared this was the case. I felt like my size became an advantage when I hit a fitness peak but felt the biggest advantage when I got down to 52 ki. I've put on a bit more muscle since then so fingers crossed I can get that back :) thanks for the science, it really does address something that's been a bee in my bonnet for a very long time.
Faired tandem recumbent vs Si on a tt bike. Make it happen GCN!
Great video! This is GCN at it's best. Good job Alex and Ollie. AAS is the new P/W ratio of the '20s.
Quite excellent work, and a nice touch to match Ollie and Alex so very well in terms of everything but weight. Even their positions on their bikes matched very well.
One of the best GCN vids I've seen in a while. Kudos for the work that went into this and explaining fairly difficult concepts in such an easy to understand and entertaining way
the bare science tech videos might not rake in ad revenue but it really narrates on what is truly interesting about the sport
Brilliant video and the usual great banter 😂👍🏼
One of the best GCN videos ever. Nerds of the world unite!
For me the "GCN Does Science" videos used to be a real weakness of the channel, I was almost going to avoid this, but this was actually pretty good. I'd imagine a fair proportion of the audience are already familiar with some of the key concepts eg Surface Area to Volume Ratio and how that changes as size changes. As I understand it SAVR is part of the reason we can't have Godzilla, say. Beyond a certain point the skeleton (squared cross section area of bone) can no longer carry that weight (increasing cubically) - the largest animals live in or underwater to support that extra weight.
It's also why if you grind up chemicals into finer and finer powders you get stronger, faster chemical reactions.
Allometric Scaling all the way :-)
Yep. godzilla is a great example! his heart would beat 1-2 times a minute. 😂
Remarkably interesting video. I liked Alex’s summation towards the end of the video.
The writing and acting on this video are brilliant! Both on the comedy side and on the science side! Very good explanations about a pretty complex topic with very good laughs in there! I loved it!
I think people intuitively understand this. I was riding in the UK, in the early 60s, when it was all about TTs on flat courses. I was a literal flyweight, at 8 stone (112 lbs) clothed. Because I was winning club events, there were some people in the local cycling community who thought I must be cheating somehow. That's difficult to do and get away with in a TT - there's just cutting the course short, getting assistance from a motorized vehicle, and drafting other riders - all easy to spot.
Helps understand the difference between me and my riding buddy when on climbs vs headwind!
I think they should mention upper and lower body weight is important too. A 'cover' model wouldn't perform as good as a rider with 'thin' upper body but massive developed legs.
Great video guys as always! I don't mind the ones that have flagrant ads for products, as some have mentioned on here. We don't pay for them to make this stuff, they have to get their kit and money somewhere! They make it entertaining when they do - so if you struggle to cope with advertising during their shows, either pay them....... or learn that they don't do this job for free.
Top work guys!!!!!!
I often buy the products they are advertising and find them to be ad described on the show 👌
This was such an awesome video!
Really nice work
Very interesting nerdy stuff! Congratulations on how you make fractional exponents understandable by everyone!
Love the physics (and physiology) of cycling! Great vid. Of course, the reason that the small guys don't get dropped on the flatter stages is that they can draft behind the big guys and at flat stage speeds the draft is huge (esp if riding as part of a team). But small guys can drop the big guys on the climbs and open up race winning gaps.
Love it! Great job on making math and physics meaningful for cycling! There’s so much bad science journalism out there, thanks for getting it right.
This was very interesting and well done. Thank you!
I love Alex’s surprise at dropping Ollie 🤣🤣
Great info guys and well put across.. very interesting even i got it :) keep up the great work love GCN :)
Hahaha! Informative and hilarious. Brilliant video guys!
This is THE BEST I’ve ever seen this explained. Absolute legends. Thank you!
Great video. Except, as Ollie should know, ships have to overcome both hydrodynamic drag and aerodynamic drag - unless they are submarines. Aside from that, spot on.
Aerodynamic drag is probably in the rounding error region for vessels of that size and the speeds they travel.
Great video Ollie and Alex. This video deserves 100k+ views
I've understood this for some time. The genetic component also comes into play to produce a time trial rider vs sprinter. There are exceptions namely Emma Pooley who could time trial as well as climb. Sean Kelly could climb better than you'd expect. A good analogy is with large vs small ships which would be referred to the law of relativity and similatude. 26% larger in each dimension = double the displacement and 4x the stability. All other factors being equal. Larger is often faster. Connor is more similar to the long container ship!
Pogacar can climb, can TT and can do some good sprint too.
Big Mig and "That Texan" just entered the chat and have brought ridiculously high Vo2 max numbers and a suprizingly large quantity of "supplements" with them.
I'd like to point out this video came out the day after my birthday.
I'm 190cm and ~95kg.
Thanks for the validation, GCN Tech!
Excellent video. Thanks GCN.
Excelent video, nerdy as I like it! Puts things into perspective
angewandte chemie is a good journal but I am a fan of JACS and Perkins. 🙂
Great video, great explanation 🙌
Great information. Thank you
Brilliant, well done!
Great job with this, have always wondered.
Absolutely brilliant content. Thank you very much.
long story short: on flat terrain, power output of big riders outweighs their aerodynamic drag hence making them faster overall.
Nice work Olli.
This is my big pet peeve with Zwift-they organize ride/race categories by Watts/kg, which makes it very hard for lighter riders to keep up on flat/downhill terrain. I'm sure they understand the physics, so why don't they do something more fair?
I get dropped on descents in Zwift by heavier riders that I smoked up the climbs. Just like real life.
Brilliant stuff!
its amazing how GCN pumps out interesting content day over day. Its like classic TOP GEAR chemistry over the cycling. Excellent stuff.
The greatest channel ... in the world!
Such a Perfect Video!!!
@Ollie I would love to see you and Matt Parker from the channel Standupmath do something. Calculating spoke patterns or try to calculate pi with a bike or something similar. :)
That was very interesting information!
That was so good.. thanks guys
The return of the "one of my favorite journals" bit, welcome back, old friend.
Loved the vid Dr. Bridgestone. Did anyone else have a Star Trek flashback due to the kit at 2:48?
I did enjoy THIS video. Thanks
As a 1m 85 cm tall slim climber at 70kg, I've suffered for years on the flats when the heavier riders put the power down. Finally the root of the issue has been explained! Nice article, thanks GCN.
Awesome vid!
GCN Tech comes out swinging in the new year with some boffin science stuff! Like it...
As a bigger rider myself I know all too well getting dropped on a climb, but then being able to make it up on the flats. It would also be interesting to know the benefits of the extra weight on a long descent. Because I usually fly by the lighter riders on almost any descent. Probably a mix of physics and cycling with some overly cautious riders in the group....
Difference should be minimal between a light and heavy rider maybe a kmph or two( based on almost asleep brain)
excellent work!
Glad you mentioned the faired the recumbent ;)
Is Ollie’s allometric explanation why we can never actually have a Godzilla or Rodan?
Underrated comment of the day!
absolutely.
7:17 do you even Lift, Ollie??? 😂🤙🏼🤙🏼
This was very interesting!!
Very cool great job, gents!
Love this!
Great video!
This is so interesting! As a big guy I always excelled on flats and didn't really understand why.
I thought that was common knowledge big riders were faster on the flats. I guessed correctly why.
Brilliant video it made loads of sense and answered the question I posed in your FTP video! 🤣 I think my ideal is to loose blubber, increase muscle mass and smash it everywhere! Lol!
Pretty cool to see the math validate my experience. When I was a 6'5" 180lbs Cat 2, I could absolutely leave everyone on the flats. People literally fought for my wheel. But here's the thing - I was a flat course Cat2. I was a climbing Cat5. I ended up choosing only races that suited me. Not something a pro could do.
Fantastic video.
I think Zwift, and a lot of Zwift ride leaders, should watch this. Running classifications, and group rides, which are predominantly flat, on a watt per kilo basis, really plays into the hands of bigger riders.
A look at how well the height scaling in Zwift actually match these models, as well as stack up against a couple of real World volonteers would be a neat follow-up.
I have to agree with Ollie. Angewandte Chemie is definitely a very nice journal 👌
Best content on any GCN YT channel in years
My favorite GCN video of all time.
Great content. Explain last why I can’t keep up on a flat, but sail past people on a climb…. If only I lived on an alp
Excellent!
Well done, however: there is another component to this - accumulation.
The heavier rider (normally me at 95kgs) has the power (torque really) but given that rides are rarely 10 minutes long, the extra weight and extra power to move that weight accumulate to show a massive difference in the amount of work completed ( weight moved over distance, especially if calculated by each turn of the pedal) and the impacts of that on the cardio and metabolism systems as I would assume those systems do not scale up equally with the scaling mentioned in the video.
Request: a part two episode that takes the maths from this fine specimen and adds the other pieces to get the full picture.
Please
Keep up the great work!
This is one of the most informative vid on going faster, this question is for "Ollie". Is there an on line calculator that we can import a strava ride that I did and calculate how much more pawer I need to produce to go faster. Love the show guys.
Would like more videos like this please!