lol, I know, a 17in vertical is embarrassing. but i’m not boasting that I am more powerful than other athletes, especially not the riders in the pics above.
I spent the majority of my time on this thread defending myself and trying to teach that nascar drivers are not powerful athletes.
I still consider myself to have sticks hitting the pedals(23" legs), and I am trying to change that with weight training.
My whole point behind mentioning my 17" vertical is that I think I ‘should’ be able to improve my power considerably more.
Wrestlers compete in spandex too, judokas in gis, Muay Thai fighters in fruity colored shorts. Go up to one’s face and start making fun of them for their attire if you think wearing a spandex in sport is bad.
[quote]SWR-1222D wrote:
Okay, since you’re not getting the point, lets use a simple lever as an example, since we all agree that the bike adds leverage, and the athlete is putting all of the power into the bike him/herself.
Big rock on the left, fulcrum in the middle, guy using his own force to lift the rock on the right.
We measure the power of accelerating the rock over a certain distance for a set amount of time.
fulcrum is close to man, he puts lots of power into the lever, but there’s not a lot of power going into the rock, so the rock moves slowly for a short distance.
Fulcrum in closer to rock, man puts less of his own power into the lever, the power going into the rock is MUCH greater, rock accelerates quickly, goes farther.
The man is able to produce more power than any other athlete on the face of the earth because the lever was designed to produce the best results.
Yea for the man working the lever.
I know you still won’t get my point, but it’s fun reading all the responses anyway. I can almost feel the blood pressure rising as I read some of these posts.
Your turn. [/quote]
Sorry but I really think you are confusing force with power. Power is a rate of energy generation or expenditure hence its units being expressed as energy per unit of time. Force is a mass with a given acceleration. Obviously they are not the same thing. Energy cannot be created through the means of a lever.
This thread is fun.
I noticed the Luge was mentioned. The Luge guys start in a seated position and launch themselves with their arms as well as “paddling” with their hands/knuckles.
If we are talking leg action, I think an appropriate example would be the Bobsledders. They push the sled, on ice down a gradual slope for a short distance. They do this from a complete stop and climb in having reached a full sprint. A two man sled has a max weight, including crew, of 860 lbs. Assuming the guys weigh 180 each, total of 360 in body weight, they are pushing a 500 lbs. sled. Yes, it is on ice and there are steel runners. Still…considerable power must be exerted to reach max speed in a short distance.