Acronym enabled cycling computer.

swampy1970

I stopped racing 13 years ago. Peter Keen had his 4 levels and people were amazed by the speed of Chris Boardman and how "scientific" it all was.

... I come back to the sport and I'm wondering if I get a power meter next year will it tell me which one of several different "level scales" (that all seem to have almost twice the number of levels of Keen's) I'm using and spit the information out after downloading into a "cool r0x0rs acroYm" forum text for me. You average Joe in the cycling store spits out more "scientific verbage" than Peter Keen did at the BCF coaching conference followings Boardmans Olympic gold.

I read some of these training posts and wonder how I can actually ride my bike without falling over from being distracted by having to follow all the info....

Yes, I write this mostly in jest, but I get the feeling that most are making this way harder than it really needs to be.

Alex Simmons

I suspect Peter Keen knew the acronyms but chose not to use them as the audience's knowledge at the time was perhaps less than a similar group now.

Calculus and relativity used to be hard once too, now it's high school stuff.

We move on.

Training methods have adapted but in many ways the science has either:

- exploded some myths, or at least made us think carefully about methods used "because we've always done it that way"

- confirmed empirically derived knowledge (hence much of what used to be done is still valid - just now we have a far better appreciation of why)

- opened up new, more effective means to an end (and with the accompanying, relatively affordable and practical to use technology, these new means are now available to a much wider group of people)

Advances in Formula 1 car racing trickle down to the family sedan. Why not the same for endurance athletic pursuits?

Acronyms invade all areas of human endeavour. It's a short hand communication tool. If you don't know, either look it up (first) or ask.

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daveryanwyoming

It's still just bike riding. You can certainly take Eddy Merckx's advice and just ride a lot. But even when he gave that famous advice you can be sure exercise physiologists and some coaches knew of most of the acronyms we use. VO2 Max, Monod and Scherrer's AWC and CP, LT.... These were decades old in Eddy's day. Sure there's some acronyms new to power training like FTP, CTL, TSB, etc. but you don't need to pay attention to these or any others if you don't want to.

Basically you can:
- Ignore all this stuff and just train like you did back in the day if that brought you the kind of results you were after.
- Contract a coach and let your coach worry about all this jargon and just do what they tell you to.
- Or learn about this stuff and make intelligent decisions regarding training mix, intensity of your workouts, training volume, tapers, etc.

For the self coached athlete these acronynms and their meanings are pretty useful stuff. But most of this isn't new it's just that the information is a lot more accessible to the general public. You sure couldn't google Pubmed and read the original papers in Eddy's day

Good luck,
Dave
P.S. Here's a start to getting your head around those acronyms: http://www.cyclingforums.com/t386984.html
and a good starting primer on what the newer ones represent: http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/

swampy1970

Alex, the target audience were BCF/ABCC (i'm not sure if the ABCC was around in 92/93) coaches - those folk that were supposed to be bringing on the current and next generation of riders. I know some of the coaches back there were stuck in their ways but you get where I'm coming from right?

I know I've not been on here long, and it really isn't my intent to come off as an ass, but reading some of the posts on here the specificity of training for some guy who's just starting and needs just to get his bike set up right, taught the basics and get plenty of miles in the legs at a fair pace just strikes me as odd.

Besides, there's more acronyms on here than there are in the all the documentation that Cisco's ever written.

I think I better stop and go for a ride....

Alex Simmons

That'd be JRA.

While you're at it, use the time wisely and think up some more TLAs. But no ABAs, OK?

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swampy1970

... still kerfuffulled.....

Alex Simmons

SKF syndrome - common amongst newer forum members.

__________________
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