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by yetihehe
1463 days ago
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> Pro cyclists can reach up to 400 Watt in short bursts I heard pro cyclists can reach up to 2kW. I managed to make 500W on a rowing machine for 5 minutes, but I'm a couch potato. I believe 400W is a normal rate for cyclists. When you are sitting, your body already produces about 100W of heat. |
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This hugely depends on body weight / gender / training levels etc., body weight being a big deal since that’s what you’re transporting. So the other way folks measure output is W/kg of body weight.
A beginner adult male will be in the 100-200W zone, around 0.5-1.5 W/Kg. Usually anyone can train themselves into the 200-300 (3-4 W/Kg) zone which is the recreational pace - the groups of cyclists you see on the road. Beyond 300 ftp (150lb body weight) (4-5 W/kg) you’re reaching race pace. The ones you see on screen have upwards of 5-6 W/Kg FTP output. They obviously have other constraints around putting this output at the end of a 200km ride for 20 mins etc as well, which makes it extra hard.
Finally we come to the KW numbers - all these folks have two kinds of muscles (fast twitch and slow twitch). The sprinters are saddled with a higher proportion of the kind of fibers that can allow huge spurts of power - they put out about 1000-1500W for about 5-10s. These are probably what you’re thinking of. This is pretty much an end of ride (or a sprint section) empty your tanks effort.
Semi related tidbit: track cyclists are a middle kind of beasts here: they put 600-1000W for a couple of minutes but don’t have to worry about riding 200kms to get there.