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"It amuses me when people assume that what works for high level athletes will apply to themselves. Its like compression garments, which only work if the wearer has a quite low body fat, though I see a lot of lardy fuckers wearing them because they have seen professionals wear them."
Who says these only work with low body fat? If that was the case why would they prescribe a fat fuck like me DVT compression socks?
hippy
@miro_o
If you are a high level athlete in the middle of your range of motion then working on strength/power probably makes a lot of sense. Range of motion can be considered in a dynamic or static fashion. On your bike you want a decent range of dynamic motion, flexibility beyond this is probably not essential for cycling fitness (*see caveat below). I'd assume as dynamic range of motion improves static would do too.
I'd suggest that many peoples limiting factor is their range of motion and that they are near that limit, in which case further strengthening (which is likely to decrease the range of motion) would be less than productive. Whereas a dedicated athlete who has worked on flexibility way beyond their dynamic range of motion may well benefit from developing strength. For an average person who lives a sedentary life their hamstring flexibility is pretty poor, so they would need to work on this to get a decent position and then develop their strength. It is easier to stretch muscles and then build them up than to build up muscles and then stretch them.
It amuses me when people assume that what works for high level athletes will apply to themselves. Its like compression garments, which only work if the wearer has a quite low body fat, though I see a lot of lardy fuckers wearing them because they have seen professionals wear them.
*We also have to consider the long term effects of exercise at extremes. Many athletes are quite crippled later in life. A lot of training inures people against pain, what may have been beneficial for high levels of sport can have a detrimental effect later in life.