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there must be a flipside to this, otherwise the ultimate crank length would be 1mm
For typical riders, biomechanical efficiency is very nearly flat (±1%) from 150mm to 200mm, but starts to drop more and more quickly outside those ranges. At the long side, it's probably an issue with range of motion, you can't apply the necessary force across such a large joint articulation angle. At the short end, you run into timing/latency issues as the muscle firing repetition rate exceeds what is viable for such a large mammal. You'd need to be a hummingbird to hit the 3000rpm necessary to exploit 5mm cranks🙂
gbj_tester
Except it stands to reason that the longer the crank, the harder it is to spin, even if you change the gearing to compensate, right?
And there must be a flipside to this, otherwise the ultimate crank length would be 1mm.