The PowerCranks™ Concept

PowerCranks™ integrates a one-way clutch in each crank-arm of your bicycle or stationary bike. This patented modification changes the cranks from being fixed to each other at 180º (as are regular cranks), to being independent from one another. Each leg can drive the bicycle but one leg cannot assist the other. This forces the use of all the muscles of the lower extremity and many core muscles in a balanced and coordinated fashion.

This simple modification benefits the PowerCranks™ user in several ways:

• Fully train the hip flexors and hamstring muscles, that are otherwise difficult to impossible to train, equally (aerobically at least) to the antigravity, muscles of the legs
• Facilitate neuromuscular changes that improve both form and efficiency in both cycling and running.
• Balance the muscle capabilities and improve the coordination in lower extremities and core which will lower the risk of injury.
• Improve running ability while training in a non-impact environment
• Act as a rehabilitation tool since the good leg cannot assist the bad leg ensuring a rapid return to balanced functioning and eliminating the devlopment of bad compensatory habits during rehabiltation.
• Nothing beats a PowerCranks™ workout! Twice as many muscles exercised and improved coordination at the same time. This results in increased VO2max for the athlete and increased basal metabolic rate for fitness buff for improved weight loss benefits for the same time spent exercising.

Why do PowerCranks have such a revolutionary effect? Or, in other words, why is there so much room for improvement in athletes who are otherwise training hard now?

As children, we learn how to pedal our tricycles and bicycles by pushing on the downstroke and just relaxing on the upstroke. Since we were not attached to the pedals, even if we wanted to go fast, we learned we had to always keep a little back pressure on the pedals on the back stroke so we would always be in contact with the pedal, ready to apply power as soon as the pedal came over the top. As we grew older, we learned to push harder on the downstroke but we could not reduce the back pressure on the upstroke any more or we would lose contact with the pedal. So, we all learned in order to go faster all we could do was train to push harder. Once this coordination was ingrained it is pretty much impossible to undo without proper feedback. The reality is that, without PowerCranks™ training, we have all pretty much ignored half of the muscles in the legs. While the form we learned as chlldren as to how to go fast on the bicycle might have been optimum when we were not attached to the pedals, this form is not optimum for adults wanting to maximize performance once we become attached to the pedals. The problem comes in figuring out how to undo these less than optimum habits that are ingrained into the nervous system after 10 to 20 years of doing it "wrong". Fortunately, now there is PowerCranks and PowerCranks ensure you will make this change if you will put in the time on them.

Why do PowerCranks have such a revolutionary effect on running improvement?

Well, it just turns out that proper cycling technique is closely related to proper running technique. Nobody was more surprised than us when we started getting the reports of these fantastic running improvements starting in as little as two weeks. As we have come to analyze this the reasons seem obvious and if you have any questions about this we encourage you to go to the running section of the web site and watch some of our running videos. Good running form and good cycling form are closely related!

This is the change demanded in the PowerCranks™ revolution.
Become a better athlete by using more of your total muscle power. Take the PowerCranks™ challenge, see how much you can improve!