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"Your potential is never defined by any metric other than the results of your own development piloted by an informed investigation of data derived from a simple objective repeatable reference."

- Bob Fugett

Actual: Yesterday, I set Mary on a web search quest to find a definitive answer to the question of the supposed dead spot in pedal strokes.

I have heard it described as at the 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock position, and elsewhere described as between 9 and 12 o'clock. I have also seen 4, 7, and 9 mentioned.

I have never heard a scientific explanation, nor seen the word "relative" included in any of the texts, nor have I ever found outlined any series of stepped exercises specifically designed to mitigate the problem.

We have been doing a lot of work on designing exercises to help Mary's psoas/hip/leg/sciatic/bunion/piriformis problem (which we are currently treating as an injury), and the series of exercises we have established specifically address the supposed dead spot problem.

These exercises are merely a continuation of the work we were doing during winter training in Florida earlier this year, and those exercises have already resulted in significant gains in the steady state power available to Mary, even without strength training per se.

I believe the discussion of "dead spot" merely describes most people's skill level in dealing with a smooth pedal stroke, not a formalized clinical definition of an actual limitation of the human interface to the bike crank and pedal.

The fact that we haven't found anybody else who knows that a Computrainer bar graph for pedal stroke smoothness can easily be fooled while pedaling with only one foot (while the other foot is clicked out and resting on a the ground) is a rather clear indication nobody has ever taken a serious look at the problem.

Everybody just hears that there is a dead spot, realizes it is part of their own limitation set, assumes it is a natural limitation, and stops thinking about how to fix it.

People are idiots.

Mary came up with several online references this morning, but none are anything more than the vague description of the dead spot that I have seen before.