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You finish a 20-minute test, multiply the average power by 0.95, and enter the result as your FTP. A week later, a platform fits a critical power model to your power-duration curve and returns a number that is several watts different. Same legs, same power meter, two values that both claim to describe the hardest effort you can hold. The disagreement is not a measurement error to be resolved. It is a signal that the two numbers describe different constructs, built from different definitions and different data.

The useful question is not which number is correct. It is which definition matches the session you are about to prescribe. Answering that requires understanding what each number actually is, why they diverge, and what the comparison studies show about the size and direction of the gap.

What FTP is, and what it is not

Functional Threshold Power is defined as the highest power a rider can maintain in a quasi-steady state without fatiguing for approximately one hour (Allen and Coggan, 2010). In practice, almost nobody tests it with a full 60-minute maximal effort. The standard field protocol is a 20-minute maximal time trial, with FTP estimated as 95% of the mean power from that effort. The 0.95 factor is a fixed correction intended to approximate the gap between 20-minute and 60-minute power for a typical trained rider.

That correction factor is where the first source of divergence lives. It is a population-level approximation applied to an individual. A rider with a large anaerobic contribution can produce a strong 20-minute effort that overstates what they can hold for an hour. A rider with a smaller anaerobic reserve may find the 0.95 factor underestimates their true hour power. FTP carries no term that distinguishes between these two riders.

FTP’s strength is not physiological precision. It is standardization. Training zones, workout files, Training Stress Score, and most analytics platforms are built around it. When you serialize a workout as a fraction of FTP, it travels cleanly between devices and platforms. That compatibility is why FTP remains the default reference for day-to-day training structure, even among coaches who understand its limitations.

What critical power is

Critical power comes from a different tradition. The two-parameter model describes the relationship between power output and time to exhaustion as a hyperbola. In its linearized form, total work done is plotted against time, and the slope of that line is CP while the intercept is W-prime (W′). CP is the rate associated with the maximal aerobic steady state, and W′ is the fixed amount of tolerable work above CP available without recovery (Chorley and Lamb, 2020).

The physiological significance of CP is that it demarcates the boundary between the heavy and severe intensity domains. Below CP, steady-state values for muscle phosphocreatine, blood lactate, and pulmonary oxygen uptake can be attained. Above CP, these variables do not demonstrate steady-state behavior; they change continuously until the limit of tolerance (Jones and Vanhatalo, 2017). This is not a convention or a field estimate. It is a physiological landmark.

W′ is the second parameter, and it is what FTP lacks entirely. It represents the finite work capacity above CP. Ride above CP and W′ drains. Drop below CP and it reconstitutes, though the kinetics of that reconstitution are curvilinear and variable between individuals (Jones and Vanhatalo, 2017). The CP-W′ pair does not just give you a sustainable power; it gives you a model of how much you can spend above that power and for how long.

Why the two numbers diverge

The divergence has three sources: different definitions, different protocols, and the presence or absence of a W′ term.

The definitions differ. FTP is anchored to roughly one-hour quasi-steady-state power. CP is the asymptote of the power-duration relationship, which represents the boundary between heavy and severe intensity. These are related but not identical constructs. Research on the maximal metabolic steady state suggests CP often sits at or slightly above the power most riders can hold for a full hour, while FTP is explicitly anchored to that hour. Depending on individual physiology, CP can read above or below FTP.

The protocols differ. CP is conventionally derived from three to five separate high-intensity tests on different days, with power outputs chosen to produce exhaustion between roughly 2 and 15 minutes (Jones and Vanhatalo, 2017). FTP is derived from a single 20-minute effort with a fixed correction. Change the durations used in the CP fit and you change the estimate. Short efforts anchor W′ and can pull a short-protocol CP estimate upward for riders with large anaerobic capacity.

The W′ term matters most. Two riders can produce the same 20-minute average power and therefore the same FTP, while having materially different CP. A rider with a large W′ will have short efforts inflated by anaerobic capacity, which can pull a short-protocol CP estimate upward even if their genuinely sustainable power is lower. FTP cannot see this distinction because it has no W′ term. The CP-W′ pair is the only one of the two frameworks that surfaces it.

What the comparison studies show

The evidence does not support a universal percentage gap. It supports correlation without interchangeability, with cohort-specific biases and wide limits of agreement.

In a cohort of 17 moderately trained cyclists and triathletes, CP was significantly higher than FTP, with a mean bias of 7 ± 13 W and 95% limits of agreement of −19 to 33 W (Karsten et al., 2021). The correlation was strong (r = 0.969), but the authors concluded that the values generally should not be used interchangeably.

In a separate cohort of highly trained cyclists and triathletes, CP and FTP were also not interchangeable. CP was consistently higher than FTP, with a mean bias of 16 W (McGrath et al., 2021). The authors framed that 16 W as a posited correction factor for that homogenous group, not as a general conversion.

These biases are cohort-specific. They do not establish a universal rule that CP is always higher than FTP, or that the gap is a fixed percentage. Direction and magnitude vary with protocol, cohort, and model choice. What the studies do establish is that the two numbers are correlated but not equivalent, and that treating them as interchangeable introduces error into pacing and prescription.

One further point from the critical power literature: a thesis examining maximal lactate steady state, FTP, and CP concluded that CP was the only marker examined that validly represented the maximal metabolic steady state or the upper boundary of the heavy intensity domain (Wong, 2024). That does not mean FTP is useless. It means FTP is a field estimate of a related but distinct construct, and CP is the physiologically anchored parameter.

A practical division of labor

The programming implication is not to replace FTP with CP or vice versa. It is to use each for what it is good at.

Use FTP for zone-based training load and workout standardization. The ecosystem is built on it. Training Stress Score, normalized power, and most workout files are computed relative to FTP. If you serialize a session as a fraction of FTP, it travels cleanly between your head unit, your indoor trainer, and your analytics platform. Keeping zones on one reference prevents the confusion that comes from mixing FTP-based and CP-based prescriptions in the same plan.

Use CP and W′ for pacing surge-heavy efforts and for diagnosing whether the aerobic ceiling or the anaerobic reserve moved. If you know your W′ is 20 kJ and you spend 15 kJ covering attacks on a climb, you know you have very little left for the summit. That is information FTP cannot give you. CP also separates your aerobic ceiling from your anaerobic capacity, so when you retest you can see which one actually improved. A flat FTP across a training block looks like no progress, but if CP held steady while W′ grew, you did improve, just in a different system.

Record your personal offset between the two numbers. The size and direction of that offset is diagnostic information. A stable offset with a moving CP or W′ tells a different story than a stable offset with everything flat. If FTP stalls, check whether CP or W′ moved before concluding that training has stopped working.

Testing hygiene

A CP fit is only as trustworthy as the maximal efforts feeding it. If you never go truly maximal for 3 to 5 minutes, the model has nothing to anchor W′ with, and your CP estimate becomes unreliable. The same applies to FTP: a 20-minute test that was not truly maximal, or that was performed in a fatigued state, produces a number that will mislead every zone derived from it.

For CP, use at least two maximal efforts of different durations, performed fresh. A common pairing is around 3 minutes and 12 minutes, sometimes with a 5 to 7 minute effort added for a better fit. Do them on separate days or with very long recovery between, because a fatigued second effort corrupts the model. The sources describe ranges rather than a universal standard: two to seven laboratory visits for traditional constant-work-rate testing, or a single 3-minute all-out test that provides valid estimates of CP and W′ from one effort (Chorley and Lamb, 2020).

For FTP, the standard is a single 20-minute maximal effort after a thorough warm-up, on a steady road or a trainer in a stable environment. Take the average power, multiply by 0.95, and that is your FTP. Some riders prefer the 8-minute protocol, taking 90% of a single 8-minute effort, but it is noisier and tends to overestimate. Ramp tests are convenient on smart trainers but read high for riders with strong neuromuscular power.

Whichever you choose, the same warm-up, terrain, and pacing discipline matter. Garbage efforts produce garbage thresholds, and that is true for both models.

What to do when the numbers disagree

First, stop treating the disagreement as an error. It is expected. The two numbers describe different constructs, built from different definitions and different data. The question is not which one is right but which one matches the session.

Second, note the direction and magnitude of your personal offset. If CP reads higher than FTP, that is consistent with the comparison studies, but the size of the gap is yours. If CP reads lower, that is also possible depending on your physiology and the protocol used. Record it and watch how it changes over time.

Third, keep your zones on one reference so that workout files travel cleanly. FTP is the practical choice for most riders because the ecosystem is built on it. Use CP and W′ as a diagnostic layer on top, not as a replacement for the reference that your devices and platforms expect.

Fourth, retest both every 4 to 8 weeks. If FTP stalls, check whether CP or W′ moved. Adjust training emphasis toward whichever system has stopped responding. A rider whose CP is flat but whose W′ is growing is making progress in a different system, and the single FTP number hides that.

FAQ

Is CP always higher than FTP?

No. The comparison studies found CP higher than FTP in their cohorts, with mean biases of 7 W and 16 W, but direction and magnitude vary with protocol, cohort, and model choice. The evidence does not support a universal rule.

Can I convert FTP to CP with a fixed correction factor?

Not for a general population. The 16 W bias reported by McGrath et al. (2021) was cohort-specific and framed as a posited correction for a homogenous group. A fixed conversion factor applied across riders would introduce error rather than reduce it.

Which number should I use for interval prescription?

Use FTP for zone-based training load and workout standardization, because the ecosystem is built on it. Use CP and W′ for pacing surge-heavy efforts and for diagnosing whether the aerobic ceiling or the anaerobic reserve moved. Keep zones on one reference so that files travel cleanly between devices.

How many tests do I need for a valid CP estimate?

At least two maximal efforts of different durations, performed fresh. A common pairing is around 3 minutes and 12 minutes, sometimes with a 5 to 7 minute effort added for a better fit. Traditional constant-work-rate testing uses three to five tests on separate days, but a single 3-minute all-out test can also provide valid estimates (Chorley and Lamb, 2020).

Why does my CP estimate change when I use different test durations?

Because short efforts anchor W′ and can pull a short-protocol CP estimate upward for riders with large anaerobic capacity. The model is only as good as the efforts feeding it. Change the durations and you change the estimate.

Sources

Allen, H. and Coggan, A. (2010). Training and Racing with a Power Meter. VeloPress. Definition of FTP as the highest power a rider can maintain in a quasi-steady state without fatiguing for approximately one hour.

Chorley, A. and Lamb, K.L. (2020). The Application of Critical Power, the Work Capacity above Critical Power (W′), and Its Reconstitution: A Narrative Review of Current Evidence and Implications for Cycling Training Prescription. Sports, 8(9), 123. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7552657

Jones, A.M. and Vanhatalo, A. (2017). The ‘Critical Power’ Concept: Applications to Sports Performance with a Focus on Intermittent High-Intensity Exercise. Sports Medicine, 47(Suppl 1), 65–78. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5371646

Karsten, B., Petrigna, L., Klose, A., Bianco, A., Townsend, N., and Triska, C. (2021). Relationship Between the Critical Power Test and a 20-min Functional Threshold Power Test in Cycling. Frontiers in Physiology, 11, 613151. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2020.613151/full

McGrath, E., Mahony, N., Fleming, N., Raleigh, C., and Donne, B. (2021). Do Critical and Functional Threshold Powers Equate in Highly-Trained Athletes? International Journal of Exercise Science, 14(4), 45–59. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8136559/

Wong, S. (2024). A critical appraisal of methods to determine the Maximal Metabolic Steady State in cycling. PhD thesis, University of Kent. https://doi.org/10.22024/unikent/01.02.104738

The native garment preview shows large bold white lowercase meh. lettering on a dark shirt. No animal illustration is present. That is the whole object: four letters, a period, and a dark field. The word is a shrug. The typography is a shout. That contradiction is the design, and it is worth taking seriously because it is the same contradiction most of us live inside when we talk about ambition, rest, and the stories we tell about our own effort.

I want to be precise about what I am describing. The letters are lowercase, which softens the word grammatically, but they are set large and bold in white against a dark ground, which does the opposite visually. The period after meh is not decorative. It closes the sentence. It says the verdict is final. A word that means I have no strong opinion is delivered with the confidence of a closing argument. That is the joke, and it is also the argument: indifference, when it is printed this large, stops being indifference and becomes a position.

This matters because the shirt is not really about apathy. It is about the performance of apathy. There is a difference between not caring and wanting people to know you do not care. The first is a state. The second is a statement. The design chooses the second. You do not set a word in bold white lowercase on a dark shirt if you want it to disappear. You do it because you want the word to be read from across a room. The shirt is a billboard for a feeling that claims to have no interest in billboards.

I see this same tension in the athletes and coaches I work with, though not in the way you might expect. The meh shirt is not a training garment, and I am not going to pretend it is. But the word on it belongs to a vocabulary that endurance athletes know well: the language of managed expectations. I am not really racing this one. I am just getting the miles in. I am not fussed about the result. Sometimes that is honest. Sometimes it is a hedge against the disappointment of caring and failing. The shirt prints the hedge in letters large enough to be seen from the back of the bunch. It makes the hedge visible, and in doing so, it makes it a little ridiculous. That is useful. A good joke about a defense mechanism is a way of noticing you have one.

The typography also does something simpler. It refuses the usual visual grammar of the sarcastic T-shirt. There is no distressed font, no faux-vintage texture, no cartoon animal, no ironic use of a retro logo. The observation is clear: no animal illustration is present. The design is just the word, set plainly, with a period. That plainness is a choice. It says the joke does not need help. It also makes the shirt harder to dismiss as a novelty. A novelty shirt winks. This one does not wink. It just says meh. and waits for you to decide whether it is funny.

I think that is why the design works as a piece of visual rhetoric. The word meh is a verbal shrug, but the shirt is a visual assertion. The two do not cancel out. They create a small, stable irony that the wearer gets to carry around. The shirt is not claiming the wearer is indifferent. It is claiming the wearer has a sense of humor about indifference. That is a more specific and more interesting claim, and it is the one the typography actually supports.

There is a practical point here about how we read slogans on clothing. We tend to treat the words as the message and the design as the delivery system. But the design is part of the message. A word set small and low-contrast means something different from the same word set large and bold. The meh shirt is a clean example because there is almost nothing else to look at. The word is the design, and the design is the argument. The argument is that a shrug can be loud. That is a small idea, but it is a real one, and it is the kind of idea that rewards a second look.

What this changes on Monday: when you next reach for a phrase that softens your own investment — I am not really bothered, I am just seeing how it goes — notice how you are delivering it. Is it a quiet truth or a loud performance? The shirt does not answer that question. It just prints the performance in letters big enough to make you ask it.

Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

The native garment preview shows a large 1000 above POUND CLUB, with a light weightlifting graphic on a dark shirt. That is the whole design. No smaller text is legible in the preview, and nothing on the garment certifies a total, a federation, or a date. The shirt states a number and a category. Everything else is supplied by the person reading it.

That restraint is worth examining, because the 1000 pound club shirt belongs to a genre that usually does the opposite. Most strength apparel is loud about effort: slogans about grinding, suffering, no days off, the whole vocabulary of permanent exertion. This design skips all of it. The largest element is a quantity. The second element is a membership category. The graphic is a weightlifting figure rendered light against the dark ground, subordinate to the type. The shirt does not tell you to train harder. It tells you what happened.

I want to argue that this is the more interesting choice, and that it carries a specific idea about ambition that the louder genre misses. A milestone shirt is a receipt. It records a completed transaction between a lifter and a barbell. It is not a program, not a promise, and not a personality. The distinction matters because the strength world routinely collapses those categories, and the collapse is where people get hurt.

What the number actually denotes

The 1000-pound club, as the term is commonly used in powerlifting and strength training, refers to a combined total of 1,000 pounds across the three competition lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. The exact conventions vary by federation and by era, and I am not going to pretend the shirt settles them. What the shirt does is name the threshold and let the number stand. It does not print the individual lift numbers, which is consistent with how the milestone is usually discussed: the total is the achievement, the components are the method.

That is a meaningful editorial decision in a garment. Printing 1,000 as the dominant element treats the total as the unit of accomplishment. The three lifts that produced it are absent. In training terms, this mirrors something coaches say constantly: the total is what counts, and the route to it is negotiable. A lifter with a strong squat and a weak bench and a lifter with the reverse can arrive at the same number through completely different programs. The shirt does not care which route you took. It only cares that you arrived.

The receipt versus the prescription

Here is the distinction I keep coming back to. A receipt says: this happened. A prescription says: do this. Strength apparel usually leans prescriptive, because prescription sells. “No excuses” is a prescription. “One more rep” is a prescription. They address the reader as someone who has not yet done the thing and needs to be pushed toward it. The 1000 Pound Club design addresses the reader as someone who has, or as someone who recognizes the achievement in another person. It is descriptive, not motivational.

I think that is healthier, and I think it is also more honest about how strength actually accumulates. Nobody reaches a 1,000-pound total by responding to a slogan on a shirt. They reach it through months of structured progression, adequate recovery, and a willingness to adjust when the plan stops working. The slogan genre implies that effort is the missing variable for most people. For most people who are already training seriously, effort is not the missing variable. Recovery, programming, and patience usually are. A shirt that simply records a milestone does not lie about which variable matters.

There is a second honesty in the design. The number is fixed. It does not say “1,000+.” It does not say “elite.” It does not claim a ranking. It names a threshold that has a conventional meaning in the sport and stops there. Compare that to apparel that prints “beast mode” or “unbreakable” — words that cannot be verified and therefore cannot be wrong, which is precisely why they are empty. A number can be wrong. A number can be checked. That vulnerability is what gives it weight.

The graphic is subordinate, and that is the point

The light weightlifting figure sits below or alongside the type, rendered in a lighter tone against the dark shirt. It is not the hero of the composition. The number is. This is a small thing, but it reinforces the argument: the design treats the activity as the means and the result as the subject. The figure could be any lifter. The number is specific.

I read this as a quiet correction to the way strength culture often presents itself. The gym is full of imagery of the act — the strain, the chalk, the bar bending. That imagery is fine, but it can become an end in itself, a way of performing effort rather than accumulating it. A shirt that foregrounds the total and backgrounds the act says: the act was necessary, but it is not the point. The point is what the act produced.

What this changes on Monday

If you coach lifters, the practical translation is about how you frame milestones in the gym. A 1,000-pound total is a receipt. When a lifter hits it, the useful response is to mark it, then immediately return to the process that produced it, because the process is what will produce the next one. The shirt is a good model for that: it records the achievement without prescribing the next one. It does not say “now go for 1,200.” It does not say “you are done.” It says what happened.

If you are the lifter, the translation is about what you let a milestone mean. A number on a shirt is not a personality. It is not a permanent identity. It is a record of a period of training that worked. The useful thing to do with a record is to learn from it: what block produced the total, what recovery looked like, what you would change. The shirt does not ask you to do that. But it also does not stop you, and by refusing to editorialize, it leaves the space open.

That is the argument of the design, as I read it. A milestone is worth printing because it happened. It is not worth inflating into a slogan, because slogans are for people who have not done the thing yet. The 1000 Pound Club shirt knows the difference, and it stays on the right side of it.

Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

“Pull up through the top and back of the stroke.” It is one of the most persistent cues in cycling coaching. The image it creates is appealing: a smooth, circular pedal stroke in which each leg contributes evenly around the entire crank revolution. The problem is that the mechanical and metabolic logic of the pedaling cycle does not support the cue as a general efficiency strategy. This article examines what actually happens during the upstroke, why forcing a pull-up changes muscle coordination rather than improving economy, and how to think about circular-pedaling drills without dismissing them entirely.

The pedaling cycle, sector by sector

To discuss the upstroke precisely, it helps to divide the crank cycle into four functional sectors. Using the convention where 0° is top dead center (TDC), the sectors are:

• Sector 1 (330°–30°): top dead center, where the pedal passes over the top.
• Sector 2 (30°–150°): downstroke, the primary power phase.
• Sector 3 (150°–210°): bottom dead center (BDC).
• Sector 4 (210°–330°): upstroke or recovery phase.

During submaximal cycling, the effective force — the component perpendicular to the crank arm that actually produces torque — is strongly positive during the downstroke and near zero or negative during the upstroke. The negative torque arises because the mass of the leg and foot is being lifted against gravity while the contralateral leg is pushing down. As Hug and colleagues note, “negative torque is classically measured during the upstroke phase (also called ‘recovery’ phase), when exercise intensity is submaximal” (Hug et al., 2013).

This negative torque is not a flaw in technique. It is a predictable consequence of the linked crank system and the passive dynamics of the lower limb. The contralateral leg’s downstroke does the work of lifting the recovering leg. The recovering leg’s muscles are largely unloaded during this phase in normal pedaling.

What independent cranks reveal about the pull-up

Independent cranks (such as PowerCranks) remove the mechanical coupling between the two legs. Each crank rotates independently, so the contralateral leg cannot lift the recovering pedal. The rider must actively pull up through the top and back of the stroke to keep both cranks moving. This makes independent cranks a useful experimental model for studying what happens when a pull-up is enforced.

In a study of ten healthy males with no history of cycling training, pedaling with independent cranks at 100 W and 70 rpm produced a dramatic shift in muscle activation (Hug et al., 2013). Compared with normal fixed cranks, the independent-crank condition significantly increased mean EMG activity in:

• Tibialis anterior (+336%)
• Gastrocnemius medialis (+47%)
• Rectus femoris (+123%)
• Biceps femoris long head (+162%)
• Semimembranosus (+304%)
• Tensor fascia latae (+586%)

The increased activity of hip and knee flexors occurred mainly during top dead center and the upstroke phase — exactly the region where the pull-up cue is meant to apply. The study also found high inter-individual variability in how participants adapted to the independent cranks.

These findings are mechanistically informative: forcing a pull-up recruits muscles that are normally quiet during the upstroke. But the study measured acute muscle coordination and mechanical effectiveness, not energy cost, efficiency, or performance. The authors themselves state that “further studies are needed to determine whether training with independent cranks has the potential to induce long-term changes in muscle coordination, and, if so, whether these changes are beneficial for cycling performance” (Hug et al., 2013).

Why pulling up is metabolically expensive

The metabolic cost of cycling is dominated by the downstroke, where the large extensor muscles of the hip and knee produce the majority of the positive work. The upstroke, by contrast, is a phase of low force and low metabolic demand in normal pedaling. When a rider actively pulls up, they are adding muscular work to a phase that was previously passive. That work requires oxygen and substrate, and it does not increase the total positive work delivered to the crank — it merely redistributes it.

In fact, because the pull-up recruits smaller, less powerful muscle groups (hip flexors, knee flexors, tibialis anterior), the metabolic cost per unit of force is likely higher than for the large extensors. The retrieved evidence does not directly quantify this energy cost, but the muscle activation data are consistent with the interpretation that a forced pull-up is metabolically inefficient. The evidence is mixed on whether any efficiency benefit could emerge from long-term training, and the retrieved sources do not resolve that question.

There is also a coordination cost. The high inter-individual variability in the independent-crank study suggests that some riders adapt more easily than others. For riders who find the pull-up awkward or fatiguing, the drill may simply add noise to an already effective motor pattern.

What the evidence does and does not support

It is important to separate what is established from what is inferred. The retrieved study establishes that:

• Negative torque is classically measured during the upstroke in submaximal cycling.
• Independent cranks eliminate contralateral assistance and force an active pull-up.
• Acute independent-crank pedaling increases activation of hip and knee flexors, especially around TDC and upstroke.
• There is high inter-individual variability in the acute response.

The study does not establish that:

• Circular-pedaling drills improve gross efficiency or time-trial performance.
• Independent cranks produce long-term changes in muscle coordination.
• Pulling up through the top of the stroke wastes energy in a way that has been directly quantified.
• The findings apply to trained cyclists; the participants had no history of cycling training.

The practical argument against making the pull-up a central efficiency strategy rests on the mechanistic mismatch: the upstroke is not where the work is done, and adding work there does not increase total positive work. It may, however, change coordination in ways that are individually variable and not yet shown to be beneficial.

Practical implications for coaches and athletes

For most endurance riders, training time is better spent on sustainable force production during the downstroke, appropriate gearing, and bike fit. These factors have a clearer mechanistic link to performance than an exaggerated upstroke pull. The downstroke is where the large extensor muscles can produce high force at relatively low metabolic cost. Improving force application there — through strength training, cadence manipulation, and position adjustments — is a more direct route to efficiency.

That does not mean circular-pedaling drills are worthless. They can serve as a coordination experiment or a diagnostic tool. A rider might use short bouts of independent cranks or exaggerated pull-up drills to explore a different movement pattern, but the evidence does not support prescribing them as a required efficiency intervention. If a drill changes muscle activation without demonstrated performance benefit, it is optional technique practice, not a cornerstone of training.

Because inter-individual variability is high, a drill that feels productive for one rider may be awkward or fatiguing for another. A reasonable approach is to test the drill in a low-risk setting — for example, a few short efforts on an indoor trainer — and observe whether it improves smoothness or reduces perceived effort. If it does not, there is no mechanistic reason to persist.

What would change this recommendation

The recommendation against prioritizing the pull-up is based on the current evidence. It would change if long-term training studies showed that circular-pedaling drills or independent cranks improve gross efficiency or performance in trained cyclists. Such studies would need to measure outcomes like oxygen consumption, time-trial power, or efficiency — not just muscle activation. Until then, the mechanistic case and the available acute data point in the same direction: the upstroke is a recovery phase, and forcing work there adds cost without a demonstrated benefit.

FAQ

Does this mean I should never pull up on the pedals?
No. During very high-intensity efforts, such as a sprint or a steep climb, a brief pull-up can help maintain power. The argument here is against making the pull-up a general efficiency strategy for submaximal endurance riding.

Are independent cranks useless?
They are a useful research tool and can be a coordination drill. The evidence does not support them as a performance-enhancing intervention for most riders.

What about the ‘scraping mud’ cue?
That cue focuses on the bottom of the stroke and the early upstroke. It may help some riders smooth the transition, but the same caveat applies: it changes coordination without proven efficiency benefit.

Should I focus on pedaling smoothness instead?
Smoothness is a subjective quality. The objective measure is mechanical effectiveness, which is already high during the downstroke in trained cyclists. Improving effectiveness during the upstroke has not been shown to improve performance.

How do I know if a pedaling drill is helping?
Look for changes in power output at a given perceived effort, or improvements in time-trial performance. Changes in muscle activation alone are not sufficient evidence of benefit.

Source: Hug, F., Boumier, F., & Dorel, S. (2013). Altered muscle coordination when pedaling with independent cranks. Frontiers in Physiology, 4, 232.

Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

On a cream ground, the lettering sits in two stacked lines: I GOT THAT DOG above, IN ME below. Between them, or rather beneath them, is the image that does the actual work. A small tan cartoon chihuahua stands in red boxing gloves, forepaws raised in a guard, planted in front of a brick wall. Behind the dog, cast on that wall, is a much larger black wolf-shaped shadow. The wolf is not a second animal. It is the chihuahua’s shadow, scaled up to a size the dog’s body cannot support.

That mismatch is the design. Everything else — the slogan, the gloves, the brick — is scaffolding for one visual argument about the gap between how a thing presents itself and how it imagines itself. The shirt is not really about dogs. It is about the shadow.

The Slogan Is a Setup, Not a Punchline

“I got that dog in me” is a phrase that has circulated widely enough in recent years that its exact origin is not something I can responsibly pin down here, and I won’t pretend otherwise. What matters for reading this shirt is how the phrase functions: it is a boast of latent ferocity. The speaker claims an inner animal — the kind of grit that shows up in competition, in a hard interval set, in the last kilometer. The phrase asserts that the mild exterior conceals something that bites.

On its own, the slogan is abstract. It could be printed over anything. The artwork is what makes it specific, and the specificity is a joke about proportion. The dog making the claim is a chihuahua: the smallest recognized breed, a dog bred for companionship, a dog whose reputation for ferocity is itself a running gag precisely because the body does not match the attitude. The gloves are red, which reads as combat, but they are also oversized relative to the paws, which reads as costume. The brick wall behind supplies the only genuinely tough texture in the frame — and it is a backdrop, not a threat.

Then the shadow. A wolf is the animal the phrase “that dog” is reaching for: a predator, a pack hunter, something with actual teeth. The shadow delivers the wolf the slogan promises. But it is a shadow, and it is cast by a chihuahua. The design has it both ways at once. The boast is validated — there really is a wolf in the picture — and deflated, because the wolf is only a projection on a wall.

Why the Shadow Has to Be a Shadow

This is the part worth slowing down on, because it is where the artwork makes a choice that a lesser version would get wrong. The designer could have drawn a second, larger dog standing behind the chihuahua. That would be a different joke: two dogs, one small and one big, the small one fronting for the big one. It would read as a threat by proxy, and it would resolve the tension. The viewer would know which dog was real.

Keeping the wolf as a shadow refuses that resolution. A shadow is cast by the object in front of it, which means the wolf is, in a literal visual sense, the chihuahua’s own. It is not a separate ally. It is what the chihuahua projects when the light hits it a certain way. The design is making a claim about self-perception rather than about backup. The dog is alone in the frame, and the thing that makes it formidable is the size of its own cast image.

I read that as the shirt’s actual subject, and I want to be clear that this is interpretation, not a claim about the artist’s intent. The visual facts are the two lines of text, the tan chihuahua, the red gloves, the brick wall, and the black wolf-shaped shadow. The reading — that the shadow is the joke and the slogan is the setup — is mine, and it is the kind of reading a design either supports or doesn’t. This one supports it, because the shadow is the only element in the composition that is out of scale with everything else, and out-of-scale elements are where visual arguments live.

The Ambition Reading

There is a version of this shirt that is purely a dog meme, and it works on that level. But the composition also maps cleanly onto a familiar experience: the gap between the size of a claim and the size of the body making it. Anyone who has stood at the start line of something they were not sure they belonged in knows the shape of that gap. The chihuahua in gloves is not a fraud. It showed up. It put the gloves on. It is standing in front of the wall. The shadow behind it is bigger than it is, and the question the image leaves open is whether the shadow is a delusion or a forecast.

The design does not answer that question, which is why it holds up better than a straightforward joke would. A shirt that said “small dog, big attitude” would be a caption. This one is a diagram of the gap, and the viewer supplies the verdict. That is a more durable piece of visual rhetoric, and it is the reason the image rewards a second look rather than a single glance.

If you want the object itself, the listing is here: I Got That Dog In Me Funny Chihuahua Boxing Meme. The design is also available in a version with a photographic snarling chihuahua from a different seller, which is a genuinely different piece of art — a photo of a real dog’s real face versus a cartoon dog with a drawn shadow. The cartoon version is the one that can make the shadow argument, because a photograph cannot cast a wolf.

What the Shirt Is Actually Saying

Strip the slogan away and the image still works: a tiny dog in boxing gloves, a wall, a wolf-shaped shadow. Strip the shadow away and the image collapses into a generic tough-dog cartoon. The shadow is load-bearing. It is the element that turns a boast into a question, and the question is the interesting part.

That is a lot to hang on a cream t-shirt with two lines of block lettering. But the best graphic tees are arguments, not labels, and this one has an argument: the wolf is real, and it is also just a shadow, and both of those things are true at the same time. The chihuahua knows it. That is why it has its gloves up.

The artwork is a closed loop. The words LET’S ROOT FOR EACH OTHER AND WATCH EACH OTHER GROW form a ring around four root vegetables — a carrot, a radish, a beet, and an onion — each with a face, each with its roots drawn down into visible soil. The sentence wraps the plants the way a garden bed wraps a root system. That circularity is the design’s whole argument, and it is worth reading slowly, because the shirt is doing something more specific than it first appears.

Start with the pun. Root is doing double duty. In the first clause, root for is the colloquial verb: to cheer, to support, to want someone to succeed. In the second clause, grow is the agricultural verb, and the vegetables are the literal subjects of it. The design collapses the two meanings by placing the cheering sentence around plants whose roots are the visual proof of the growing. The carrot’s orange taproot, the radish’s red bulb, the beet’s deep magenta, the onion’s layered white — all four are drawn with their below-ground structures exposed, which is not how you normally see a root vegetable. You see the top. The shirt shows you the part that does the work.

That choice matters. A root vegetable’s edible portion is its storage organ, the tissue it builds to survive dormancy and regrow. The visible leaves are the factory; the root is the reserve. When the artwork draws the roots in soil, it is showing the part of the plant that is not performing for anyone. The smiling faces are above ground. The roots are below. The shirt puts both in the same frame and asks you to read them together.

Now the second clause: watch each other grow. Growth, in the botanical sense, is not a moral achievement. A beet does not try to swell. It accumulates because photosynthesis exceeds respiration, because the sink strength of the storage root pulls sucrose down the phloem, because the plant has the resources and the time. The carrot does not compete with the radish for the title of Most Improved. They occupy the same bed and draw on the same soil. The design’s four vegetables are not ranked. They are adjacent.

This is where the shirt’s argument becomes useful, and where it diverges from the standard mutual-support slogan. The common version of this phrase — root for each other — is usually a statement about encouragement. It means: want good things for your friends. The shirt adds and watch each other grow, which changes the tense and the posture. Watching is not the same as cheering. Watching implies attention over time, a willingness to observe a process you are not directing. You can root for someone in a single moment. You can only watch them grow across a season.

The artwork supports this reading through the soil line. The roots are visible, which means the viewer is positioned below ground, looking up at the smiling faces. That is an unusual vantage point. It is the perspective of someone who has been in the dirt, not someone standing at the edge of the bed with a hose. The design does not show a gardener. It shows the plants themselves, arranged in a circle, each with its own root system, each facing outward. The sentence runs around them like a fence or a trellis. The vegetables are not looking at each other. They are looking at you.

I read that as a quiet correction to the way mutual-support language usually works. The phrase root for each other can slide into a demand: I am supporting you, therefore you should be growing in a way I can see. The shirt’s second clause resists that. Watch each other grow is an instruction to pay attention without prescribing the rate. A radish matures in weeks. A beet takes longer. An onion is a biennial, and if you leave it in the ground, it will bolt in its second year and send up a flower stalk instead of bulbing. The four vegetables in the artwork have different timelines. The design does not flatten them into a single schedule.

That is the part I keep returning to. The shirt is not a productivity slogan. It is a description of a bed. The carrot, radish, beet, and onion are drawn with their roots visible, which means the artwork is showing you the storage phase — the part of growth that looks like nothing is happening above ground. Anyone who has grown root vegetables knows this phase. The tops stall. The leaves look the same for weeks. Then you pull one and find a full-sized beet. The growth was happening below the soil line the whole time.

The shirt’s phrase, read literally, is about that phase. Watch each other grow is not measure each other’s growth. It is not compare each other’s growth. It is watch, which is a patient verb. The design reinforces it by keeping the roots in view. You are not looking at the leaves and guessing. You are looking at the actual structure.

There is a version of this shirt that would be a generic kindness slogan. The artwork avoids that by being specific. Four vegetables, four root types, four colors, four faces. The carrot is orange and tapered. The radish is red and round. The beet is magenta and bulbous. The onion is white and layered. They are not interchangeable. The design does not say we are all the same. It says we are all in the same soil. That is a different claim, and a more interesting one.

If you want the object itself, the listing is here: Let’s Root For Each Other And Watch Each Other Grow Garden. The design is printed on a standard t-shirt, and the artwork is the argument. The shirt does not claim to improve your garden, your relationships, or your personal growth. It is a drawing of four root vegetables with their roots showing, surrounded by a sentence that uses the word root in two ways at once. That is enough.

Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

What this changes on Monday: if you coach or train with other people, notice the difference between cheering and watching. Cheering is a moment. Watching is a season. The shirt’s four vegetables have different maturation times, and the design does not rank them. Neither should your attention.

On a dark shirt, centered, in lowercase, sits the word meh. — with the period. It is very small. There is no animal, no mascot, no rainbow, no distressed grunge texture, no ironic cat. The garment preview shows lettering that occupies a modest fraction of the chest area, and the punctuation is part of the design rather than an artifact of the product title. That period is doing more work than most slogans manage in a full sentence.

This is a critique of that specific artwork, not a roundup of introvert merchandise. The Meh Funny Sarcastic Introvert Minimalist Saying is the object under discussion, and the design decision worth examining is scale: the word is printed small enough that a viewer has to be close, or paying attention, to read it. That is not a limitation of the print. It is the argument.

Editorial note: this publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner, so this is not an independent review.

What the artwork actually shows

The observed design is a single lowercase word followed by a period, centered on a dark shirt. No illustration accompanies it. No secondary text frames it, explains it, or softens it. The typography is the entire composition.

That sparseness matters because it removes the usual escape hatches. A slogan shirt with a cartoon animal gives the wearer a character to hide behind — the joke belongs to the raccoon, the cat, the tired-looking sloth. A shirt with a large, loud font announces itself from across the room and invites the wearer into a performance. This design does neither. It states a mood in the smallest reasonable type and then stops.

The period is the detail I keep returning to. Without it, meh reads as a fragment, a label, a category. With it, the word becomes a complete sentence — grammatically closed, tonally flat, finished. The punctuation is what converts a shrug into a verdict. That is an interpretation of the visual choice, not a claim about the designer’s intent, but it is the reading the artwork supports.

Why small type is the harder choice

There is a practical logic to large lettering on apparel: it is legible at distance, it photographs well, and it performs the wearer’s personality to strangers who never asked. Small type does the opposite. It rewards proximity and withholds itself from the crowd. A person has to be near enough, and attentive enough, to read it.

That is a coherent position about social energy, and it is expressed through typographic scale rather than through a written explanation. The shirt does not say I am an introvert. It behaves like one. I find that more interesting than a design that simply states the trait in bold capitals, because it makes the medium carry the message instead of using the medium as a billboard for the message.

It also means the shirt is quiet in a way that slogan apparel rarely is. Most statement tees are built to be read across a room. This one is built to be read at conversational distance — which is, arguably, the only distance at which the sentiment is relevant anyway.

The word itself, and what it refuses to do

Meh is a useful word precisely because it declines to escalate. It is not no, which is a boundary; it is not whatever, which carries contempt; it is not fine, which is often a lie. It occupies the middle register — low affect, low commitment, no invitation to negotiate. Linguistically it sits closer to a sigh than to a sentence, which is why the period is such a strange and effective addition: it gives a sigh the grammar of a full stop.

I would not claim the shirt is making a philosophical argument about ambition or rest. It is not that ambitious, and that is consistent with its own thesis. What it does is mark a position that is genuinely underrepresented on apparel: the position of having no strong opinion and no interest in manufacturing one. Most slogan shirts sell enthusiasm — for a hobby, a sport, a team, a personality type. This one sells the absence of enthusiasm, and it does so without irony so heavy that it becomes another form of enthusiasm.

Where the design could be misread

The obvious risk with a word this small is that it reads as an accident — a print that came out undersized, or a blank shirt with a speck on it. That risk is real, and anyone drawn to the design should weigh it honestly. The counterargument is that the ambiguity is the point: the shirt is legible to the people close enough to matter and effectively invisible to everyone else. Whether that reads as deliberate restraint or as a printing error depends entirely on the viewer, and the design accepts that.

The second risk is tonal. Meh can read as apathy toward the people around you rather than as a statement about your own energy. That is a genuine hazard of low-affect humor, and no typographic choice fully solves it. The small scale helps, in my reading, because it keeps the statement from becoming a broadcast — but I would not pretend the hazard disappears.

What this changes on Monday

If you are the kind of person who has been handed a dozen extrovert-shaped assumptions about how you should spend a weekend, the useful move is not to buy a shirt that argues with them. It is to notice that the argument can be made at low volume. The design here is a small demonstration of a larger principle: a position does not need to be loud to be legible, and a boundary does not need to be explained to be real.

That is the whole of it. The shirt prints one word, small, with a period, and trusts the reader to arrive at the rest. I think that trust is the design’s best quality — and the reason the period, not the word, is the part I would keep.