What are the specs of muscles?
There are books and papers on the physiology of exercise, in particular on how muscles use energy in different regimes. For a basic intro check Crossfit, for more details you can look at e.g. Body By Science.
trying to optimize
What are you trying to optimize for?
Those links seem to describe how to maximize fitness, not what you are able to do with a given amount of it. Isn't there at least a basic rule of thumb, like which of applying 100 N over 10 m and 50 N over 30 m exerts a muscle more?
I'm trying to optimize for a certain combination of time saved and not having exerted myself too much during a trip.
This is a thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. The previous thread is at close to 500 comments.