I had an interesting outcome today. Recently ive been using Torqs Todays plan virtual coach and taking my training rides outdoors. Today i did a set of sweet spot intervals on some road climbs.

Ive only ever calculated my ftp indoors using trainerroad. This sets my ftp at 251w and threshold hr at 165. But ive always maintained that and my w/kg felt low compared to my outdoor power. We know this is often the case.

Today then, using the same PM i rode my hill intervals at 250w. But this recorded a consistent HR average of 153. Whats more, my virtual coach describes the effort as “breathing deeply, only able to talk in short gasps”. I was no where near that.

Ive got the same ride tomorrow, so I’m going to push my climbing watts to what i believe/guesstimate is my outdoor ftp – about 280w – and see where my HR goes to try to gain an idea of my outdoor ftp.

Not very scientific, but i find the difference facinating and worryingly all my Todays plan intervals could be “low” and i may need to reset my ftp by +/- % each time to see the required power to train indoors/outdoors respectively.

*watts an hr arent real but are factored in the same percentage of actual for the example. I dont want to give everything away 😀

I’ve found a similar trend, especially when comparing indoor riding with an outdoor climb. Differences of several tens of watts. Eventually I’ve decided on roughly what my outdoor ftp on the flat seems to be, but I can still sustain significantly higher power on long hills without increasing hr to extremes. Plenty of reading but seemingly little consensus in online articles about this phenomenon but it’s definitely not unusual.

It is definitely interesting.
I know i can get a lot more out on a climb on a warm day than i can on the flat on a cold day.
Would be an interesting (but probably not that useful) experiment to see what happened to indoor power with front wheel propped up higher to mimic a climb.

‘only able to talk in short gasps’ sounds a bit beyond SS to me, more like LT.

‘only able to talk in short gasps’ sounds a bit beyond SS to me, more like LT.

It was upper end / threshold.

i have the same issue, i reckon i’m about 30/40 watts lower indoors than out, which is a huge percentage of my output. Makes a bit of a mockery of trainer rd etc imo

Makes a bit of a mockery of trainer rd etc imo

Does it? I cant say ive ever done an easy TR workout. Surely its just the Turbo/heat/momentum/indoor issue leaving us working harder for less indoors.

Lots of factors but it’s usually explainable.

If you were to look at the mechanics of pedalling on the turbo, on a flat road, and up a hill, you’d likely find that the application of torque around the pedal stroke would be different. You’ll be using different muscles in different firing patterns. Riding fast on the flat, most of the power on the downstroke. Riding hard up a steep hill, much more evenly spread around the pedal stroke. Turbo, depends on its characteristics.

Then there’s cooling, position (breathing being associated to this), psychological factors. Turbo is just different. Not uncommon to have an indoor and outdoor FTP and work accordingly.

If your power is significantly higher out on the road just be thankful it’s not the other way around 🙂

Yes but it makes a mockery of 1 ftp test result used indoors and outdoors.

You’ll be using different muscles in different firing patterns

And this differs between individuals own profile also. This is why a climber and a TT’er with the same w/kg cant compete on the same climb/ flat.

Yes but it makes a mockery of 1 ftp test result used indoors and outdoors.

There’s still a lot of value in having an easily repeatable test.

I tend to keep track of my indoor and outdoor interval targets across various durations and work from those. The only thing the FTP number really gets used for is working out TSS.

i reckon i’m about 30/40 watts lower indoors than out, which is a huge percentage of my output

If that is the case it would be interesting to understand where that difference comes from. Might be that your turbo setup isn’t the best for you. Might be that you’re just better suited to variability of riding outdoors. Also how much turbo work you do is a big factor, if you are a very occasional turbo user then you’ll likely be way down.

Makes a bit of a mockery of trainer rd etc imo

It doesn’t really. You just need to be aware that riding on the turbo is a different activity to riding outdoors. And when you’re doing turbo work you’re actually training your capacity to ride your specific turbo which has some carry over to your outdoor riding capacity. How much carry over? Well… it depends 🙂

What really is flawed in TR/Zwift/etc are generic workouts that have targets set at % of FTP.

What really is flawed in TR/Zwift/etc are generic workouts that have targets set at % of FTP.

What’s a better way of working then?

For the intervals you do (e.g. 1 min, 5 min, 8 min etc.) know what your max is, or at least track previous efforts, then gauge efforts based on a percentage of that or on your previous effort at that level.

I would assume that for a significant proportion of TR users, the approximation of their power curve that TR use (based only on the single point estimate of FTP) is good enough for them to see the general improvements that many of us are after.

For me certainly, the reality is that whilst I like having power data and geeking out a bit, really what I need to do is a lot more training, and the subtleties of my particular power curve shape are not so important. I don’t even have any goals in terms of tweaking the shape of my curve.

I totally agree though, that there must be a non-tiny number of people who do care enough and know enough to perceive benefit from a more curve-based intensity setting. I suspect that the software infrastructure to support that just isn’t in place though. At the moment every workout is just scaled according to FTP – they would need to separately scale each interval instead.

Converting their library would be tricky too – whilst they could perhaps automatically convert an interval from %FTP to %CPn where n is the duration of the interval, and then scale that interval’s wattage spec. according to the user’s curve, I imagine that they might want to do something a bit more complex than that to make sure that it does what they want. (I expect that that would be fine for simple workout structures, but not for some weirdly-shaped ones.)

So I guess it depends on the demographic of their target market, really, and how much resource they’d be willing to put in to satisfy their really-serious customers (who might be their main market now that Zwift is more competitive on the structured training front than they used to be).

Waffle waffle wibble. Sorry.

In TR probably the best approach is just to create a custom version of whatever workout you do. Just create a copy, then you can tweak the interval target after each time you do it.

I don’t see much if any difference indoors to outdoors BUT I would never ever dream of doing an FTP test on turbo/rollers.

I suggest you adjust by feel. If the session calls for 6 intervals and it was too easy outdoors then add what you think will get you to complete exhaustion by the final interval and call it done.

I’d also just do a 20minute outdoor test as a training session one of these days.

I would never ever dream of doing an FTP test on turbo

Why not? I think the opposite – I wouldn’t dream of doing it outdoors, too many variables unless you’re using an Alpine climb.

Surely turbo’s ideal – controlled, repeatable and lower risk of hitting the deck when the bleeding-from-eyeballs final minute or two arrives.

I suggest you adjust by feel.

Thats only easy if I’m doing say 20 x 15 uphill “foaming at the mouth sprints” on single track, whereas to perform 8 x 5 mins climbing at 96% FTP is too hard to judge accurately – thats what PM’s are for. For example the last three days for me have been a 50k / 1:45 minute ride comprising of:

Day 1: 8 x 5 mins tempo, ideally uphill
Day 2: 8 x 5 mins SS/Threshold, uphill
Day 3: 8 x 5 mins 120%, uphill

Had to judge, even harder if you don’t know what your outdoor FTP is and its a variable of the indoor version.

mrBlobby has touched on it there with the mechanics of pedalling.
I’ve owned a mediocre turbo trainer which was ok for the job of indoor training, but the difference between that and the Kurt Kinetic fluid unit is remarkable
My power indoor and out is identical.
Most people I know who have real reservations about indoor training are using cheap Magnetic turbos.

For me, Inertia is key. Temperature control 2nd. Motivational tools (TR/Sufferfest etc) 3rd.

EDIT – Its also only one experience? You need a wider test period!

Well everytime I get on the turbo a little bit of me dies, everytime I get outside on my bike then like a man pulled down off a bit of wood it miraculously comes back to life.

That’s the full scientific explanation for what is happening, no need to look further into it.

I’ve owned a mediocre turbo trainer which was ok for the job of indoor training, but the difference between that and the Kurt Kinetic fluid unit is remarkable

Much the same experience as when I went from a Minoura mag turbo to a LeMond. Night and day in terms of feel and the gap between road and turbo.

Day 1: 8 x 5 mins tempo, ideally uphill
Day 2: 8 x 5 mins SS/Threshold, uphill
Day 3: 8 x 5 mins 120%, uphill

Hard to judge,Tbh, not that hard to judge at all. All of them give quite obvious physical indicators in terms of breathing, muscular strain, pressure on the pedals etc.
Obviously power is better (or is it if it was calculated based off a 8/20min test indoors?), but listening to your body is a valuable skill.

Tempo 5
SS 6
LT 7
VO2Max 8

Slightly off topic
Surely 8×5 @ 120% has to be a misprint? Lots of riders with flatter power curves will struggle to even do 1×5 at 120%.
I’m sure you already know this, but coggan’s VO2Max zone is 106-120% and is equated to 3-8min efforts, so 8×5 min repeats seems wildly off the mark.

I didn’t mean ride by feel I meant look at your outside data calibrate with how much left you had in the tank and decide how many watts you want to add on to your target power or threshold.

Good luck with day 3 after days 1&2! Torqs recommendation is no more than 2 interval sessions per week. Day 3 looks VERY tough as a third day in a row.

As for turbo 20minute FTP – can’t hack the pain indoors. Tried it – doesn’t work for me.

I’ve owned a mediocre turbo trainer which was ok for the job of indoor training, but the difference between that and the Kurt Kinetic fluid unit is remarkable

Much the same experience as when I went from a Minoura mag turbo to a LeMond. Night and day in terms of feel and the gap between road and turbo.

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How does your Neo compare to those in that respect?

(Sorry – I know I’m always asking you what you think of it!)

How does your Neo compare to those in that respect?

Very well. Going from the LeMond to the Neo was pretty seamless (other than going from about the loudest turbo there is to the quietest!) The different settings really do make a big difference too. The TT/Tri setting does a good job of simulating the feel of lower CdA riding. And the Road is much like the road. Ride both modes back to back in TT position and the difference is very noticeable.

In terms of gap between turbo and road. I still make more power on the turbo than the road, but not that much and it’s mostly due to the variability of road (given a long enough road with a constant steady shallow gradient and no traffic then it’d probably be about the same.) And more importantly I find that the gains are much more transferrable between road and turbo (this was a big issue with my old mag turbo.)

Interesting – thank you.

Good luck with day 3 after days 1&2! Torqs recommendation is no more than 2 interval sessions per week. Day 3 looks VERY tough as a third day in a row.

Adsh, todays plan is putting 3 sessions aweek in for me?

Anyway, I didnt make it, i was ****, not help by two of those days being 5am-7pm ar work. So it ended up as:

Day 1: 8 x 5 mins tempo, ideally uphill
Day 2: 8 x 5 mins SS/Threshold, uphill
Day 3: rest
Day 4: Same 50k route with the hills, “smashed” to get the Vo2max on the hills, with 1h 37 min at 250np. Not bad with 10k of that in/out of traffic.
Day 5: Different route with 20 x 15s sprints and one 5k TT emptying the tank.

Yesterday was day 5 and i also had a parents & kids activity event including a 3k run. Understandably im aching all over today.

This was the last week of plan before this next comparatively easy week before next weeks race.

Anyway, looking through the numbers on these rides i was right, i’m pushing about 13% higher power outdoors. This does mean ive undercooked my few TT efforts this year. Everydays a school day…

I noticed the same thing with a powertap. About 30-40W lower indoors for the same RPE.

Cooling wasn’t a factor either because I could be winching up a slow climb on a hot day outside and still do better than indoors on a cool day with a huge fan blowing outside air in. Also not attitude related, since I could get similar numbers outside on a flat TT effort but still be rubbish indoors.

I put it down to muscle activiation as mrblobby says or psychology. You’re not alone though as it seems loads of people report this, maybe half the turbo training population, but loads of people don’t. Interesting.

Good a place as any to ask, would I notice a big improvement going from a mag trainer to fluid…it terms of ride quality?

Not looking to spend smart trainer money

Haze, I’m sure there are some people who’ll swear they didn’t notice any difference but I’d be very surprised if you didn’t. I’d get a kinetic road machine, 308 quid off wiggle.

Coincidentally it’s a KK I’m considering

Generally regarded as the best fluid turbo.

Reckon there’s a couple of months left before the weather turns, should be able to scrape the funds together by then.

New turbo, ScrewFix for an industrial fan and a decent pair of Bluetooth headphones on the shopping list!

I have an Elite Chrono Fluid. Its very good, and cheaper if you want to consider a lesser cost.

Cheers Kryton will add it to the list.

Mate of mine has just offered to lend me his CycleOps fluid to check out…should give me a better idea of how much of an improvement I can expect for the outlay

Thinking of some new track wheels so I can leave turbo tyres on the cheap wheels I have and use the track bike for rollers….

Haven’t read the whole thread as there are some long responses.. sorry being a bit lazy!

My take on this is about mechanics of the body, when you work on the turbo the bike sits straight in one position.

I think ftp in a static position is lower than when you can move the bike around and from side to side as and when you want to keep swapping an recruiting various elements of your hamstrings and lower back etc.

If you think about it at an extreme if you had to do a 10 second sprint how would you apply the power… the bike is side to side. There’s got to be a small element of this when riding normally at threshold for a period…

Also how long were your climb intervals? Did you account for hr lag?

@Haze/kryton
The Chrono fluid has a pretty significant flaw. Since it has the floating design and uses your body weight for pressure on the roller, this also changes its power curve.
In the case of a very light rider, it doesn’t offer enough resistance for doing low rpm force work.

@Haze
The Fluid2 (assuming thats the unit you’ve borrowed) has a very nice feel to it, but has a very frustrating warm-up curve, and resistance can fluctuate significantly depending on ambient temperature.

Also don’t discount resistance rollers. The concentration to keep upright and in position helps take your mind off the pain which IMHO is the reason I produce more power outside.

Cheers Fife…haven’t picked it up yet so not sure which model it is…just looking for some general mag vs fluid feedback to justify it.

Will do some further reading when I’m sold on fluid, although tbh I’m not sure there’s a better option without going to direct drive which al seem a bit £££