So, determined to roll into spring with decent fitness I've been using the turbo. 2x 30mins at a resistance setting of 4 from a max of 10. Tacx sirrus.
Typical, I've injured my knee!
Bike fit was done by a specialist so that's not the problem so am I running to high resistance?
The French resistance, just for the berets.
Serious answer it will depend on lots of things but I kept settings consistent and used virtual power as the measure. (measure as in a stick with markings on it not the numbers)
When I use it I vary the resistance from 0 to 1 to 0 up to 10 in a pyramid or just at random depending how I feel. This winter it has been set to at the back of the shed.
3/5 on a cyclops mag. but 5 is not difficult to pedal. some turbos i've tried you can barely turn the high setting.
As per Mike most people are running power or virtual power. I have a power meter on my bike and it's hooked up to an old magura trainer. I think the settings go up to about 7 and I'm not using more than the first 4 settings.
What cadence are you cycling at? If it's low I'd suggest less resistance and higher cadence might help the knees...
Try to keep your cadence around 80rpm and just use gears to do intervals of a few minutes higher efforts. So say 5 mins warm up 1 to 2 out of 5 effort. 5 mins at 4 out of 5 effort, 5 mins at 2 out of 5 effort repeat five times, warm down 5 mins.
But thats really old school what you really need is some kind of power or at least heart rate numbers.
It's [i]unlikely[/i] that running too high resistance has caused knee problems. It's more likely that sitting in one position for longer periods has highlighted something else. Either an earlier injury or a problem with your "specialist fitting".
You'd have to google the equivalent power levels for your turbo to get an idea if it's doing what you want or not. Level 4 might be 150 watts, or 400 watts. Who knows. (well, i do for my turbo as i have the power curves for it!)
Do you have any of the turbo training guides (either online or print) they can give you a good handle on how to structure. 30 minutes gives you a reasonable timescale to do warm up, short intervals and warm down, so i'd guess there are plenty of standard sessions about.
As an absolute minimum i'd want to know my heart rate to judge how hard i'm working (power is better, but more expensive) checking your pulse is easiest, but a cheap HRM can be bought for not much. You might need to work out levels. Cadence you can just count out. Aim for at least 80 for most sessions.
Just smashing out 2x30 isn't guaranteed to give you decent fitness. Unless you have some sort of idea what you are doing, and trying to achieve.
I'd be looking at heart rate and cadence rather than what relative setting you are on.
You could be on a hard setting but be on the easiest gear ratio, whereas a lower setting on your big chain ring might be as hard or harder.
I use a fluid trainer so no additional resistance settings other than gears. Monitoring HR works for me.
X4 10 mins at 90% max is my go to routine at the moment.
Four on my Tacx. You really don't move around much on the bike, and I think this exacerbates small misalignments that you don't get on the road (e.g. cornering). So I suspect you have a small cleat misalignment, rather than pushing too hard. Try getting out the saddle a little more.
I too try and callibrate heart rate with virtual power (speed) to my road riding. On Zwift, At 150 VWatts, my heart rate is 140, cadence about 90 rpm and VSpeed is 32 kph on the flat. That isn't far from my road riding experience. I don't use a fan.