Got myself a jetblack smart trainer with a zwift cog over Christmas and have just had my first couple of rides on zwift but I'm not sure if I've got something wrong .
Yesterday I did the Norton summit which is a 368 meter climb . I ride fairly regularly on the road on my gravel bike and I know how hard that would feel but on zwift it felt alot easier , my heart rate was below 140 whereas I know if I rode up my local big climb it would be alot higher.
I was using between gear 10 and 14 on the cog and this felt right in terms of how hard you have to push the pedals to ride up a steepish road climb but it didn't result in the heart rate I'd expect. It said I averaged 164 watts up the climb and as I've never ridden with a power meter normally I've no frame of reference for how this compares to when I'm riding outside . For reference my local climb to compare to is 272 m and 7.2% and last time I did it my heart rate was around 170 by the top where there are some pretty steep hairpins .
Does this sound normal on Zwift or does it sound like I've got something wrong in the set up or am I just not working hard enough?
There's a trainer difficulty setting that's usually set at 50%, if you bump it to 100% it should feel a lot more realistic.
People who ride with it at 50% say it doesn't change the effort required but there's a reason they ride at 50% and it's not because 100% feels the same!
Looks like that zwift climb is only a 4% grade
https://zwiftinsider.com/portal/norton-summit/
So it should feel a fair bit easier than your outdoor one. Having said that the first thing to ask is whether you've calibrated your turbo?
I've not used zwift for a while but I always used to calibrate in the jet-black app rather than in zwift, not sure if that's still the general advice.
And then finally you now have the perfect tool for fitness benchmarking, after calibrating do an FTP ramp test and see how your W/kg stacks up.
Edit: oh yeah and that re the trainer difficulty
Yeah start with calibration, also make sure your weight is correct in the settings. You can also change to certain gear ratios to mimic what’s on your actual bike but I’ve never found that does much
Have you got a (powerful) fan? I find I get too hot with no breeze so what feels like my limit is actually quite a bit less without a fan. In the stw race series a few years ago I suddenly improved* by getting a great big fan pointed at myself!
*Just slightly less bad than before, not good!
Jetblack Victory owneer here for ~2 months, after my Saris H3 died.
Default 50% trainer difficulty with the default mixed terrain gearing is far easier than 100% TD, but because the virtual gearing with Cog fitted instead of cassette gives me 24 gears I prefer using 100% all the time so far including races like the TDZ stage 3 earlier at 1710 GMT.
Typically, my goto gear on the flat in races is around virtual gear 14, which is approx 220-250W iirc.
During recovery cooldown today I went up Innsbruck legsnapper (~8% average) in gear 1 and at 93Kg, I was doing ~165W at ~86rpm cadence on the Aethos climbing bike.
Thanks all . Not sure I understand the point of the difficulty setting , what's the benefits of having it set at a lower difficulty?
Easy day at work today so decided to give an FTP test a go to give me a benchmark. Did the ramp test lite which was hardish but I completed it with the cadence it asked for . Am I not meant to be completely exhausted by the end ? It gave me an ftp of 189 which Google tells seems about right for a regular cyclist my age .
The plan is to do one of the training programmes in preparation for a couple of events in may so I suppose it doesn't matter to much as long as I keep everything the same and hopefully the next test shows an improvement.
Am I not meant to be completely exhausted by the end
Depends how fit you are. At the end of the ramp test you shouldn't be able to turn the pedals anymore and be breathing at the limit but if you have a reasonable fitness level you should be able to carry on riding at a short period.
You shouldn’t be completing an ftp test, you should be going to exhaustion. If you’ve ridden mountain bikes for a while do the regular ramp test and that will set the specifics of each workout you do. Trainer difficulty just gives more room between gear changes so if for instance gear 14 means 230-250w feels right to you before wanting to go to one harder having less trainer difficulty means you’d get 230-300w before needing that change. But 300w is 300w regardless of difficulty setting
Depends how fit you are. At the end of the ramp test you shouldn't be able to turn the pedals anymore and be breathing at the limit but if you have a reasonable fitness level you should be able to carry on riding at a short period.
It was the lite test and at the end it was wanting me to do 250 watts at 80rpm after going up 10 watts a minute from 70 watts . I was working hard by the end but not at my limit .
Ive always just ridden my bike and only really paid attention to distance and elevation on strava but not in any training sense . Ive got a couple of things this year that I'd like to be fitter for so thought zwift would help me get the most out of any training I do through the week so I can still enjoy a proper ride at the weekend without thinking about the training aspect. But I just want to make sure I'm roughly right in terms of numbers so when I start the training program I'm doing enough.
I'm also a zwift newbie - I just stick it in erg mode and do the workouts without worrying about gears. You need to correctly set your FTP before the workouts will feel right. I'm also trying trainerroad for a structured training plan for an event in May, It syncs recommended workouts to zwift and has some ftp detection to keep the intensity of the workouts correct - I've been using a few weeks and think it has the workouts just right for my fitness.
If the ramp is correct then you shouldn't be able to complete it. My FTP is around 300W, at point of failure on a ramp test I think it's asking for over 400W. The ramp steps go way above that (6-700W). It's a test to failure not completion.
Do the full ramp test not the lite version. That should let you set a more realistic FTP
Or do the Oh Hill No route which goes up the grade. That will also give you an FTP once you get to the top of the climb.
Ive done something wrong but I'm not sure what 😀 I did the ftp ramp test lite which went up 10 watts every minute but at 250 it stopped and said we'll done you're finished . Looking at the ramp tests on the companion app I see what you mean about them going to a point where I wouldn't be able to continue but it didn't do that for me .
Will give it a day or two then try the full test.
If you did the lite ramp test and start the final 250W interval, nevermind finished it, you need to do the standard ramp test instead. Your best 60 seconds power (75% of it) determines your estimated FTP.
Ramp tests are much less energy draining than a standard FTP test. Suddenly, you will be unable to spin at 70+rpm while seated, you end the ramp test and should quickly feel ok within five minutes of pootling along.
I think the ramp test lite is for complete beginners. If you get to the end of it, you need to do the standard one.
Trainer difficulty effectively makes the terrain feel 'flatter'. So 50% trainer difficulty will make a 6% gradient feel like 3%.
It doesn't affect things like FTP tests or workouts. Try playing around with it on a hilly route & you'll soon realise what effect it has.
It's worth noting that will Zwift will also auto-detect changes in your FTP based on riding data.
I'm a zwift newbie, haven't done a ramp test, but FTP was estimated based on one of the climbs I did. Never ridden with a power meter, so no idea how my effort relates to real world, but find zwift hard enough. Using a kikr core though.
Is there a STW group?
I've not used it for a few years. My experience of FTP tests were I was:
Ok
Ok
Ok
Getting harder
Harder still
Hard
Hard
Who am i
Spent
Curl up in a ball on the floor wondering what I'd just done.
Yeah that's what I was expecting but I've thought the lite test was for beginners to zwift and riding with power not for beginners to cycling in general.
I might do the hill climb test as it seems fairly straightforward in that you just ride up the hill as quick as you can . I just need the FTP to be about right to make sure the workouts are at the right level for me .
I think of reducing trainer difficulty as the virtual equivalent of fitting easier gears to your bike.
If you were really going to the Alps, you might well fit lower gears... turning the %age down does the same without having to get your wallet and the spanners out.
At the end of the day, you still need to produce the same number of watts to get up that hill, whether it's 200 watts for one hour, or 2 watts for 100 hours.
I'd be double checking you've entered your weight and height (and age, to a much lesser extent) correctly.
Some apps sync these across, so if you've linked Garmin Connect or Strava or similar, make sure all linked apps have the correct weight/height/age in case Zwift thinks you are much lighter/smaller/older than reality....
And set the trainer difficulty to 100% until you've establishes a reasonably accurate FTP (you'll know once you've done a few sprint interval workouts...).
Just did the normal ramp test and blimey that was a bit different to the lite version . Clung on till 400 watts but my cadence fell off a cliff a few levels before that . 30 seconds after pressing the quit button I was cursing myself thinking I could have gone for longer . Gave me an FTP of 236 which gives me something to work with .
Thanks for the help everyone 👍
Clung on till 400 watts but my cadence fell off a cliff a few levels before that . 30 seconds after pressing the quit button I was cursing myself thinking I could have gone for longer
That sounds more like it!
...ramp test ...Clung on till 400 watts...Gave me an FTP of 236...
Thought it was 75%? If you completed a minute at 400w you should be looking closer to 300w
I wouldn't curse yourself too much on not hanging in for much longer, an extra minute wouldn't make a vast difference and ramp tests aren't entirely accurate.
They are good at getting you in the right ball park though, so maybe try a 40 minute TT at (or just below) your FTP to dial it in a bit.
Also Zwift Cog half price today with the code PEAKPARTY if anyone is interested?
Thanks for that though the saving is somewhat offset by now needing to replace my trainer with a compatible one 😉
Just did the normal ramp test and blimey that was a bit different to the lite version . Clung on till 400 watts but my cadence fell off a cliff a few levels before that . 30 seconds after pressing the quit button I was cursing myself thinking I could have gone for longer . Gave me an FTP of 236 which gives me something to work with .
Thanks for the help everyone 👍
As others have said, if you were power matching 400W in the ramp test, you would have been given an FTP of ~300W (400W+ was always my target when healthy before long covid, nothing like that now).
To be given FTP of 236, your best minute of power was ~315W, so something pretty wild must have been going on for you to reach the 400W interval! Important to stay seated and keep cadence 70rpm+ in a ramp test.
But at least it gives you a ballpark figure to work with, tests should get easier with practice and if you do ~10min+ hard efforts around Zwift outside of tests, you may be told your estimate has increased again from their algorithm.
It tells you that your best minute counts so I'm assuming when I was up at 400 I wasn't getting enough cadence for it to count as me doing it properly then it gives you the choice to quit . At 400 I dont think what I was doing would be considered proper cycling 😀
A couple more questions if I may , now I've got a baseline FTP should that be the number I'm trying to improve ? Ive got 2 endurance style mtb events in May , I've done these types of things before but always have just tried to ride my bike a bit more before so just once I'd like to try and actually train and see what the outcome is . I'm thinking 3 zwift sessions a week then try and get out for a proper ride at the weekend . Does that sound about right to you ?
Your ftp will increase naturally to a point the fitter you get as you’ll be able to work more efficiently at lower power so you’ll be able to go for longer, but it’s not a number to get fixated on. As for structured training, you’ll get a million different answers as to what’s best to do! I’d suggest if you’ve done those types of events before have a think of what you thought went well and what you could improve, and look at working on that. Other than riding for 8 hours straight and slowly increase the average power you can do for that duration, but that’ll be some serious mental fortitude to do that indoors
Other than riding for 8 hours straight and slowly increase the average power you can do for that duration, but that’ll be some serious mental fortitude to do that indoors
If I have 8 hours free I'm going for a ride outside 😀 It's got to fit in around work kids etc etc so that's why I'm thinking the shorter workouts will be useful. I'm not really interested in zwift as a virtual world if that makes sense , just a tool to try and improve fitness although i can see how the routes would be useful for zone 2 stuff or just getting some riding in when the kids are in bed or the weather is rubbish .
If I'm honest I'm probably at a level where just riding more in any form is going to help .
I’ve mostly used Zwift for races and group rides, plus some recovery type zone 2 workouts.
When I used TrainerRoad I followed their training plans for mtb - thy did a lot of sweet spot training for the first chunk of a plan - then moved to adding in some more tempo / vo2 types stuff as you went on. If you’re time limited then this is good use of time to put on fitness quickly.
I don’t know if I’ve done a ramp test in Zwift - but in TrainerRoad I’d never get near the 400w minute - I’d get some where around 330w ish then get to the point I couldn’t keep turning the pedals any longer - at which point the test ends. If you were powering through each minute of effort rising all the way through to 400w then your ftp on trainer road would have been a lot higher than low 200’s.
Either way, if you do some races on Zwift and get a best 20 mins that it thinks means your ftp is higher than what you have from the ramp test it’ll update your ftp automatically at the end of the race.
just go full gas in some races, it soon figures out your FTP
For the last 2 or 3 levels on the ramp test I don't think I was putting out anywhere near what it was asking for but it let me continue the test so my best minute that it judged it on was probably a good 3 or 4 minutes before the end . Comparing what's its telling me with some of my mates on strava I reckon it's in the right ball park at 236 and if I can make that go up in a couple of months then I'll be happy .
It sounds in that case like your ramp test probably wasn’t done in erg mode. If you switch it to erg mode then at the point you can’t put out what it’s asking it’ll grind you to a halt. As your cadence goes down the trainer will put on more and more resistance to try and make up the power.
I'd probably add that 20 minutes of surging in a Zwift race probably isn't the best way to estimate FTP
Whatever number you arrive at, try to ride it afterwards for around 40 minutes steady state.
Whatever number you arrive at, try to ride it afterwards for around 40 minutes steady state.
That seems like a good idea . So if I can maintain 236 for 40 minutes then it's about right?
I did one of the recommended workouts yesterday and it felt like what I was after . With the ERG mode you just have to do what it tells you without thinking about it . But it sets the intervals based on your FTP I think so I'd like that to be right.
I didn't think I would but I might give a race a go just to see what it's like but I've used it nearly every day for the past week and I think my legs need a rest , like a kid with a new toy 😀
Thanks for all the tips everyone.
Sounds like you’re getting into it, takes a while to understand all the settings and lingo but the more you do it the more you’ll know what it’s meant to feel like, so when you look at a training session, how hard it will be. Erg mode is good for set and forget but for shorter intervals and/or higher power outputs then normal gears are better I find
That seems like a good idea . So if I can maintain 236 for 40 minutes then it's about right?
Yep, probably as little as 30 minutes if you're new to it, as training progresses you should be able to stretch this out spending longer and longer near your threshold.
I find progressivley increasing the duration of sweetspot intervals is good for building this out.
So it turns out I quite like zwift racing which is something I never thought I'd say . Did my first race and was shocked how motivational it was to have an avatar of a man from Canada to to try and keep up with . I did another one yesterday but there were only 15 people in it which doesn't seem alot but I'm guessing that when it's 5pm in New Zealand most of the world is asleep . Also my wife walked in the garage and saw me in bib shorts with a massive puddle of sweat under me and I think its probably extinguished any spark left in our marriage 😀
Earlier in the week I went on a proper road ride on my gravel bike and although I dont have a power meter it was interesting to roughly compare it to how it feels on the trainer . From the house it's really flat for 20kish before any hills and it feels like my normal cadence and power on the flat is close to F all and when I got to the hills im probably capable of working harder than I normally do if that makes sense . I suppose it seems obvious but my riding before probably lacked enough intensity to be proper training but im hoping the indoor sessions will have that training effect.
That quote about how it never gets easier you just get faster , I think im starting to understand it a bit 😅
I was going to suggest Zwift racing, you got there before I could 🙂
I'm not a huge fan of virtual worlds and game like riding, if I'm riding indoors I like to get on, ride hard and make myself feel sick, then get on with life. I used to use Sufferfest which was awesome for that, stuck with it for a while after Wahoo took over, then tried Zwift (free riding and programs) but didn't like it.
A few weeks ago I thought I'd give Zwift another try and entered a race - totally different experience. Amazing how competitive you can become trying to either drop someone or catch someone. Probably shouldn't be too surprised as that is how I tend to ride on solo road rides IRL.
Personally, I do track FTP but I'm less bothered by it, as long as it goes up from time to time it's all good. More important is keeping myself motivated to ride indoors. Hopefully I can get myself stronger for the good weather as I've been struggling to get out over the last couple of years.
Gotta a potential newbie racer question, as I certainly can’t get my head around it.
Did a 330-450 Tour Du Zwift race yesterday. A guy went off the front proper early, and proceeded to trounce the 89 people trying to follow. On seeing the results his racer score is 613 (at the start), so miles outside the limits. Second place was also outside, but only by around 15 points. Any idea how he/they managed to get into this race?