There’s always a lot of talk about weight doping, either losing pounds to go up hill faster or gaining pounds to avoid going over wpk caps.
People complain of cheaters who never change their weight but I think this is misplaced.
My wt has been 170 lbs in Zwift for at least 2 years. No changes.
Previously, it was 165 lb.
I preferred 165 lbs because it is 75 kg and that makes math easy.
But one Fall, it was 170 and that is where it has stayed
I don’t weigh daily but weigh myself at work.
Today, after 2 doughnuts, I stepped on scale and it’s exactly 170 lbs.
I think many people have static weight .
How do I demonstrate that I did update my weight but there were no changes?
I worry more about people gain an lose 5 lbs weekly or are 130 lbs.
If they are from US, adult men under 140 lbs are not common.
I think the cases that are the most impactful are weight gaming to keep yourself at the top of whatever cat you are in (this is in CE, not sure how much racing score will change this).
So that would be folks adding weight to make sure they skirt under a w/kg ceiling to the category upgrade, or folks losing weight to move themselves to the top of the w/kg category.
So if someone’s weight is completely consistent and they are bottom of a category it’s very unlikely that’s due to gaming the system.
It would be interesting if Zwift could prompt folks who haven’t updated their weight in a while to do so when in a pen, (even if the weight has stayed the same, at least it’s been updated etc.) and maybe on ZP they could show ‘stale’ weights somehow just to distinguish it from ones that have not been updated maybe?
Though, folks whose weight is consistent because that puts them perpetually at the top of a category will just update it to the same value, so it probably doesn’t help much for this case anyhow.
As an adult living in the USA, I maintain a weight of under 140 pounds.I monitor my weight and choose what I eat so It remains consistently stable. Many of my friends who participate in real-life racing events also hover around the 140 pound mark.
Adding weight also gives an advantage on downhills.
At least the weight of weight hack of 250kg for the downhill is stopped.
My weight (around 130lbs) stays consistent because I work to keep it that way. While I don’t have any sprint power, at least I can still make people suffer going up hills in real life at least. Zwift always has many folk at less than 50kg.
Anyhow not a “US adult men” so you folk can carry on.
Something else that could be looked at is the performances and stats of the biggest distance riders in Zwift. Won’t say anything more, just to look.
Arent those remarks more adressed at the people who suddenly lose or gain 20 kilos just to lose or gain it again for the next race if the terrain doesnt suit their current weight.
I always thought one of those blue start up suggestion screens that typically say “grab a towel” or whatever, should say, “have you weighed yourself lately?”
173cm for me and yes, lean. I go up hill quickly in real life and in Zwift.
You might think that message is perfectly appropriate, but go back and think about it for a few days. It’s not good. Particularly for this reason:
I’m not affected in that way but some people might and given massive number of people around the world use Zwift - the choices of wording have to be carefully thought out.
I think it was pointed out years ago that Zwift really doesn’t have a way of confirming our wt and I don’t want them to spend the time and effort trying to do so.
Putting extra attention on weight may serve as an unhealthy trigger for some and in the end, there will still be no way to confirm a rider’s weight.
What doesn’t happen, is losing or gaining 5 or 10 kg weekly.
I’m certain others will claim it’s their normal pattern but I have not seen that occur IRL.
I generally don’t care about such matters.
I only wanted to respond to a recent poster complaining about riders not changing their wt.
I agree, accurate wt is ideal but a constant wt does not mean an inaccurate weight.
I weighed 190 lbs consistently for months, given a 1-2 lb margin either side depending on the day, so didn’t bother changing it during that time. Recently, after cutting out a significant portion of sugar I was routinely eating, I’ve dropped a couple pounds to where I’m more often at 187-188 lbs consistently. I waited for weeks to update this just to make sure it wasn’t an anomaly as I race quite often and didn’t want to give myself any unfair advantage in climbing (my weakest aspect of riding for more than a few minutes given my size).
Cheaters gonna cheat, and they’ll find whatever way to do it they can get away with. Not sure what they get out of such a hollow victory, but c’est la vie.
agreed. personally i dont really think 1kg here or there is even noticeable, and i dont weigh a lot of kilos to begin with. i keep on top of mine, but only because i feel extra obligated to
I update my weight almost every morning (except the days I get thrown off my morning schedule).
5’8", 129-133lbs
Most I ever weighed was right before I started Zwifting / cycling at 140lbs.
Only thing I find annoying is that it’s “difficult” / no automatic way [really] to have your weight updated in Zwift. Have to put it in manually.
I generally don’t care as much either as long as within 5kg as well; but again some of that comes down to it being a bit of an annoyance that there’s no import capability.
Some people haven’t adjusted their weight on Zwift in 5+ years…
At the end of the day, the only time it bothers me is when your profile picture is of a normal height and weight looking human, yet their weight is set to 40kg and they zip by at 5+w/kg doing under 200w
The point here should be, if the weight gain from eating a donut or drinking a glass of water makes a significant difference in zwift then zwift is broken.
You can’t really do anything about people cheating with numbers they can enter freely into a box - and given point one above - if the physics in zwift are not realistic then there’s no justification for anyone’s weight to be realistic. i.e if the delusion is that honest weights give realistic results for that to be true the physics need to be accurate.
Rudyard Kipling wrote a piece about accepting things that you cannot change.
Most of the stuff around racing seems to be people who want to win by removing people faster than them. This would be easily done by just sorting all race results putting each racer at the top. Another alternative simply add various filters that each racer can pick and choose until they are at the top - filters can be perhaps ones used IRL, age, biological sex or they could be other things, hair colour, eye colour, favorite colour, food, place of birth, favorite film etc etc.
This way you can filter your race and say “I’m the fastest in this race amongst the brown eyed 50-somethings who like the Godfather” and someone else can say “I’m the fastest lady who doesn’t eat eggs” - you’re all winners.
If I weigh myself and it’s less than it is in Zwift, then I update Zwift.
If I weigh myself and it’s more than it is in Zwift I pretend I didn’t see it.
