ERG Mode

I think that it would be great if you could turn ERG mode on/off from the app mid way through a workout.
That way you can have ERG mode on for lower watts, and manually adjust the resistance and/or use gears or higher watts where the ERG takes  too adjust.

Really need this as a toggle on the app. Look at Academy workout 2 for the perfect example of why you’d want this feature. 

Within the the workout ,why not consider ERG mode off and a “all out” effort for the time period?  I too cannot achieve the power I am being asked to produce based on an accurate FTP  (my last FTP test was a fairly flat power line with HR rising to max)

Indeed, Academy workout 2 with 710 W several times for sprints in ERG mode was a pain in the rear. Once cadence drops… game over… and almost no chance to crank up cadence/shift gears before as then you run the risk to get out of the acceptable power/cadence window for the previous section…

Toggle ERG with one key would be terrific!

Come on Eric toggle Erg mode. TrainerRoad has had this feature for years.

Some of the workouts require you to be able to turn Erg mode off. I use a Wahoo Kickr and there is no way I can do some of the sprint sections in the Zwift Academy workouts. This is really frustrating. 

FTP workouts already turn Erg on and off within the workout, so the code exists. Why cant we have a toggle button?

Id dearly love to be able to use my Wahoo Kickr and Zwift to do sprint workouts.

Having looked for over threads on this theme, on October 04, 2016 18:48 Eric said he would have the team look into it.  So basically people have been asking for the ability to toggle ERG mode during a workout since at least October 2016.  Come on guys give us the toggle switch.  I have just failed Academy w/out 5 as I cannot to get through the sprints at the end due to the power demanded. :frowning:

Not sure what has changed but I too have found that the Zwift academy workouts that require short sprints are now impossible to do. In the past, during workouts, I could kick up the effort just before a starts and the transition would work, but now the cadence is impossible to maintain and the spiral of death into no cadence happens every time.  I am on an original kickr, and the same happens on my wifes taxi Neo.  She broke her chain yesterday trying to pedal through one of these ERG sprints on the zwift academy workouts. It is really quite frustrating.

Hey Karl sad but impressive that your wife tore a chain to pieces. I too have original Kickr and used to be able to sneak up on all out efforts by spinning up before. But not any more. I think it was in a change to Wahoo fireware. Either way Eric we really need that Erg toggle.

Hey Spinmonkey. My kickr certainly does behave differently since the last firmware change ( not entirely in a good way…obviously). Given that this issue also happens on the Neo, I can’t help but wonder if the way these erg sprints are initiated by Zwift isn’t contributing to the problem.  Two well regarded trainers and both are now failing on these sprints. I worry that an erg toggle will be cumbersome to use, but I would welcome some sort of solution to this issue.

i read elsewhere that changing the power smoothing setting on Zwift from 3 second average to instant was a fix. Does making this change actually change how zwift controls the trainer, or is it just a setting that changes how power fluctuations are reported on screen while riding?

The time before last that I rode the ‘race prep’ workout of the ZA2017, month 1 and I am sure the final 24 sprints were at ~345 watts, I tried the same workout today and the  same sprints required ~700 watts. I would certainly remember runnning into that brick wall! Has there been a recent change to the calculation for power zones?

It just defeats the point of those sprint efforts if we are all trying to find cheats, or death spiralling to a standstill hoping it will be enough to get over the line. Thats not the purpose of sprint efforts.

I remember from the very first week of the academy that a training on the iPad required from me 735 Watt at some point. Impossible in ERG and w/o also not doable as required for too long. 

Then there was a note that this had been an issue on iOS devices. When I did the training on my laptop, the 735 turned into 335… I guess something similar must have happened above with the 24 sprints of 700 each…

What I am still seeing are discrepencies on training durations between iOS and PC/Mac. I don‘t understand why the trainings deviate between SW platforms. Obviously the platforms have separate data that needs to be maintained and not one single data repository. This is of course subject to errors… Still, quality control could be better.

I have said this before but would it not also be a good idea to have a mode whereby the ERG can be triggered to up your gears by one electronically, when you have reached a preset (possibly adjustable) cadence. It could be a feature that could be optional to use. Or/and even an up/down gear button. You would not actually need a mechanical gear change. I am using a smart trainer that is not really very smart :wink: Elite Novo Turbo trainer.

Just curious…

When you hit Up Arrow, then use the ERG OFF button, does this not help you?

I dont have an UP or DOWN button, do you? There is no console with the so called SMART trainer I use.