I am having trouble with the FTP test. I keep spinning out and not gaining resistance, I’m wondering what the issue is?
I have connected my mtb to the trainer and I’m thinking my front chainring is too small for the ERG to keep up so I keep spinning out on the ramp test and the resistance not increasing. I have a 28 tooth chainring which I know is much smaller than a road bike. Any insight would be great
Should I do the FTP using my controller?
You’re right, this is almost certainly the problem - you don’t have a big enough gear.
Which trainer do you have? If it supports virtual shifting with Zwift then that would be the way to go.
If she is in ERG mode, though, does the gear actually matter, since the trainer (at least if it’s a smart trainer, should adjust the resistance to whatever gear and cadence the rider is using. I might be mistaken on this, or there might be some limitation based on trainer or really small gears.
this was my thought, erg is controlled by the turbo and gearing shouldn’t be part of the equation
Providing the trainer can supply sufficient low speed torque, many can’t.
But, even with a 28T chainring, I would think there would be a sprocket of ‘sufficient smallness’ on the cassette to generate reasonable speed.
So the first time I’m pretty sure I had the ERG on but I was still spinning too fast. My thought is with the smaller chainring the ERG can’t engage if that makes sense
Hi @Monique_Joyce welcome to Zwift forums and Zwift more generally.
Shuji at Zwift HQ here. I’m able to peek at your server logs and see you have a KICKR Core and a Zwift Click. This trainer setup is capable of Virtual Shifting, which means you should be able to
get enough resistance even with a single 28 tooth chaining on your mountain bike.
With virtual shifting - you’d use the Click controller to adjust your trainer reisistance instead of shifting the physical gears using the derailleur. Have you been doing that?
First thing I noticed is that your Click shifter is still on the firmware v 1.0.0 as when it left the factory. Let’s have you use the Zwift Companion app to update that to the latest firmware. This article will walk you through the steps..
Next question: Did your KICKR Core trainer come with a single speed Zwift Cog, or a multi-speed cassette? You didn’t mention this or “virtual shifting” so I’m going to guess there’s a multi-speed cassette installed. Virtual shifting will work with either setup - but if you have a cassette, you’d just leave the derailleur alone and “shift” using the Click controller.
When Virtual Shifting is working correctly, Zwift will calculate what physical gearing is on your bike by looking at your pedal RPMs vs the trainer’s flywheel velocity, then start you off in an easy-to-start-pedaling Virtual Gear 8. This happens only once after your avatar spawns in a world. This is why it should not matter if you’re on a 1x mountain bike with a 28 tooth chainring or a TT bike with a 58T ring. Either way you should get a very usable, wide range of virtual gears.
Not to overload you any more than I have - but would you let us know if you’ve been using virtual shifting already? If no - please update the Click firmware and let’s go from there. Here’s the next steps.