Impossible to get target watts stable - always jumping up and down vastly

Bugs and Support
1

hello,

I’ve used Zwift for years apart from in the summer like alot of people - however now after having done s few rides since coming back this time im finding it impossible to stay within target power W zones. I’ve been doing workouts of 95w for 15 mins then 130w for 45 mins. This and when doing an FTP test it was impossible staying to the range - it was jumping from 60 to 300w consitently thorugh this. I tried really hard to maintain the same power and speed and it was really difficult so something must deffo be wrong.

I’ve done the correct spindown checks etc and its still an issue its impossible for me to keep within the range even though i know im not really changing anything and i’ve not had this issue before. If you see my pics the one is from when i started out again this time last year - its clearly within the power W targets but now its all over the place - it could be worse but its deffo not correct it was easy to stay withing the w targets last year.

Would love any help or advice please

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2

The super-smooth graphs you see are from people who have power-smoothing as a feature on their trainers. A fair bit of variation is just normal. How fast your trainer responds also impacts how much variation there actually is.

Looking at your graphs though - ERG works best when you keep a constant cadence, you’ve got a lot of variation happening there. Just keep a constant cadence and don’t look at the power and you might get better results.

3

What trainer
What type of connection to Zwift ( ANT, BT, DIrCon )
ERG smoothing on or off ( If that’s an option for your trainer )

4

I make sure I stay out of Erg mode, that thing is a doom loop. I used to not even use gears and for a few years on a lower level trainer had the resistance turned off for probably a year even with a smart trainer. These days I quite like shifting as it brings another dimension to the game but still mostly stay in gear 11 but can now keep my cadence more constant at around 83-90. Find your cadence sweet spot.

5

Just to add to Dan’s questions…

What gear are you in when you’re using ERG mode? Size of chainring, size of cog in back?

What are you running the game on?

6

its bluetooth and i have erg mode on so cant feel the inclines - is that what you mean by smoothing?

its the wahoo kickr snap

so not the best of the market but this is what ive used every year and its only now im experiancing this issue.

7

thats interesting you say about gears as i like to try change gears abit and feel thats something to do abit of sometimes but not sure if that was the right thing or not

8

shouldn’t need to change gear in ERG mode

2 Likes
9

ERG mode power smoothing is a setting in the Wahoo app. It changes the reported power from the trainer to make your graphs pretty.

10

For the most part no, I sometimes had to when I had a Kickr Snap when there was a big jump between power targets - it just didn’t adjust very fast. Up or down a gear as appropriate got me to the target power faster.

I certainly don’t shift in ERG now on my Kickr or my wife’s Core.