Hey all, just saw a post on this which had been somewhat answered (but not resolved) and then archived.
I just got the new 2018 Kickr, and the Climb. As the other post mentions, the Climb doesn’t respond to gradient changes during a Workout (in ERG mode)… and it needs to.
I understand that there might be technical or methematically correct reasons why they don’t in the software, but when I’m training on the road and doing SST intervals with, for instance, 5 mins at 275 watts, I’m STILL going uphill and my body is utilising the lower back muscles etc, which is be exact reason I bought the Climb. The whole beauty of Zwift and smart trainers is that users can do their workouts indoors, with exact numbers and an awesome experience. And the Climb just opened that up in a whole new way. But that now simply means one can only climb, stand, use the right muscles, when one ISN’T actually doing a workout and is only free riding. This really isn’t great. Of course, I could manually adjust the grade of the Climb during a workout, but why should I need to focus on that when it should be automatic and I’m focusing on the workout?
Can an option be built in to the software to simply allow gradient changes on or off in workouts?
Thanks for listening, hope this can be considered as Zwift helps so many people train through the winter. Now the days of sitting on a flat bike with a sore butt after 2 hours are over because we can stand and climb… except, we actually can’t.
Peace and love and bike riding,
Steve
Steve
Zwift does not control the Wahoo Climb the KICKR controls the Climb.
Zwift sends the msg to the KICKR and the KICKR sends the msg to the Climb as to resistance.
This is a question for the team at Wahoo to solve.
DCRainmaker has a suggestion in his site, here’s the condensed version of what he recommends doing:
“In the Wahoo Fitness [Smartphone] App under the KICKR configuration (once you have paired your CLIMB) there is a field for you to enter your wheelbase. A bike with a shorter wheelbase will require slightly less travel from the CLIMB to produce the same slope than a longer bike. Thankfully the engineers/coders did not limit the number of digits in this field! Therefore it can be used as the “correct for trainer difficulty multiplier” and wheelbase simultaneously. This makes me VERY happy!
Three steps:
1. Look up your wheelbase (mine is about 1000mm)
2. Divide your wheelbase by your trainer difficulty setting from the perfs xml file
3. put the result in the wheelbase field
So for my bike and setting it shakes out like this:
1. 1000mm
2. My difficulty is set at 20% so : 1000m / 0.20 = 5000
3. Enter 5000mm in the “wheelbase field” in the Wahoo fitness app KICKR setting
Now the CLIMB will simulate the full slope (accurately enough for our purposes) regardless of the trainer difficulty setting!! You just need to remember to adjust this number if you ever change you trainer difficulty setting in Zwift.”
Is that still the case in workout/erg mode though [C 18 Fitness GYM]? It seems strange that the KICKR would ignore/drop the gradient data and not pass that across to the Climb.
Hi Steve. This is a big +1 from me for this feature. It’s a fundamental justification for investing in the Wahoo Climb. As it stands, when in ERG/workout mode, everything assumes a gradient of 0% which doesn’t harness the features of the Climb.
Ideally I would like to see options in the custom workout builder where you can set the gradient along with your power targets. For example, I want to hit 200w for 5 mins with 0% gradient followed by 300w for 5 mins at a 6% gradient. The data pathways already exist so I would hope it wouldn’t be too challenging to implement.
The Climb will not work ERGO mode because if you think on it logically you can be riding on the flats and ERGO kicks in and gives you 350w resistance the Climb would rise thinking your going up hill.
DC rainmakers fix is for people that want to have full Climb but with lower than a 100% resistance when going up hills.
The Climb will only work in SIM mode and ERGO mode creates a false environment.
You can workout in SIM mode and the Climb will work only if you are going up or down hills.
Thanks for the reply. As useful as the DC Rainmaker / motto info is, it unfortunately only effects your Climb when in a Zwift free ride.
The actual gradient info from the route you are riding on is available, even when you are in training/ERG mode. So the suggestion is that you have the ability for your training plan to supersede the gradient sent to the Kickr and for the Kickr to actually forward that gradient to the climb. The Kickr would continue to operate the wattage and resistance exactly as it does now.
I appreciate that the Climb effort would not be captured in the Zwift total altitude gained stats but I can live with that - I just want to be able to set out training plans that engage the Climb in a scientific way without me having to manually flip it up and down.
Right with you, Brian. The gradient data is there and does not transmit to the Climb when in ERG workout mode, which makes no sense. It’s not an issue with the Climb, as the Climb only uses the data which is sent to it via the Trainer, via Zwift.
If we’re doing a workout on Watopia and climbing for 45 mins, why wouldn’t the gradient of the climb be raised?
Hopefully this can be seriously considered by the Zwift team
I too am disappointed that the Climb does not work in workouts, in either ERG or SIM mode.
Zwift tells me that in SIM mode gradient data to drive the Climb is being sent to the Kickr.
But when I contact Wahoo, they tell me no gradient data is being sent in any workout and that is why the Climb is not responding, and they suggest I need to contact Zwift to have them change that behavior.
I am a consumer caught in the middle here. It doesn’t seem right that the two companies don’t seem to be in the same page as to how their products function together. Worse yet, that they seem to want me to be the go-between when Mom and Dad are fighting.
Can you please make it possible for the Climb to function in Workouts?
Even if the Climb can only can be configured to work in SIM mode workouts, at that would be great…
Typically use Trainer road for my workout similations. Just bought the climb and hoped to use Zwift for Workouts with gradient changes. As previous posters mentioned this would better mimic real life outdoor intervals.
+1 to be able to include gradient changes when doing zwift in workout mode.
+1 also from my side. To me this i a mus have function to have better workout experience, if you don’t want to have it simply lock the climb. Hope to have this feature up and running asap.
Actually, as a kickr 18 user but not climb user I’m going to email wahoo about this. I’d buy the climb if it worked during erg mode. Thus, it is in the best of interest for wahoo to make zwift implement it. Wahoo could even say that zwift is “killing” their product.
Actually when you turn off ERG mode during a workout on the Zwift Companion app, it changes to “Incline” and that is what the Climb will replicate. You can manually change the incline but what fun is that and you can do essentially the same thing locking your Climb and changing it that way. They need to have a third setting option… see my post in this thread.
I think “Terrain” should be a third option during workouts (in addition to “ERG” and “Incline”… you would just rotate through all three) on the companion app whereby the current slope data of the terrain is sent and changes the resistance (and Climb slope) like a free ride. Even if you don’t have a Climb this is a useful setting because it replicates doing the workout outside, but with the benefit of seeing the target power (like in Incline mode). In fact, I’d position myself at the bottom of a climb before hard intervals (using the “pause” workout button if necessary), or do them on a flat course, just like I do when I do a workout outside.
New to Zwift and just bought the kickr Core and Climb. I was pretty surprised to learn that the climb will not work when doing a workout. This is a must have feature…
The question is simple, here the official wahoo answer to my question. I appreciate the wahoo customer service reply to my question.
Thanks for writing. The Climb is only meant to operate based on the resistance changes brought by a simulated virtual course. Since ERG mode doesn’t change the resistance of the KICKR based on a virtual course, but rather your power, it wouldn’t be very realistic for it to change based on grade alone if there is no accompanying resistance to change with it (though I suppose this must be what it feels like to climb at 55 kg, something I’ll unfortunately never be able to experience!).
To answer your question, I don’t believe we have any plans on changing this soon, because it’s just not how the Climb was meant to operate. I can submit a feature request for this on your behalf, however. Let me know if I can do anything else for you!
