I’ve been riding my Zwift ride for a week now and I’ve had a lot of issues with the pedals slipping or clunking when I try to ride out of the saddle. I rode out of the saddle on my peloton bike without any issues. I had the same clunking when I did the single leg drill on a build me up training ride so I’m assuming this is a pedaling technique issue. It gets a little better if I’m in free ride and can increase the gear but even then it’s not super smooth for more than 10 seconds or so. Any tips as how to solve this? Do I just need more focus on my pedaling? Is it supposed to be supper fatiguing out of the saddle? Do I just need to get stronger?
What sort of pedal/cleat system are you using?
Delta cleats. We got these because they would work with the peloton shoes that we already had.
BV Bike Pedals Shimano SPD/Look Delta Compatible 9/16’’ with Toe Clips -
When I stand up the resistance just drops off.
might be a low gear thing, might be worth trying to get a video of it an sending it to support
Hi @Debra_Gorgi, welcome to the Zwift Forums!
I’m Fernanda, from Zwift.
I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to help you out! If you are in free ride and want to stand, you can change to a big gear to avoid drops of power, however, in ERG mode you can’t control the gears, if this is happening in ERG mode, it could be related to cadence, when you change from “sitting to standing” the cadence low so the ERG mode will quickly change your resistance harder so you can keep the same watts goal, making difficult to pedal, and you will feel the fatigue. This is ERG mode automatically adjustments.
But to be sure this is the expected behavior it will be great to get you some one-on-one assistance, please use the Contact Us link on Support.Zwift.com. so we can investigate further.
We will be waiting for you!
Just wanted to update this in case there is someone else who is having this issue at first. I got much better at controlling the pedal stroke with practice. I’m 6 weeks into the build me up training plan and I have it figured out how to ride out of the saddle. Yes, the cadence being low and watts being higher do matter, but it was hard in Erg mode when my cadence was supposed to be higher and my output wasn’t set to hard enough. I found that resting some of my weight on the handlebars helped me be able to control the pedal stroke, plus I got better at the whole full circle pedal thing. The height of my handle bars also made a big difference. Raising them up to how I had had the peloton bike set up made the Zwift ride more comparable to what I was used too. So practice makes better. 