Has anyone noticed a sudden recent change in resistance levels? I’ve been training for 28 weeks @ 6 days a week and have built up an average ride of around 380W over an hour. Now I can’t crack 200W a ride. I’d normally ride in gear 18 at around 85-90rpm and now I can’t sustain anything above gear 15. The resistance above 15 is what I’d normally expect changing into 20/21 on the flat.
I’ve tried recalibrating my trainer and upgrading the firmware and no good.
Every once in a while it reverts back and I get my normal stats in, but it’s less frequent over time.
I can’t put it down to fatigue as I’m riding relatively fresh.
Any help or advice appreciated.
Please tell us the details of your setup. What are you running Zwift on, which trainer, etc.
Without another reference point for your power, it’s hard to guess whether the trainer is under-reporting now or was over-reporting before. If you have any interest in owning a power meter this would be a good time to have it, or borrow from a friend.
Alan welcome to the Zwift forum. Congratulations on reaching level 46 in your first 6 months on Zwift, it can become addictive quite quickly. Keep up the training.
Your Zwift activity is all saved as public so it is possible for anyone to have a look at your progress and hopefully make comments to help with your current issue.
You are asking us to explain why your, recent, normal power in the high 300s is no longer achievable. Viewing your activity analysis, the question you should be asking is why you saw unusual power gains from middle of September to end of October. Unless you are a fairly elite athlete who took the first 4 months on Zwift very easy your last 6 weeks activity just looks wrong.
Your best rides in August/September suggest an FTP of around 195w. Whether that is good or not depends on your past fitness experience. However the jump, within 6 weeks, to being able to hold 380+ watts for an hour is totally unrealistic.
It certainly looks like you have a trainer issue. Please let us know your training setup and your past athletic achievements so that we can help further.
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Hey Ian, thanks for the response.
I’m riding on Zwift using a Jet Black Victory smart trainer.
Fair call about the massive jump. There is probably some exaggeration there for sure. The initial jump was probably a combination of things. Getting my cadence tuned in through various training workouts and realising I needed to ride at a higher RPM. So technique was one part. Building up leg muscles with diet and my body adapting to the bike was another. Took that time to adjust as I’d snapped my patella a few years ago and the strength training my legs were used to needed time to adjust to cycling again.
My cardio was none existent either, which also took about 8 weeks to get to where it needed to be to see improvement.
Prior training. Played soccer at semi-pro level in UK, US and Australia. Competitive volleyball player as well. School track and cross country competitive runner. So essentially into sports since school.
Ultimately I don’t care if 380w is correct or 195w. The annoying thing now is the gamified aspect of Zwift that tracks PBs is useless to me now as most of them were set at potentially an unachievable power output going forward. The PBs are what drives me to train harder, which is why I Zwift, to compete mainly against myself and improve.
I will test out the native ERG power test on the JB app tomorrow to see what that gives me as a comparison.
PBs can be reset by contacting zwiftpower@zwift.com if you need that.
Something is definitely going on with the trainer if your power at equivalent effort ends up at 200% or 50% of whatever it should be. Testing in the JB app is a good idea since they would probably want that to process a warranty claim.