When riding a workout on a smart trainer (Cycleops Hammer) the prompts, on the ZA workout just prior to a hard effort interval, say something such as, “10 seconds. Start spinning those legs up now!”
If you are at 110W and the interval is at 320W and you start trying to ramp up power the trainer will start decreasing resistance.
If a majority of Zwifters use smart trainers aren’t the prompts telling most riders to do something they just can’t do?
To me a more valuable suggestion would be along the lines of preventing trainer spin out when coming off a hard interval by starting the HARD interval in low gear so the trainer flywheel isn’t going 30 mph at the end of the interval and trying to coast down from the 320 W to the 90 W rest. OR Recommend that the rider get at least in the middle of the cogset prior to starting a really hard interval in case they find their cadence dropping into death spiral zone. They may at least have a chance of shifting to a cadence they can work.
Isn’t that the point, the trainer will decrease resistance and your legs will be at high cadence when the 320W block begin you will have the cadence to avoid “the spiral of death”
Totally agree . My experience of the Academy workouts is that they are too easy or too hard . Iam using a correct FTP (from ramp tests). Workouts need to be improved in my opinion . It seems ridiculous that when you come off a sprint block into an easy spin block (say 30 secs) the flywheel is too slow to slow down so it is impossible to acheive a star . Surley Zwift must realize this ? Also when i cant manage the watts and basically stop pedalling , the text still praises me . The software should pick up on this, giving more relevant text . Having said this i think it still provides a good workout but needs improvement .
Maybe you should take this up with your trainer manufacturer, or not use ERG mode that way you can adjust the trainer resistance your self.
It would Be nice to have some intelligence in the software to have more realistic feedback, but that will take a lot of programming effort and also setting up workouts will take a lot more time since then they have to have positive and neutral comments.
If you follow the directions you can fail the rest interval.
I agree!
I’ve lost stars “spinning up now” or “give it your all” - hitting 1000w where it only asks for 530w
It’s a game and I guess we’re asking everything to be perfect. I’m using a Tacx Neo and it needs me to stay focused on my cadence in order to meet the Zwift requirements.
I’ve not tried the Zwift Academy so I don’t know if you actually “fail” a workout if you don’t recieve enough stars or something. But, having tried short sprint intervals w/o ERG-mode on, I wouldn’t recommend it. The difference between the gears to use in the interval and the rest is something like changing front ring + 2-4 cogs on the rear. You’ll probably either fail to get on par in time on the interval or “fail” the rest period if you start your shifing before the interval starts since you then would fail to hold correct power/ cadence on the rest.
Maybe no prgamming is needed, maybe just no stars on short intervals/ rests?
/edit: Why care about the stars?
You can use the incline button on the companion app if you need more resistance when not in erg.
± on kb also change resistance
Stars = XP. For those trying to level up as quickly as possible, every point counts.
Also, some people (like me) are kind of obsessive about these things and see full stars as a success, while anything less than is kind of a bummer. If you don’t understand this, it’s okay - you don’t need to. It’s just the way some of us are. 
Oh, I see. I wasn’t aware of what affected the leveling. I’m a numbers guy myself, the data collected from training is great fun to analyse! =)
The physical improvements you get from the workouts are real, golden stars and game level are not! =)
I’m surprised to see so many short intervals in the workouts as I thought ERG mode would struggle to work for those.