Zwift resistance in workouts and routes

General Discussion
1

I’ve had the Kickr Core with zwift for a few months and still learning about how resistance is used.

I understand workouts use the ERG mode and routes use the SIM mode. I tried a couple workouts today trying to do get some strength training it, and they only went up to like 240 watts and for both I was running in the highest gear and still pedaling super fast trying to keep up, but it wasn’t really a burn. I’m a big guy (~260 lbs) and thought my profile weight would factor into normalizing wattage, but it seems like I don’t understand what’s actually happening. I finished the workout and while slightly winded my legs weren’t tired at all.

Using bout routes and workouts, how can I get into the higher watts my bike trainer supports at lower RPMs?

2

This is the problem. It’s counter-intuitive at first, but pedalling faster and faster produces less resistance because the trainer needs to reduce resistance at higher cadence and you can get into the situation where the trainer can’t keep up with you. It’s the opposite of the “spiral of death” where you keep reducing cadence and resistance keeps increasing until you can’t turn the pedals.

Keep a steady cadence and don’t change gear, and after a few seconds the resistance should adjust to hit the power target.

If there’s still not enough resistance then try increasing your FTP via the slider on the right in the.workouts menu.

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3

Do you have your trainer connected as controllable?

That would explain both sim and ERG not going above 240 watts

When doing ERG mode I shift to a cog in the center of the cassette and just go on with the workout.

4

Hi @Joshua_Stratton1, Welcome to the Zwift Forums!
Fernanda here, part of the support specialist team at Zwift.

I understand that the relationship between ERG and cadence can be confusing at first. To be able to help you in improving on your workouts I will advise you to check this information:

  • ERG mode only responds to the target wattage, and the target will be set based on your FTP, I took a moment to review your account and I noticed that your FTP is on “0”, in order to get accurate targets when performing your workouts I encourage you to please perform a FTP Test before completing any other workout.
  • In Zwift, your FTP is used to determine the difficulty of any workouts you do; the higher your FTP, the higher the wattage targets you’re going to see during an interval.
  • To perform an FTP test for your next workout, follow these steps from our useful article.

On the other hand, regarding your cadence, in order to make ERG mode change the resistance to allow you to spin faster, you must first pedal faster- ERG resistance will decrease as your cadence increases, if you slow your cadence, resistance will increase.

But careful! Don’t slow down too much, or too quickly, or you will feel a very steep increase in resistance that may make it impossible to pedal.

I hope these tips help you enjoy ERG mode as much as we do!

Ride On.

5

its really good informations

6

Thanks for all the details about what the trainer is doing.

It would be nice to have this a little more prominent in the app like if it’s using FTP and that is set to 0 giving a warning at the start.

Thanks, all!

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