People don't seem to understand that pushing say 300 watts on the flat is the Not the same as pushing 300 up a gradient 😂 I can tell you that it's a lot harder on max difficulty setting than say 50%
Fully agree. I got a new indoor bike over Christmas and had TD on 100% up until ydays ride. Prior, I had my old indoor bike on about 35/40% TD. Old bike time up AdZ - 42min New bike time up AdZ - 58min. Night and day difference. You’ve still got to put the watts out but on 100% TD I’ve been struggling to do so. Don’t know why. Old bike pace group was A. New bike pace group is B haha. I feel like my FTP is a myth right now. Hoping now I’ve dropped TD on my new bike I’ll stop struggling. Someone explained TD to me like you feel every single bump on 100% so that’s why it’ll feel more taxing (even though watts are watts) haha it’s a mad one.
@@F1TZGER4LD yea for me running a 53/39 sweet spot is around 80% anything higher either my Turbo struggles or am grinding. But the resistance changes so it's harder to put the watts down for sure. Like going into a headwind pushing the watts or having a tailwind pushing the watts. As you say watts are watts but resistance is different so it's harder. Thats my take on it anyway 😂
@@benturp3492 I definitely agree mate. I came on this video to look for your exact comment 😂 buzzing I found it. Now I can stop feeling guilty or like I’m cheating by lowering my TD 😅😂
When in ergo the program doesn’t put any gradients and only controls the power. Do this same test normal mode and you’ll see that the feeling is quite different.
Why Power (Watts) Isn’t the Full Story: While the watts required to climb a grade at a specific speed remain constant, how those watts are generated varies with the Trainer Difficulty: Lower Slider: You spread the workload across a wider cadence range and maintain more consistent pedaling dynamics, reducing strain on any single muscle group. Higher Slider: The workload is concentrated, simulating steeper terrain and requiring more force per pedal stroke, which fatigues muscles faster. A reduced slider position is a practical choice for hilly Zwift races, as it allows for better energy conservation and smoother pacing.
It depends on what you are using Zwift for, which can be different between sessions. If you want to train to ride IRL (especially climbs) then it makes sense to go 100% because the real world has no difficulty setting and you will run out of spinning gears so learning how to vairy your cadence is important. If your focus is overall fitness or achievement within the game it doesn't matter, its not cheating and you should go with what feels best and/or more realistic to you.
Agreed. I used to be a 100% TD diehard but I've found for just riding around on Zwift, 50-75% seems pretty good. 100% is great to train for spinning or grinding up climbs (36/32 at 100% TD is no fun going up Ventoux). Even then, I'll back it off and just not use the biggest cog or two to keep the trainer spinning and overheating. 85kg going up a 10% grade for an hour really taxes the trainer.
It's the same. You can choose gears that mean you're doing 300w at 50 cadence on the flat, or a gear that means you're doing 300w at 100 cadence climbing - the climbing will feel less resistance and, for most people 'easier' to push the pedals. The only reason you find it tough to climb IRL is because your bike is overgeared for your ability. It perhaps also because cyclists tend to hit a certain speed on the flat and coast or light pedal, especially if they have a bit of a tail wind. So most of their time on the flat is at a low power in an easy gear. There's very little point (unless you're doing a time trial or something) in doing a massive wattage on the flat because aero means you'd only gain a few extra mph for a ton more effort. When you get to a climb and the bike slows to a crawl you put some effort in and that, combined with having insufficient gears is why you associate climbing with low cadence and high resistance. The other main reason why climbing is tough IRL is when you go to a mountain and end up at altitude because there's less oxygen, well zwift can't simulate that - but you'll notice most of the gradients in the mountains are not that extreme anyway - people building roads up mountains zig zag up so it is less steep. In places where there are only short hills (e.g the UK) they tend to go straight over the top and that means some short, but very steep gradients - few, if any, road bikes are sold with gearing suitable for these and that's why you see cyclists every week standing and stomping their way up these hills. That's not climbing, that's bad gearing - and it's not making you stronger by doing that - a bicycle is not gym equipment, you'd be much better going to a gym and doing squats if you want to build leg muscles with high resistance than trying to ride along in the wrong gear. This is why groupset manufacturers are adding more cogs - because it's been established for decades now that it's faster to climb with lower gears than to struggle turning a bigger one - and since that day they've been adding more and more sprockets. Well skip to zwift and they can show you what climbing would be like if you had the right gearing - and they can do that 2 ways now, with trainer difficulty setting and with the newer virtual gearing. Try the latter if you think the trainer difficulty too confusing to understand. You'll see the virtual gearing makes it easy to spin up a 12% or higher - equally though try the hardest virtual gear on the flat. That's what gearing is for. That's why a wrench has a long lever - so you can turn both using a lower force - the penalty, of course, the back wheel turns less each revolution and the bike inches slowly up the climb. But you can do a low cadence and a high resistance on the flat in zwift and IRL. You can also (with zwift's virtual gearing) use a really easy gear on any of zwift's climbs and spin your way up at 120 cadence. Another way of trying this, get a short 8mm hex wrench and try and remove your pedal - tough to turn eh? High resistance. Now get a breaker bar or pedal wrench and try - now the bolt turns easily. That's what gearing is. It makes it easy to turn the pedals - except when you bought your bike you figured you were stronger than you are and got the wrong ones. Put lower gearing on your bike and spin up the hills. And specifically if you're like OP and breaking into a sweat and dying at 200watts - then you should be at subcompact levels or lower on a road bike, but the shop sells pretty much the same gearing to everyone that walks into the store regardless of their age or where they live and ride - and then you take that bike to zwift and try to climb up a mountain on it and wonder why you can only eek out 50 cadence at 200 watts in your lowest gear. Well because your bike gearing is way, way too high for you - and zwift put in an option so you don't have to buy a new bike. Then confused viewers decided this option must be cheating or making climbing feel wrong - no, it's what your road bike would feel like if you had the right gearing on it to match the hills you climb and how much power you can generate.
The better way to do this is with two copies of Zwift with two accounts (for a short climb free account should suffice) on two systems. Pair both via Ant to your trainer or power meter. Start both avatars in the same location (you can adjust position in a single game by going into pair mode in the other.) Once both avatars are positioned in the same location, both paired, start your test. Both games will receive the same power data assuming no dropouts. If dropouts are an issue, use a trainer that can support multiple BLE connections (e.g. Wahoo Kickr) and pair both games using BLE.
@@danieldugal4057 No, of course...I did realize my error after a while 🫣. Probably should have edited that bit out but....yeah! Thanks for taking the time to comment
You can use a lower difficulty setting to cheat. I gave it a try. I am an "A Rider" according to Zwift Power. I did the Zwift Fondo many months back and set my trainer difficulty to Zero. Once the course hit that front range climb that can take you to either the jungle or epic reverse, the attack begins. With Zero difficulty I was able to turn the Grade into zero instead of 10%. I was nailing 400 plus watts for that 2 mins or so and kept with the front. Normally at 100% trainer difficulty my legs can't deal with the amount of torque required to produce 400 plus watts for 2 mins on a 10% grade. Certainly not without standing and stomping. In real life you can't just opt to reduce or eliminate a grade. The best you can do is to choose a different cassette option for the IRL Event. However it is not the same a Zero Percent Trainer Difficulty. If you want to be strong when it is time to get on the road, use 100% Trainer Difficulty. Especially if you want to climb strong IRL.
It's just a question of gearing. If you had low enough gears you could spin at 120 cadence on a 20% gradient. Same as if you try to remove bike pedals with a short wrench vs a long breaker bar, the latter makes the bolt as easy to turn as a 5nm bolt on a saddle post or whatever. All zwift did was give an option so you don't need to put really low gearing on the bike - it's a sane option, it's the same as bike manufacturers putting 9 then 10 then 11 then 12 gears - all of these are the 'trainer difficulty' setting for real life. If you use 11 or 12 speed bike then you made it easy to climb gradients without stomping compared with the past when cyclists had fewer gears. Now that zwift has virtual gearing you can see how the gearing that provides is wide enough to make any hill easy to climb. You can use it and see what a bike would feel like if you had wide enough gearing. And the result is, spinning while you climb is perfectly possible if you pick a low enough gear. If you still don't believe it, put your bike in the biggest gear and ride on the flat - and if you can spin that, get a fixie with 100 gear inches and try. You have to stomp on the flat in a big gear because the resistance is high - exactly the same as climbing in too big a gear. Indeed virtual gearing just adjusts the trainer resistance. Go and do some track cycling and see how much force they need to get a fixed gear bike off the starting line and then tell them they need to climb to get strong legs. When they've stopped laughing apologise and go home.
for me i was faster up hill @ 50% but seemed to have drag on the flat and downhill ... @ 100% the ride felt more realistic 5% hill felt like 5% and downhills fast .... wahoo kickr
It's just way of altering gearing that is all in other words, if you've got a bicycle that's got high gears and you put it on the trainer. You alter the difficulty and you've got a differentr geared bike. People forget it's only a game. As for me I don't race at all and I'm quite happy to alter the training difficulty to make it easie.r
People don't seem to understand that pushing say 300 watts on the flat is the Not the same as pushing 300 up a gradient 😂 I can tell you that it's a lot harder on max difficulty setting than say 50%
Fully agree. I got a new indoor bike over Christmas and had TD on 100% up until ydays ride. Prior, I had my old indoor bike on about 35/40% TD.
Old bike time up AdZ - 42min
New bike time up AdZ - 58min. Night and day difference. You’ve still got to put the watts out but on 100% TD I’ve been struggling to do so. Don’t know why.
Old bike pace group was A.
New bike pace group is B haha.
I feel like my FTP is a myth right now.
Hoping now I’ve dropped TD on my new bike I’ll stop struggling.
Someone explained TD to me like you feel every single bump on 100% so that’s why it’ll feel more taxing (even though watts are watts) haha it’s a mad one.
I seem to shift a hell of a lot more on 100% too. Probably because of “every bump”. Who knows
@@F1TZGER4LD I noticed that too. Like real life I suppose
@@F1TZGER4LD yea for me running a 53/39 sweet spot is around 80% anything higher either my Turbo struggles or am grinding. But the resistance changes so it's harder to put the watts down for sure. Like going into a headwind pushing the watts or having a tailwind pushing the watts. As you say watts are watts but resistance is different so it's harder. Thats my take on it anyway 😂
@@benturp3492 I definitely agree mate. I came on this video to look for your exact comment 😂 buzzing I found it. Now I can stop feeling guilty or like I’m cheating by lowering my TD 😅😂
When in ergo the program doesn’t put any gradients and only controls the power. Do this same test normal mode and you’ll see that the feeling is quite different.
Didn't think of that at first 🙄, but realised it when I started climbing. So did it again in normal mode
Sorry, my bad. I wrote it while watching your video and posted right before you realized it didn’t change the gradient 😂
Why Power (Watts) Isn’t the Full Story: While the watts required to climb a grade at a specific speed remain constant, how those watts are generated varies with the Trainer Difficulty:
Lower Slider: You spread the workload across a wider cadence range and maintain more consistent pedaling dynamics, reducing strain on any single muscle group.
Higher Slider: The workload is concentrated, simulating steeper terrain and requiring more force per pedal stroke, which fatigues muscles faster. A reduced slider position is a practical choice for hilly Zwift races, as it allows for better energy conservation and smoother pacing.
@@trplay1 Top input 👌
It depends on what you are using Zwift for, which can be different between sessions. If you want to train to ride IRL (especially climbs) then it makes sense to go 100% because the real world has no difficulty setting and you will run out of spinning gears so learning how to vairy your cadence is important. If your focus is overall fitness or achievement within the game it doesn't matter, its not cheating and you should go with what feels best and/or more realistic to you.
Agree!
I have mine set at 60% to reduce number of gear changes. I just don't allow myself to use the easier gears.
Agreed. I used to be a 100% TD diehard but I've found for just riding around on Zwift, 50-75% seems pretty good. 100% is great to train for spinning or grinding up climbs (36/32 at 100% TD is no fun going up Ventoux). Even then, I'll back it off and just not use the biggest cog or two to keep the trainer spinning and overheating. 85kg going up a 10% grade for an hour really taxes the trainer.
Well you said it right. It is cutting the gradient, and it is not alterd gearing at all. People think that is the same but it isn't.
It's the same. You can choose gears that mean you're doing 300w at 50 cadence on the flat, or a gear that means you're doing 300w at 100 cadence climbing - the climbing will feel less resistance and, for most people 'easier' to push the pedals. The only reason you find it tough to climb IRL is because your bike is overgeared for your ability. It perhaps also because cyclists tend to hit a certain speed on the flat and coast or light pedal, especially if they have a bit of a tail wind. So most of their time on the flat is at a low power in an easy gear. There's very little point (unless you're doing a time trial or something) in doing a massive wattage on the flat because aero means you'd only gain a few extra mph for a ton more effort. When you get to a climb and the bike slows to a crawl you put some effort in and that, combined with having insufficient gears is why you associate climbing with low cadence and high resistance.
The other main reason why climbing is tough IRL is when you go to a mountain and end up at altitude because there's less oxygen, well zwift can't simulate that - but you'll notice most of the gradients in the mountains are not that extreme anyway - people building roads up mountains zig zag up so it is less steep. In places where there are only short hills (e.g the UK) they tend to go straight over the top and that means some short, but very steep gradients - few, if any, road bikes are sold with gearing suitable for these and that's why you see cyclists every week standing and stomping their way up these hills. That's not climbing, that's bad gearing - and it's not making you stronger by doing that - a bicycle is not gym equipment, you'd be much better going to a gym and doing squats if you want to build leg muscles with high resistance than trying to ride along in the wrong gear. This is why groupset manufacturers are adding more cogs - because it's been established for decades now that it's faster to climb with lower gears than to struggle turning a bigger one - and since that day they've been adding more and more sprockets. Well skip to zwift and they can show you what climbing would be like if you had the right gearing - and they can do that 2 ways now, with trainer difficulty setting and with the newer virtual gearing. Try the latter if you think the trainer difficulty too confusing to understand. You'll see the virtual gearing makes it easy to spin up a 12% or higher - equally though try the hardest virtual gear on the flat. That's what gearing is for. That's why a wrench has a long lever - so you can turn both using a lower force - the penalty, of course, the back wheel turns less each revolution and the bike inches slowly up the climb.
But you can do a low cadence and a high resistance on the flat in zwift and IRL. You can also (with zwift's virtual gearing) use a really easy gear on any of zwift's climbs and spin your way up at 120 cadence. Another way of trying this, get a short 8mm hex wrench and try and remove your pedal - tough to turn eh? High resistance. Now get a breaker bar or pedal wrench and try - now the bolt turns easily. That's what gearing is. It makes it easy to turn the pedals - except when you bought your bike you figured you were stronger than you are and got the wrong ones. Put lower gearing on your bike and spin up the hills.
And specifically if you're like OP and breaking into a sweat and dying at 200watts - then you should be at subcompact levels or lower on a road bike, but the shop sells pretty much the same gearing to everyone that walks into the store regardless of their age or where they live and ride - and then you take that bike to zwift and try to climb up a mountain on it and wonder why you can only eek out 50 cadence at 200 watts in your lowest gear. Well because your bike gearing is way, way too high for you - and zwift put in an option so you don't have to buy a new bike. Then confused viewers decided this option must be cheating or making climbing feel wrong - no, it's what your road bike would feel like if you had the right gearing on it to match the hills you climb and how much power you can generate.
I've been wondering about this! Thanks for the video very informative!
Great to hear, thanks!
Its like having a bigger cassette, when sliding difficulty down. Easiest way to think about it.
True 👍
I have mine set at 110% because I always give 110%. No shortcuts to fitness.
@@oldanslo 😅😅 True
Hi there, nice to see another Scandinavian cyclist here on RUclips, there’s not many of us 🙂
Hello! 👍 Nice, thanks for connecting. Where are you from?
@@mattiasgriot I’m from Oslo, Norway🙂
The better way to do this is with two copies of Zwift with two accounts (for a short climb free account should suffice) on two systems.
Pair both via Ant to your trainer or power meter. Start both avatars in the same location (you can adjust position in a single game by going into pair mode in the other.)
Once both avatars are positioned in the same location, both paired, start your test. Both games will receive the same power data assuming no dropouts.
If dropouts are an issue, use a trainer that can support multiple BLE connections (e.g. Wahoo Kickr) and pair both games using BLE.
But you only get half the training then 😜.
Seriously though, it would be good to do it that way maybe, if your trainer supports sending double signals
With ERG mode you don't feel the gradient......what's the point?
@@danieldugal4057 No, of course...I did realize my error after a while 🫣. Probably should have edited that bit out but....yeah! Thanks for taking the time to comment
If you just wants to play a game and not get any fitness then turn it all the way down. If you are wanting fitness turn it up to 100
You can use a lower difficulty setting to cheat. I gave it a try. I am an "A Rider" according to Zwift Power. I did the Zwift Fondo many months back and set my trainer difficulty to Zero. Once the course hit that front range climb that can take you to either the jungle or epic reverse, the attack begins. With Zero difficulty I was able to turn the Grade into zero instead of 10%. I was nailing 400 plus watts for that 2 mins or so and kept with the front. Normally at 100% trainer difficulty my legs can't deal with the amount of torque required to produce 400 plus watts for 2 mins on a 10% grade. Certainly not without standing and stomping. In real life you can't just opt to reduce or eliminate a grade. The best you can do is to choose a different cassette option for the IRL Event. However it is not the same a Zero Percent Trainer Difficulty. If you want to be strong when it is time to get on the road, use 100% Trainer Difficulty. Especially if you want to climb strong IRL.
It's just a question of gearing. If you had low enough gears you could spin at 120 cadence on a 20% gradient. Same as if you try to remove bike pedals with a short wrench vs a long breaker bar, the latter makes the bolt as easy to turn as a 5nm bolt on a saddle post or whatever. All zwift did was give an option so you don't need to put really low gearing on the bike - it's a sane option, it's the same as bike manufacturers putting 9 then 10 then 11 then 12 gears - all of these are the 'trainer difficulty' setting for real life. If you use 11 or 12 speed bike then you made it easy to climb gradients without stomping compared with the past when cyclists had fewer gears.
Now that zwift has virtual gearing you can see how the gearing that provides is wide enough to make any hill easy to climb. You can use it and see what a bike would feel like if you had wide enough gearing. And the result is, spinning while you climb is perfectly possible if you pick a low enough gear. If you still don't believe it, put your bike in the biggest gear and ride on the flat - and if you can spin that, get a fixie with 100 gear inches and try. You have to stomp on the flat in a big gear because the resistance is high - exactly the same as climbing in too big a gear. Indeed virtual gearing just adjusts the trainer resistance. Go and do some track cycling and see how much force they need to get a fixed gear bike off the starting line and then tell them they need to climb to get strong legs. When they've stopped laughing apologise and go home.
for me i was faster up hill @ 50% but seemed to have drag on the flat and downhill ... @ 100% the ride felt more realistic 5% hill felt like 5% and downhills fast .... wahoo kickr
True!
It's just way of altering gearing that is all in other words, if you've got a bicycle that's got high gears and you put it on the trainer. You alter the difficulty and you've got a differentr geared bike. People forget it's only a game. As for me I don't race at all and I'm quite happy to alter the training difficulty to make it easie.r
Yes, agree. It is a game and an aid to get training done. What difficulty you use is and should be up to you (even if you race on Zwift)
I stopped watching as soon as he said he was going to use ERG mode. Oh brother...
@@roadcyclist1 He??? I realised my error after a while so corrected it...but thanks for the comment!
Slow down. You speak too fast for me.
Sorry, I still struggle to find my rhythm doing talking head into camera. Usually I think I speak too slow.
For him maybe. For me, absolutely fine 👍 thanks for the vid