New Confused Turbo User

Jazz_UK

Hi,

I purchased a turbo from Halfords, so that I can continue to train during the winter. I have only recently taken up cycling as part of my weight loss programme after completing the Couch to 5K running programme and subsequently completing 2 10K races in around 1hr.

My confusion is that many of the programs talk about effort or %Max Heart Rate as a measurement ie 60% MHR for 3mins, 70% for 2mins, 80% for 1min.

So I followed the guidance to start a warmup starting on the small chainring, largest rear sprocket (lowest gear) and medium resistance. After every two minutes knock your gear up one sprocket aiming to maintain a cadence of 80-100rpm. After 10 minutes shift to the big ring.

So at that point if I want to increase effort/%MHR, I could (1) increase cadence (2) increase resistance (3) change gear

The way I tried it yesterday was to start in lvl2 resistance, increasing to 3 and then 4 while trying to maintain cadence butI had to drop a gear during lvl4.

I then tried to keep it at lvl 2 and increase cadence from 80-90 (I counted the number of time my knee was up as I don't have any gadgets) and then tried to go faster until I tired myself out.

My goal is firstly to loose weight, however I want to try and prepare for next season where I would like to go riding with a few friends and hopefully keep up with them.

Any tips, suggestions? Should I just leave my gears alone and use the resistance of the trainer to change effort and/or cadence? Should I use a combination of gears and resistance to emulate roads/hills

Confused!
Jazz

bobones

What kind of turbo?

I bought a Tacx Satori from Decathlon a few weeks ago, so I am kind of new to this too. For most workouts that I have done I just leave the resistance lever in the same place and use my gears and cadence to vary intensity. I'm currently using level 5 on the Satori because it seems to give realistic speeds (on the flat) for a given gear and cadence. If I was doing hill based workouts at low cadence then I might up the resistance a bit.

By sticking to a consistent setup I can translate rear wheel speed on the turbo to a power measurement in watts, which I can then use to structure workouts and measure performance gains. Look at the Trainer Road thread to see a great application of what it calls Virtual Power.

If that is not important to you then do whatever you prefer to vary the intensity, but I think using the gears and cadence is a bit more realistic than changing resistance during a workout.

I am using a Garmin 500 with speed, cadence and HR sensors and it is a great tool for use with the turbo as you can program workouts on it and then analyse them on the Garmin Connect website. However, I think you can still do a great deal just with a HR monitor and a stopwatch.

amaferanga

I think you're overcomplicating something that should be simple. Do whatever it is you need to do to maintain the desired effort level. If you do that by increasing cadence or changing resistance on your turbo or changing gear on your bike, it really doesn't matter.

napoleond

viewtopic.php?f=40020&t=12661884

dw300

One of the resistance setting is going to be optimal for you, it should allow you to use most if not all of your gears. Find that resistance level and keep it there. Not so low that you can spin top gear easily, and not so high that you barely get in the big ring.

You use your gears to affect level of effort on the road .. that's what you also want on the turbo.

Jazz_UK

dw300 wrote:

One of the resistance setting is going to be optimal for you, it should allow you to use most if not all of your gears. Find that resistance level and keep it there. Not so low that you can spin top gear easily, and not so high that you barely get in the big ring.

You use your gears to affect level of effort on the road .. that's what you also want on the turbo.

Thanks for the tips one and all... I tried to to use the gears and also cadence tonight and the workout seemed to go better

Thanks
Jazz

Alex_Simmons/RST

Really there are two ways to affect the resistance load while riding:
- changing the resistance setting on the trainer (sometimes there are fairly large step changes between "levels", depends on the trainer)
- changing the wheel speed (which is a combination of cadence and gear), faster the wheel goes, the greater the resistance you will feel

Suggest pedalling at a cadence that feels about right for you, but certainly 80-100 rpm is a good range, and then just change gears to adjust the resistance, and once you can't get enough resistance with a big gear (large front chain ring and small rear cog), then it's time to shift the trainer's resistance level up another notch.

As for using heart rate as a guide, that's fine, but keep in mind that HR takes a while to respond to changes in effort. Training that suggests riding at a HR level for 1-2 minutes is meaningless, since it takes the heart that long to respond to a change in load - the effort is over before the HR gets to that level. HR is helpful as a guide to overall effort for longer durations, and when that effort is not overly variable.