Wattbike 3min test.

cal_stewart

My work gym had a Wattbike delivered a few months ago. So instead of riding around aimlessly for yet another year I thought I will use the Wattbike as a testing platform and to maybe do some training when its wet (yes I shouldn't be so weak).

Anyway looked on Wattbikes website and I conducted the 3 min test as follows.

1. Setup HRM
2. Selected 3 min test.
3. Set Air Resistance to 4
4. Killed myself for 3 mins

As I had no knowledge of my power output I chose level 4 to give me a good power spread between 90-110rpm.

My Results

0-1min AvPower 448w AvCad 115rpm AvHR 155Bpm
1-2min AvPower 391w AvCad 111rpm AvHR 179Bpm
2-3min AvPower 344w AvCad 106rpm AvHR 183Bpm

1Min AvPower 395w Power/Weight 4.34W/Kg

My question is, is my Cadence spread to big for the test to be accurate?

If this test is OK would a Ramp test be useful to back the results up?

Thank you

Cal

Herbsman

Sorry if this is a stupid question but what exactly is the relevance of this test other than to see how hard you can ride for 3 minutes? What are you trying to achieve?

Why would the variation in cadence affect the accuracy? :?

cal_stewart

You use the 1min AvPower results in the as the base for other tests and your training zones. I've never used power before.

Goals are just to get my Power/Weight higher

ric/rstsport

it might, be better to ask this question: why are you trying to get your power to mass ratio higher? Presumably you are not just trying to get your p/m ratio higher, but you are attempting to do something else (TTfaster, win a road race, cycle faster in a sportive, lose weight, etc, etc). Once you establish this then you can start to work out how and why to increase your power to mass.

For e.g., at RST Sport we use a different test (a maximal ramp test to exhaustion), we're not just focussed on making this number (the MAP) larger. You may need to work more on submaximal power, or possibly more on the maximal power. it'll depend what your goals are.

cal_stewart

Just want to improve in general no goals this year. Not to fussed about weight loss as I'm around 12-13% bodyfat and will be moving down slowly to around 10% and don't want to down much lower.

ric/rstsport

Cal_Stewart wrote:

Just want to improve in general no goals this year. Not to fussed about weight loss as I'm around 12-13% bodyfat and will be moving down slowly to around 10% and don't want to down much lower.

not having any goals makes it somewhat hard to provide a suggestion. just ride the bike and see whether you get better or not then? or formulate a goal....

Wrath Rob

Like Herbsman, I'm not sure what this test is designed to do, apart from measure your 3 min power. It won't be a realistic measure of your 1 or 2 minute power as you'll be holding something back for minute 3, and its probably not a real measure of your 3 minute power as you can see that your power was tailing off through the test. Was there something which told you to do a 3 minute test?

To answer your question, power is power, its not affected by cadence although plotting power vs. cadence can indicate if you lack muscular power.

The question to you though is "what do you want to achieve"? My biggest epiphany with power training was understanding the type of riding I wanted to do, crit racing and TT's in my case, then conducting relevant power tests to identify my strengths and weaknesses (based on the Hunter-Allan book) and then building a training plan around that to work on my strengths and target my weaknesses. Of course, you can do this with HR training too but the benefits of using power for training is to more specifically measure yourself, create accurate training zones and then squeeze every once of time on the bike to get the most out of your training.

ncr

Ric/RSTSport wrote:

it might, be better to ask this question: why are you trying to get your power to mass ratio higher? Presumably you are not just trying to get your p/m ratio higher, but you are attempting to do something else (TTfaster, win a road race, cycle faster in a sportive, lose weight, etc, etc). Once you establish this then you can start to work out how and why to increase your power to mass.

For e.g., at RST Sport we use a different test (a maximal ramp test to exhaustion), we're not just focussed on making this number (the MAP) larger. You may need to work more on submaximal power, or possibly more on the maximal power. it'll depend what your goals are.

In that test above can you explain how in the third minute when his power output and cadence were both lower his AvHR was higher.

imposter2.0

ncr wrote:

In that test above can you explain how in the third minute when his power output and cadence were both lower his AvHR was higher.

Probably a combination of increased oxygen demand and fatigue/lactate brought about by the effort...

dgstewart

I don't have a Wattbike but did read the training guide for it out of interest. The guide offers two main tests to determine your power levels and training zones for further training.

The ramp test is used to determine your "maximum minute power" (MMP), with power levels and training zones based as % of MMP. It's the same principal as determining your FTP or VO2max and setting training levels from those. For the ramp test you start at a lower power and increase it by 20W each minute and keep going until you blow. Your power in the last full minute before you blow is your MMP.

Your average power in the 3 minute test is intended to approximate your (MMP). No idea how close it would be, but it makes some kind of sense, as during the ramp test you are working at increasingly higher power levels and accumulating fatigue for about 10 minutes up to the last minute, while for the 3 minute test you are hitting it fresh.

ncr wrote:

In that test above can you explain how in the third minute when his power output and cadence were both lower his AvHR was higher.

Heart rate responds relatively slowly to such short hard efforts. For a three minute test, your heart rate will most likely keep climbing even though your power may be dropping off. If you kept putting out a "maximum" effort, your power would drop off so much that HR would also decline, but that would take longer (not sure how long).

cal_stewart

Been looking at the BC ramp test, you use the av power figure and work back ten 20w steps back and as dgstewart says work up in 1min 20w steps. Going to try this next.