Power trainer tool

Wouldn't it be easier just to buy a turbo with a power reading? I got mine secondhand for about £100 a few years ago and have spent many happy hours on it since. It's not calibrated to give an accurate reading in watts but it does everything I need it to.

Ruth

Yes, certainly. How accurate (and therefore useful) it would be to do so would depend on the turbo and how carefully you controlled all the variables, though. Slight changes in tyre air pressure, the roller pressure onto the tyre, the type of tyre, the room temperature, how well warmed-up the turbo is etc etc.......... all these are going to affect the accuracy.

The crux of the question is whether knowing your power output accurately in absolute terms is important to you. If it is then the only real answer is to get a proper powermeter such as a Powertap or SRMs. If what interests you is mainly measuring relative improvements in power output and you can live with a bit of inaccuracy, then there's little point in trying to calibrate a turbo. That doesn't stop many people from doing it - I know loads of people who have played around with calibrating turbos using Powertaps and the like - but they are usually motivated by academic interest in seeing the comparison rather than a belief that this is a route to transforming their training.

Ruth

portuguese mike wrote:

thanks beacon; i don't need to know in absolute terms my power output but rather, as you say, only in terms of relative improvements. The reason i asked is because looking to get a powertap in the near future and wondered if would help if turbo was calibrated to allow direct comparisons but i suppose as long as the turbo was innacurate by a reasonably consistent percentage then that would be ok.

When you have a Powertap then it really won't matter as you will able to measure power when riding on the trainer.

That's the thing with the power meter, it matters not what the conditions are, it just tells you how much power you are generating.

If your only interested in relative improvements and not totally accurate power measurements, why not just use speed? If you always set the turbo up the same (resistance etc) then higher speeds mean more power. I do my 2x20 sessions like that and compare my average speeds to map improvements (or not :oops: ).

I prefer to use speed (power would be better still, I know) as a reference because i found that when I used heart rate I would push too hard at the start to get up to the target and so tire more quickly. Now using speed I can see that my heart rate drift is quite pronounced (ie at the end of the second 20min session my heat rate is a lot higher foir the same speed.