How does Trainer Difficulty in Zwift affect your ride? 

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 😅😂

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 😂

@@oldanslo 😅😅 True

Great to hear, thanks!

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.

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.

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.

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

Hello! 👍 Nice, thanks for connecting. Where are you from?

@@mattiasgriot I’m from Oslo, Norway🙂

True 👍

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)

True!

@@roadcyclist1 He??? I realised my error after a while so corrected it...but thanks for the comment!

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