Weight loss ratio indoor or outdoor cycle

Hello All

I am in the early stage of my Sweat spot training session1.2.3

I am asking if I increase my weight during the indoor cycling and my workout plan will reflect this, would it help me during the outside ride.
The idea behind this would be that the indoor cycle will be harder but the outdoor ride will reflect the correct weight.

Hope my questions make sense

Best Regards
Lucsi

Hey Lucsi,
do you mean in the app? I do not believe that it will make the rides harder for you. It will just show a higher watts to kg ratio if you decrease your weight in zwift or rouvy. This would mean you get more miles in on the app, but it wont result in a harder ride or more physiological adaptations.

3 Likes

I think it will make your TSS #’s at the end of a ride inaccurate for indoor rides thus skewing all of your data.

Let’s say you add 25lbs to your Zwift weight, doing a workout that averages 200 watts over one hour will be easier at a higher weight. This will skew the intensity factor and TSS score. Then doing that over the course of months will make your form # in TP pretty inaccurate.

I think, I’m thinking that out correctly. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

Your best option if you want to make indoor rides hard is just adjust the “bias” on zwift during your workout.

2 Likes

Hi all
Many thanks for you answers and sharing your knowledge.
I will keep the correct weight and just carry on

Best regards
Lucsi

You may be talking about FTP rather that weight. Changing your weight in TrainingPeaks won’t affect any metrics other that your w/kg, in zwift it’ll make your character go faster. If you ride with an inflated ftp, your metrics like tss will not be based on your actual zones and all the work you do indoors will be harder than the fatigue balancing designed in your plan. When those plans are written the Coach expects you to do x hours of zone 3, but if your ftp is intentionally set high you will have done something like upper sweetspot or threshold instead. Then, while your tss values “say” you did zone 3, your body knows what’s up and you’ll struggle progressing on to future workouts where your coach or plan expects you to be only a specific, zone 3 level of tired… hence the FTFP mantra here. Trust the coaches and your plan, it always works out better for me when I do :eyes:

2 Likes

Your weight is not directly related to TSS, IF, etc. If you ride by power as Fascat wants you to, the only thing weight is going to affect is how slow/fast you are moving. Now if you try to ride by speed then you are screwing things up like @chad mentioned because that’s not how Fascat (or any coach using power based metrics) writes a plan that I know of.

1 Like

Many thanks for all your replies

I would like to clarify my intentions:

  1. I am 100% trying to follow my coaches recommendations and the plan provided to me
  2. I asked about the weight question to improve my resistance for the future (absolutely not for cheating purposes) - I would cheat myself and nobody else :slight_smile:
  3. I thought my logic would say that if I have my weight higher from78KG to 80KG inside I will have a harder time to work hence when I am cycling outside would be a benefit for the real ride.

But after all these explanations and reviews (which I all appreciate) I will keep it as it is. The correct weight

Many thanks
Best Regards
Lucsi

1 Like

I don’t think this is accurate. If I adjust my weight in Zwift I’m going to put out higher/lower watts on zwift despite the actual effort being the same. But Zwift is going believe that for that hour (or however long) I’ve avg 280 watts instead of 250 for example. This will then impact the IF and TSS when the data is transferred to TP.

It’s similar to the whole “weight doping” topics in Zwift racing. If he’s just changing the weight in TP, then yes it’ll have no impact but if he’s changing his weight drastically in Zwift to make rides harder, it will definitely skew his TSS results thus his CTL numbers down the road.

The easiest way to do this in Zwift as I mentioned originally, is to use the “ftp bias” button during a ride. If you’re feeling good and want to squeak out an additional 5 watts avg over the course of a ride, you can do that with that button. I actually increase my bias 1% every ride b/c workouts when uploaded to Zwift, sometimes knock 2-3 watts off intervals when it does its rounding from TP

It’s okay to disagree😉

1 Like

Thank you again all for these insights very valuable

Best regards
Lucsi

You’ll still have correct wattages, since that comes from your power meter and all it knows is how many watts are pushing down on it- not whether that force comes from muscle force or body weight.

The reason changing weight makes you go faster in Zwift is because if it thinks you’re putting out 280 watts at 160 lbs versus 190 lbs, you’re going to go faster at the 160lbs setting - BUT your power meter will still report 280 watts as 280 watts. Your TSS and IF will also be unaffected since they’re based on time in zones of your FTP, not body weight.

SO, you can “weight-dope” to go faster in Zwift, but if you have your FTP correct and based on a field test, your metrics like TSS and things will be OK. You’ll want to have your ftp correct at all times to keep your data accurate and your workouts in the intended progression of easy to hard so you can build and complete the plan.

3 Likes