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.
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.
I think it will make your TSS #âs at the end of a ride inaccurate for indoor rides thus skewing all of your data.
Letâs 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, Iâm thinking that out correctly. Someone correct me if Iâm wrong.
Your best option if you want to make indoor rides hard is just adjust the âbiasâ on zwift during your workout.
You may be talking about FTP rather that weight. Changing your weight in TrainingPeaks wonât affect any metrics other that your w/kg, in zwift itâll 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 âsayâ you did zone 3, your body knows whatâs up and youâll 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
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 thatâs not how Fascat (or any coach using power based metrics) writes a plan that I know of.
I am 100% trying to follow my coaches recommendations and the plan provided to me
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
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
I donât think this is accurate. If I adjust my weight in Zwift Iâm 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) Iâve avg 280 watts instead of 250 for example. This will then impact the IF and TSS when the data is transferred to TP.
Itâs similar to the whole âweight dopingâ topics in Zwift racing. If heâs just changing the weight in TP, then yes itâll have no impact but if heâs 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 âftp biasâ button during a ride. If youâre 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
Youâll 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 youâre putting out 280 watts at 160 lbs versus 190 lbs, youâre 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 theyâre based on time in zones of your FTP, not body weight.
SO, you can âweight-dopeâ 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. Youâll 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.