My Kickr is reading 30W lower than my (new) Stages. I think I am not doing the spin down and or calibration correctly.
I store the Kickr in the bedroom where I train. I don’t travel with it.
I know there is a ‘calibration’ feature in TR (within each workout), and a spin down feature in the Wahoo Fitness App. On TR it says to perform a calibration before each session. On the Wahoo Fitness App it says to perform the spin down only if we travel or every two weeks. It also says to ride for 10 mins before doing a fortnightly spin down. What’s the difference between the TR calibration and the Kickr spin down?
I train 4 times a week indoor.
What’s the recommended calibration vs spin down procedure, and frequency?
Do I need to perform the spin down once every 2 weeks, AFTER 10 mins riding, and a calibration via TR BEFORE each training?
I only do spindown once in a while, half a year maybe. Consistency is what is important, accuracy isn’t as much as long as you are not competing with others. If I did spindown every time, my numbers and workouts would be all over the place.
On a side note, perhaps you know already, you can feed your Stages PM data to Kickr and it will adjust the resistance for you? It can be done via the wahoo app, where you specify the PM sensor ID.
If you want to take Stages out of the loop, then need to calibrate kickr to read close to Stages and that would be it. On Snap, it can be done via consistent trainer setup - adjust and use same tyre pressure, drum pressure, same wheel and tyre every time. On direct mount, I think it is the belt tension that needs adjustment?
Thanks. To add, my Kickr is from Dec 2016. I haven’t done any maintenance yet. I use it religiously 4 or 5 times a week. Do I need to call Wahoo to understand if I can do some maintenance at home?
I calibrate my kickr core once every 1-2 weeks, I started paying attention to the offset value a few weeks ago and it’s always the same: 32768. So unless you have big changes in location, equipment, setup or temperature, no need to do it every ride.
I also calibrate after 10 minutes of riding as the wahoo app suggested the first time. Since I only use TR, I don’t bother calibrating in other apps, I just do the spindown in TR after ~10 minutes.
If it’s always 30 watts lower, just continue with powermatch and ignore the kickr values free FTP bump with using another power source
I would google how to do the factory spindown, then make sure both the PM’s are calibrated. I had the same issue and was training with a 40w low ftp for 3 months…
Exactly the opposite happened to me. On a new Kickr 17, it was reporting about 30% higher power. I had no idea until I bought a second power meter. After a factory spindown it was/is very close to my Assiomas
Fwiw Stages are notoriously bad for over-reading. As long as you train with something that is consistent that is the main thing. But your kickr may be a more accurate value of your power output (and kj’s/calories burnt ect).
free FTP bump with using another power source 