I’m looking for some good advice for my ERG-mode intervaltraining. I’m on a Elite Direto XR, and i’m beginning to realize and accept, that the model is just not good for ERG-mode with short intervals. So what can I do my self, to make it less worse?
I’m having a lot of trouble “settling in” the right watt & cadence when doing my intervals. It get worse and worse in each trainingsession. The first intervals i works find, but then it seems like the trainer/TR-app is having more and more trouble giving me the right resistance. It wants me to do a giant jumo in cadence to get the higher wattage, instead of just increaseing the resistance?
In frustration, I often starts to shift gears. That seems to confuse my trainer/TR-app even more. And the wattage begins to differ A LOT from my Powermeter-number (on Rouvy, that I have on my second screen).
It takes me about 30 seconds to find the right watt and cadence, but in an interval of one minute, I think that that is too much. It’s also very frustrating to use that much energy on “guessing” what my trainer wants me to do, instead of focussing on the actual workout. It totally ruins my rythm.
So - does anybody recognise this? Any good advice her?
Keep your cadence constant, focus on the workout and anticipate the changes in wattage.
When doing workouts with such short intervals you have to commit to the workout and make sure you know what’s coming. When you start chasing the wattage changes you’re lost.
e.g., rest at 50% rpm of 90, short interval coming up, keep rpm at 90 or even increase a bit, feel the wattage changing and match your power increase - this is a subtle process that does not involve mashing the pedals, interval done, keep the rpms high, maybe slightly decrease to recover, then increase again 20 seconds before the interval.
I really liked how this worked on my Elite Drivo. Very natural process, with the ~10 second build-up that was inherent to that machine…
There will always be a lag, however it works both ways so while you get a ramp up at the start of an interval you will also get a ramp down at the end of one too. I find using the small chainring and middle of the cassette works best for short intervals on my Direto, I also get my cadence to where I want to before the interval starts and hold it as steady as possible.
Honestly I got rid of my direto and got a kickr for this. It just used to over-ramp the start of every interval, so the only way to avoid a wall of resistance was to spin up prior to the interval. Then, when you drop to normal cadence, it overcorrected and smacked you with another wall of resistance.
E.g. 500W for 1min. I’d prefer to do 100rpm. I spin to 100rpm in rest, resistance ramps up and suddenly hits me with 750W of resistance. This is more than i’d expect, so my cadence drops a bit. Great says direto, have some more resistance. This cycle happens for about 20-30s.
In rest i’m doing maybe 95 rpm, and then my interval starts where i’m supposed to do sweetspot-zone, but if i keep the cadence, nothing happens with the resistance, so I have to push the wattage by maybe 105-110 rpm. It helps if i begin the sweetspot-interval by lowering my cadence to 50, feel the resistance increase, and then slowly higher my cadence to 95 again.
Same issue on the Drivo II, so I switched to the Neo 2t. Had about a 5-10sec lag, I contacted support and they were really good but it never really improved. They gave me a couple firmwares to try but was never brilliant.
Ive an Elite Suito which is probably worse. My tact is to do most workouts above endurance on the laptop so I can quickly toggle out of ERG to resistance mode if I’m not on top of it/ the Suito is playing up. Try not to shift gears and let ERG adjust and keep a steady’ish cadence, too much of a shift of gears and/or a too varying just confuses the Elite software. I occasionally do workouts with ERG completely switched off if I’m riding a virtual course (kinda like outdoors in).
Sadly, another reminder why I will never own an Elite trainer. They simply don’t have ERG mode anywhere near as functional as just about any other option.
With the suito here, i know that i need to expct 4-5 seconds to get the right power.
But i have to be paying attention, if i do, usually i can hit the right power sooner with a slight increase in cadence.
Much better than my tacx vortex thats for sure lol
But in any case, definitely no gear changes.
I had the same problem as you. I finally ditched it for an H3 this summer. The difference is night and day. Now the direto just takes up space in my garage until someone offers me a few bucks for it.
Can’t say I ever have any problems with my original Direto either, just have to hold cadence steady and not chase after the power and it’s usually pretty much on target power about 5-7 seconds after the interval starts - and that includes making it hard on the machine by using the big ring! I’ve never had a chance to try any other trainer, but the Direto works fine for me.
This will probably not help you but I recently upgraded firmware on my Direto and since that it takes much longer to TR to converge the power on correct level… Not sure what has changed there
In reality, defined sprints are always going to be imperfect - forget the avg power for the interval. If you’re working really hard and get around the target watts, you’ve done what you needed to do.
I use an Elite Zumo. I spin up to 100rpm in the last ten seconds then hit 110+ after that. Then I try to slightly increase the rpm in the last ten seconds of the sprint.
The target watts takes a few seconds out of the avg but it’s all good really.
I got my first smart trainer and did my 2nd ride on it. I don’t think this is normal. How do I make this better? I think it’s a cadence issue, my cadence was pretty steady but the readout would be around 93 then drop all the way to 50 before going back up. I updated firmware, calibrated, matched it with my assioma pedals. How do i get this better?
Having a real issue with performing TR workouts on my Direto X and it’s getting depressing. I bought my Direto last year and had a few initial issues but these settled and the trainer performed well. Coming back to indoor training after riding outdoors for the summer/autumn something seems to have changed. The trainer is not applying resistance correctly whilst using ERG, using either bluetooth or ANT+. There is an issue when switching to resistance mode. Not experiencing any issue with resistance application (level) with the myElite app
Ran a diagnostic on the trainer which stated there were no problems.
Tried on both laptop and mobile phone, removing all other bluetooth devices so these are the only things connected. No joy…
