Hi All, I’m new to TR and training with a smart trainer.
When looking at training sessions from other members of TR (all rides sections in any workout page), I saw that most people have a very smooth fitting line of the power they generated during workout that almost perfectly matches the blue area.
Mines are not like this at all, they are more wobbly. I would like to learn more about this.
I thought it could be a factor of scale and absolute FTP value. (small power variation at higher FTP are just squashed by the scale of the chart) but it doesn’t seem to be always the case. Some people have perfect lines at lower FTPs.
is it a matter of learning how to produce more constant power output?
Some trainers have power smoothing enabled, with makes the line artificially smooth. It’s not real, it’s just how it looks in the graph. Yours is likely more realistic.
Simply explained, some people are very good at being smooth and it is something you can improve on, but mostly I suspect you are seeing people who use ERG mode on their trainer. My workout files looked a lot smoother when I moved from a dumb trainer (with power meter) to a smart trainer (also with power meter).
Thanks a lot for the answers here @onemanpeloton, @splash, @rkoswald. That helped me a lot. I Can definitely see there are improvements in my own power output when comparing the same workout from three months ago. Power smoothing definitely makes the rest of the difference I saw.
