Does Gear Selection Matter in Erg Mode

Al Truscott

@Randy Peene Posted this in the Jan OS forum...I found it intriguing, and thought others might want to contemplate it as well. You gotta watch the video to make any sense of it, and even then, it requires some actual thought:

http://blog.wahoofitness.com/erg-mode-gear-selection-matter/

I've always just set my gears in Erg mode so I end up with a reasonable speed/distance for the ride. This data indicates that, if you go to the extremes you can train different muscles:

• Small front/big rear: quads
• Big front/small rear: Glutes

Doesn't actually come out and stay that, but that's the inference I drew. He goes on to say, consider what you are training for when you set your gears while doing a workout via erg mode on a smart trainer. Quads=flats; Glutes=hills. Again, he doesn't say that, but that was my conclusion. I could be all wrong.

Then there was the whole issue of "road feel". He lost me there.

John Katsoudas

@Al Truscott I don't know if gear selection in erg mode affects which muscles are being trained.  if it does, the effect is subtle enough that it has gone largely unnoticed by me.  What I have noticed, however, is a huge difference in the responsiveness of my trainer in erg mode, depending on which gear I'm in.  I usually ride in erg mode in the small chainring up front (34) and either the 21 or 23 in the rear to get as straight a chainline as possible and quietest ride.  I've noticed that my trainer (Tacx Neo Smart) is MUCH better at keeping a constant power in a small gear like this vs. when I'm in the large chainring, for example.  I took this screenshot a while back to demonstrate (no smoothing on the power curve).  After the warmup, I was doing a workout with four identical intervals in erg mode.  The second interval I did in the 50/11 and the others in the 34/23.  All were at the same cadence.  You can see how much more the trainer struggled to hold a constant power in the larger gear. (the blips you see in the other three intervals were me getting out of the saddle for 30sec to give my rear end a break.)