FTP rides on a stationary bike
I am traveling and do not have access to my bike/trainer. Though I do have access to gym with stationary bike. Is it a better measurement of my output to add resistance with lower cadence or less resistance with higher cadence? I feel I can get my HR up to Z4 with either option but want to get the most out of the time on the stationary bike. Any inputs would be greatly appreciated.
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what do you do when home on a trainer? I'd be shooting for setting up conditions that replicate what you are used to... if you are a grinder at 80rpm, do that and set the tension appropriately, if you are a spinner at 90+, do that! as long as you are hitting the wattage or HR zones...
btw, just saw that my gym has something called "stages solo" which is made by the powermeter folks with stages PMs on them... look for those if possible.
Thanks for the guidance - Stationary bikes are different to me and something I avoided like the plague until joining EN.....Now I feel like I cheated myself if I ma not following the plan so I have no choice but to get on one while traveling overseas. I just wanted to be certain I was putting in a max effort.
@Patrick Milton , are you testing for power or HR?
Nowadays in the cold and dark, I go to weekly spin classes at my local gym, LA Fitness. They use Keiser bikes with their own wattage on the little computer screens.
However, I also take off their pedals and use my PowerTap P1s, and record it with my own Garmin.
Surprisingly enough, I find that their computer is within a 10% variance of my own power pedals.
Just a thought/possibility, if you're going with power.
I cannot say which is better to actually measure output, but I vote for low cadence training. Please read the following:
http://blog.trisutto.com/the-great-cadence-debate/
The title of this thread is "FTP rides on a stationary bike." With that in mind, the Cameron Watt post linked by @Paul Hough is kind of a bait 'n switch. Half way down, begins a section which starts with, "The higher the power, the higher the cadence needs to be." Followed by some examples from race distances.
Seems to me the advice from Mr. Watt would be, go for a higher cadence if going for FTP-level wattage. In an FTP session, you are not trying to replicate the wattage generated in a 56 or 112 mile TT followed by a half or full marathon. Rather, you are replicating the wattage for a 40k TT, which Watt suggests should be @ 95 rpm.
No disagreement from me but the most important thing is to get the work done!
Thanks to all for the input. As you can see from the "prison" gym equipment offered on Bargarm Airbase, I can really only get a true measure of output by my HR. I have no other way to measure others output for the next couple weeks. I appreciate all of your insight as I am new to EN and really new to training using any metric other than time and distance. FTP - TRP - LRP are acronyms that are new to me....just trying to keep up and get the work in effectively while I am on the road. Be back on my bike and trainer in a couple weeks....hope to see you guys on Zwift.
@Al Truscott - my take on the Watts article is that for AG athletes the desired cadence will almost always be much lower than for an elite cyclist, although I agree with you that it will/should be higher for an FTP test than for a 70.3 or IM bike leg. Here's another article from Sutton himself advocating low cadence cycling for triathletes.
https://blog.trisutto.com/low-cadence-triathlon/
@Paul Hough no question. For me there is an inverse correlation between my cadence the triathlon distance, from about 80/IM to 90+/Sprint. I don't look at cadence during a race, but that's what it ends up being.