So, I flew to New York to discover it for myself – the only reasonable way to get the straight poop right? While their numbers do not really measure the metrics we understand as Power in the cycling world, they have accomplished an amazing feat – they’ve created training tools they retrofit to older Red Knob bikes! I started out quite skeptical, but ended up quite impressed. Come follow this journey.

Their little display that is attached to the side of the flywheel does indeed say “Power”, and there is a number that displays, but it is not Power in Watts as you and I (and anyone interested in real cycling power) currently understand it. It is an attempt to measure the combination of resistance applied from the red tension knob, and the estimated cadence or RPM of the flywheel, and report on that combination. First of all, yes, power in its simplest terms is a mathematical function of RPM and torque or force applied, in this case to the flywheel. So, it’s good that it is this combination they focused on. However, the question is how are they measuring these two critical components, and what is the result. Let’s break it down.

Torque
Their display spells it “Torq” for branding purposes I’m sure. This number simply reflects how much resistance you are putting on the fly wheel. I suspect they have something that is measuring the number of turns of the red knob, or somehow measuring the amount of brake put on the flywheel. As you turn the red knob, you see the power go up – even if you are not pedaling the bike. Hence, it clearly is not power. In fact, when I came into the empty cycling room early, each bike had a different power number showing on their custom display. I was ready to call the ghost busters, but instead I asked the Flywheel attendant what it meant, and he told me it was simply how much the red knob was turned or how much resistance the rider last used. While they could have called it “gear” or “resistance level”, I guess it was more chic to call it “torq”… hey, it’s NY city.

RPM
The “measured” RPM however is another story. I saw what looked like a magnet on the side of the flywheel (but I’m not sure it was), so I hoped that they were measuring this much like outdoor bikes measure RPM – with the circumference of the wheel and the number of times the magnet gets passed over. However, that may not be the case, since the numbers seemed a bit low to what my body was telling me. After having a cadence meter on my outdoor bike for 6 years, and teaching with RPM on my indoor stationary bikes for 3+ years, I am pretty in tune with my spinning speed. So I did some manual validation tests:

First, I established a steady number on their meter of 60 RPM, with a steady, smooth pedal stroke. The number held pretty consistent, never varying more than 1 RPM more or less. Once it was steady, I counted the number of revolutions (each time the knee comes up, or the foot hits the bottom of the pedal stroke can easily account for the number of pedaling revolutions), for 10 seconds (using a stop watch) and multiplying the number of revolutions by 6, giving me the RPM or Revolutions Per Minute. I also counted them for 15 seconds, and multiplied by 4 – just to vary the method a bit and see if there would be variations. While the two measurement periods (10 and 15 seconds) did not produce differences, it was difficult to get exact counts at the higher pedal rates. At 60 RPM I was a consistent 10 RPM higher in my manual test than what was showing on the meter. However, when I tested it at a steady 80 RPM those numbers seemed to produce estimates 15 to 25 RPM higher.

Consequently the cadence reported is low by a minimum of 10 RPM and a maximum of 25 RPM. This variation is likely due to this testing in a “manual” way without a mechanical device, but I can assure you, those stated RPM are definitely too low. My gut tells me that if they were validated in a controlled environment with mechanical devices, they would average about 15 RPM or more too LOW.

OK, so we have a torque number that we know is a measure of resistance, and we have an RPM reading that we know is low, but likely consistently so. The big question is where does the number under the heading of “Power” come from?

Power
I had to slow my RPM down to as little as 60 to test the following theory, but any of you who go to FlyWheel can test this for yourself and tell me if you agree or not. As I pedaled at 60 RPM, and set my “torque” or resistance knob to a torq of 15, I saw the power number of 9 come up. So I increased my RPM to 70, and I saw power numbers jumping between 10 and 11. So I increased my torq to 20 and dropped my cadence back to 60, and I saw a power number of 12. Are you beginning to see the pattern? It is simply the multiplication of torq and RPM divided by 100: (torq X RPM) / 100. I further tested this theory by watching and pausing the Channel 7 report they so conveniently supplied on their website. Each combination of torq and rpm shown on the TorqBoard (if you pause each number combination) can be proved out by this formula, But reader beware – this is not cycling power by any stretch – it is simply a number.

Total Power
This is the number that intrigued me the most. What in the world is total power? It’s sort of like asking, how many RPM did you do today. It doesn’t even make sense. But here’s the very cool part. While I did not take the time to figure out their formula on this one (I assume it adds the average power for each minute on a cumulative basis), I found this number to be completely captivating and motivating. WOW, was this a surprise! Here I am, looking down my nose at a completely false set of numbers in absolutely every category and indicator, and yet, the weirdest one of all; Total Power, was driving me on… pushing me to get to 400, then to 450 before the cool down, then I was bummed that I couldn’t hit 500 before the end of class. What just happened there!?!?

Bad Data Is Better Than No Data
At first blush, this heading may seem, well, sacrilegious… maybe even dangerous. Couldn’t bad data lead to terrible conclusions and even worse decisions? In life yes, but when it comes to Indoor Cycling the answer is maybe not.

At the end of the class, it was clear to me what Flywheel had done. They created a way to put tools on the bike, that measure your effort, hopefully in a consistent way. Forget about the purity of each measurement – the fact remains, as I’ve stated in previous blog posts; to wit – if you can measure it, you can improve it. Having some mechanism to measure how I’m doing today, I can subsequently measure how I’m doing next week, and next month, and see if I’m getting stronger, weaker, better or worse. Best of all though, in the moment, it provides some tools for the instructor and immediate feedback for the student. As weird as this sounds coming out of my own mouth… or keyboard… it’s all good!

Rock On Flywheel!
While I won’t even comment on the custom weight holders attached to each bike, and my disdain for contraindicated movements and activities on the bike, I must commend Flywheel for bringing tools into the Indoor Cycling environment – and doing it by retrofitting older bikes. If you can get by all the numbers being mislabeled, inaccurate and in some cases just silly, you may just find yourself working harder than you thought possible, just to get to that next level. Well done Flywheel, keep on flying!

Rather than blather on, I’ll simply describe how we arrived at these numbers, and define each of the metrics that we tracked throughout the sessions. Our methods were as scientific as is possible outside of a university setting. We required everyone to do a New Leaf metabolic test (measuring fat/carb burn rates, VO2, Threshold, Heart Zones, etc) one to two weeks before Winter Training began on January 2nd. We also used the first 2 weeks to measure everyone’s baseline power numbers.  Having the Keiser M3 to work with was the absolute key component of tracking and improving our progress for improving Power.  From there, we kept track of these various metrics over the next 16 weeks of training, culminating with a post New Leaf test.

The percentages in the table images represent the amount of improvements each rider has achieved from the beginning of the year to about the middle of April – setting each one up for the cycling season of their lives. I graded anyone with cumulative improvements over 100% with an A, over 200% an A+, and one individual (our most improved rider) had a total of over 300% gain across multiple metrics. The highest degree of improvement in each category are highlighted by a pink cell, showing while they’ve all had huge gains, each person responds differently to training, and thus they vary by which aspect of their riding and fitness improved the most.

Training Load: These are measured in Heart Zones® training load points. Each week riders were required to increase their load by 5%

Threshold: This is their measured heart rate where the body shifts its use of fat in the aerobic energy production system to carbs (actually, glycogen) in their “anaerobic” system. This is also their Lactate threshold, and team members were given lactate tests to double confirm these threshold values.

VO2 Max: The maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in to produce energy

Sustainable Power: The MSP (Maximum Sustainable Power) measured in Watts, for 20 minutes (all tests were done twice and averaged, with 5 min of rest between efforts)

Climbing Power (5 min): The MSP for the Climbing Power Zone. It represents power output for 5 minutes. Three efforts were averaged for each of these.

Climbing Power (3 min): Same as 5 min, only at higher power levels, for 3 minutes of power generation instead of 5.

Explosive Power: This is the MSP for the Explosive Power Zone – which is 1 minute power. Three efforts were averaged.

Pocket Power: During the New Leaf tests, we manually record their power numbers each minute of the test. The power each rider generates while they are within 15 beats of their threshold is their “Power Pocket”. This is similar to Sustainable Power in that it represents a hard effort that should be able to continue for very long rides.

Watts per BPM: This is an efficiency rating. Every Watt of power you produce is at some physiological cost. The heart rate is the easiest way to measure that price you are paying. Hence, the fewer heart beats that you require to produce the same Watts, or the more Watts you can produce with the same BPM (Beats Per Minute), the more efficient you are.

Burn Rate Change %: New Leaf measures how many calories you are burning in each heart zone. As you train your metabolism, the intention is to have your body learn to burn more fat, more often, and for longer periods of time. This preserves your glycogen for harder efforts, and makes you much more efficient at producing energy, especially over longer rides.

Weight: Not everyone attempted to lose weight, but even if that was not the goal, a lighter rider should be able to produce more Watts/Lb, thus becoming stronger and faster.

Unfortunately, they have missed more than the point. If you have read our Cycling Fusion Manifesto, and subscribe to this blog, you already know how much fun riding indoors can be. This alone is a good enough reason to give indoor cycling a second look if you live in a climate that locks you out of riding outside for months on end. However, it’s the performance improvements that are the real draw of indoor cycling. There a number of cycling workouts that are nearly impossible to accomplish outside. This applies to both Heart Zone® centric workouts as well as Power workouts. Many of these workouts are designed to accomplish some of the coveted objectives of higher VO2, greater power, and an elevated threshold.

Here are a few excerpts from some diehard outdoor cyclists who are just discovering for themselves that Indoor Cycling may be the key to their next performance jump:

UK Rider
“…this started me wondering whether there is an argument for doing roller sessions even when you could ride outdoors. The problem with riding outdoors, certainly around here, is that you are often prevented from applying power for various reasons. There’s traffic lights, roundabouts, junctions, cars blocking you, downhills with tight bends etc. Then there’s also uphill parts where it is almost impossible not to go anaerobic. I could post some pictures of graphs of power distribution and quadrant analysis, but I’m sure you get the idea – my power output is much more variable outdoors, so to hit the same average power as I would on the rollers, I actually end up spending a lot of time at much lower power output and also quite a bit of time at higher power output to pull the average back up to where I want it to be.”

USA Rider
“I took 30 seconds off of my 10 mile TT PR last year and was putting out crazy watts compared to the previous year.  In road races I felt like I had an enormous depth of strength and pretty much went on a reign of terror during the spring and won a lot of races. Interestingly enough though as the time changed and I spent more time outdoors I had a smaller amount of total quality time on the bike per week than I had during the winter.  Of course I was racing and doing more threshold, VO2 max work than during the winter, but in retrospect I felt like my fitness went down during the summer.  In retrospect, if I could I would have sent the April version of me to Nationals in July.  I wasn’t bad in July, but I was better in April.”

UK Rider
“One of my points, though, is that outdoor training can be even worse than this, in that interrupting the time spent at the target power with time spent at a much lower power, might have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the training. Accumulating 60 mins of tempo over 3 hours as 5 mins tempo, then 10 mins AR (Active Recovery), then 5 mins tempo, 10 mins AR etc, may not have the same training benefit as a continuous 60 mins of tempo, on top of the inefficient use of time.”

However, all of this does come with a catch of sorts. This caveat pertains specifically to any cyclist who wants to improve their performance outside. If you are content to stay inside and ride, this is only an issue if you are pushing for the next level of fitness, or perhaps cross training for another sport. But for those that enjoy riding in both venues, this is vital to understand. Without a power indicator on your indoor bike, my current feeling is that you are almost riding blind. This may seem a bit harsh or extreme, but I’ve now cycled with a number of Indoor-Only instructors who have asked me to take them outside and give it a try. While they do have to get used the equipment, shifting and the sport in general, they typically lack the ability to climb real hills. The lack of an indicator for tension or power creates an almost artificial ceiling, where it requires a great deal of personal conviction to keep reaching for the next level and making that simulated road that much steeper.

Let’s hope that soon this will be a non-issue, as old bikes get replaced with new ones like the Keiser M3 and other indoor bikes with Power. Members, instructors and indoor cycling advocates of all kinds all need to let their voices be heard if this trend is to take hold and sweep across the nation.

Let’s define power just a little more precisely. It is not simply the amount of “work” you are doing. That is a different measurement. Sure many people say “I worked hard today in class”. You are also admonished by instructors to “Work it!”. In fact, the entire industry uses the term “work out” to refer to exercise. However, when it comes to Power, in terms of work, it is the RATE of performing that work; how fast you do it.

The easiest example is walking up a set of steps. If you walk up the steps, or run up the steps, it’s the same amount of work. However, running will require a different amount of power. To perform the same work faster, requires more Power. Hence, to make a bike go faster, you need more power. The same concept applies to climbing. The same hill will require the same “work” for a given individual, but if they climb it faster, it will require more power.

There is however, an additional “wrinkle” for power. The steeper the hill, the more work required to move the bike up that hill and essentially overcome the forces of gravity (which while constant, seems stronger as you climb steeper hills). Thus, the amount of power required for climbing will also change as the pitch of the hill changes.

So if you haven’t already drawn a rather obvious conclusion, let me draw it for you. If you just ride Rails to Trails, or only on flat terrain, with no concern for speed, then you really don’t need to train with power for your outdoor riding. You may be interested in training with power for all the reasons mentioned earlier for “non-cyclists” – leg strength, toning, fitness, etc. But as it relates to cycling – this is a technique for improving your speed or ability to climb better, or both; plain and simple.

The following are reasons an outdoor rider would want to focus on power in their training:

Power Training will improve climbing, possibly more than any other method for improving this critical aspect of cycling.
The ability to climb, and climb with speed, is one of the easiest ways to separate riders; cometitively and recreationally. While your VO2 and Threshold Heart Rate will limit the upper limits of your power (a subject for later blog), it is not something one can easily monitor. Yes, heart rate can be monitored, and you could do periodic field tests to see if your Threshold has increased, but you would still not have such an easy task of measuring VO2. Thus, you have limiters that can’t be regularly monitored, meaning you will find improving these a bit ellusive. 

Enter the Power meter. Now you can see if you are able to generate more power one class after another. From short timed interval tests, to entire workouts, your power numbers will be a great predictor for how well you will be able to face the steeper climbs once you begin your outdoor riding.

Power Training will help you target very specific types of riding; climbing, sprinting, time trialing, etc.
First and foremost, there is a training principal that we will speak about from time to time, and which has been written about extensively in other books and training resources, and that is regarding the power of training specificity. If you want to get better, stronger, faster at something, you need to practice, or train that something. Of course you need a solid fitness base beneath this sort of specific training, but given that as a foundation, each rider should be able to indentify their weaknesses or objectives, and train specifically for their improvement. 

As an example for power, if you are constantly getting dropped on a specific hill, or if you routinely need to get off your bike on a given hill, you can train indoors on a Keiser M3 or other power bike to be able to overcome that. You can get the grade of the road from a variety of online sources, or your own altimiter, look up the Watts per Pound required on Cycling Fusion’s Power & Speed for Climbing chart, and you will then know your requirements to either get up the hill without having to stop, or getting up the hill with greater velocity. 

Similarly, if you are a time trial specialist, you know that maintaining a given wattage throughout your time trial is key to improving your times. Knowing what watts you’ve generated in past races will allow you to set specific power goals for improvement. 

Sprinters also require a different type of power, utilizing predominantly fast muscle twitch fibers, and power in much higher ranges for much shorter periods of time. Keeping good records of where you start, and setting higher goals is the key to training specificity. 

Power Training will allow you to make comparisons between riders, and to evaluate your relative strength within a given field.
There is such a thing as a “rider’s profile”. It is a way to look at the different types of power an individual can generate, and predict what types of riding events or even races they are best suited for. Power is measured over a duration of time (otherwise there would be no way to determine the “rate” of work accomplished). These times are indicative to specific riding situations. 

For example, a ride (or race) with a lot of short steep climbs will require good power, but for short periods of time. If you know what your 3 minute power is, you can predict the type of performance you might have in that event. Similarly, a 30 minute time trial on a mostly flat course would allow you to just about predict the speed you can maintain on that course, and thus train for something higher depending on what kind of speed is competitive for that event. You might have terrific numbers for sprinting and climbing, but only so-so numbers for the longer events. That not only points out some relative weaknesses in your overall riding abiity, but also helps you see what events you might want to challenge yourself with.

Power Training will help you add leg strength throughout the entire season.
Given you are able to train with power indication indoors, you can now set power goals all year long, not just when your riding your outdoor bike that has the power meter. While I believe some cyclists take this to extremes, and only do power workouts, leaving heart rate training behind like it’s “old fashioned”, I do not advocate that. Both training methods are important for different purposes, and one should never negate the other. All that being said, having power indication on your indoor bike will allow you to continue to increase leg strength and the improvements in power that should follow. It is much more than strength, but with the feedback from the bike computer or console, you can make sure your RPMs or cadence also stays up to create those additional watts. 

So there you have it, plenty of reasons to train with power for both the indoor and outdoor rider. Review these well enough that you can get owner, managers or influential members thinking about why this is attractive to all the members. The easiest way for this to be dismissed out of hand is to let people get intimidated by it, or think it is only for an elite group. While there are many blogs and other resoures on the internet that do fit that profile, good indoor Power Training does not have to be that way. I say let’s bring Power Training to everyone! 


To that end, we have just left our Spinning® boat, and have embarked on a cruise liner to the next level. The results achieved in the Giretto proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only indoor training works, but when coupled with the right set of tools – which in today’s world must also include a power meter – can take you to multiple levels of performance above where you started. The Keiser M3 was purchased to help us train for the hardest, longest and most challenging cycling event we ever attempted, and the results convinced us to replace all our Spinner bikes with these amazing machines.

Now clearly, there are other power bikes on the market, and you can also use your own bike with a power meter and a trainer. I’m not out here selling Keiser bikes – it was simply the model that we settled on after test runs and training success. The REAL point is having proper training tools, matching class design, and a facility that demands instructors to educate as well as entertain. These are not mutually exclusive objectives. Our kick off event held 2 nights ago proved that – and the 5 minute YouTube video will give you a taste of how that went.

This is indeed the mission of Cycling Fusion; to help indoor cycling reach its full potential for both outdoor cyclists as well as dedicated indoor enthusiasts, and yet to challenge the indoor only folks to broaden their horizons by exploring the outside world on 2 wheels. We can not only all “get along” as the cliché goes, but we can actually help or at least enjoy each other’s company along the way. If you haven’t ever read the full Cycling Fusion Manifesto, please take a moment to do that. Impacting an entire industry will be difficult to do, but we can do it with a ground swell of folks who catch the same vision.

You can read the full press release of the kick off night and the departure from Spinning® by clicking on the press release hyperlink.

As you can see from my chart above, my power has increased from my first power test. If you are wondering why you don’t see “250 watts, 300 watts”, etc – that is because the raw watt numbers really do not make any sense without knowing how heavy the rider is. Watts per kg is the “great equalizer”. The power you produce is always relative to your weight – a bigger guy will need more watts to pull him up the hill, and he has bigger muscle mass to produce that power. Hence, watts/kg is the “measure of truth

”.

We have the luxury at Global Ride to use a Keiser M3 bike with power, heart rate, cadence, calories, time and distance readings. We performed the same testing I had done 5 months ago just yesterday. We were able to repeat the same test, in the same environment, and on the same equipment. In conjunction with the Keiser bike, we used the New Leaf Metabolic Cart to analyze all the aerobic components (more on that in a future blog).

While field tests can always be done outside, nothing will provide the accuracy of testing in a controlled environment, with identical conditions and equipment. The differences in performance can then be properly credited towards your training between tests.

While there are a number of power metrics the power gurus point to, it is those that translate to my event (The Giretto) that I’m most interested in. Given that my emphasis has been on long distance and endurance, I am most interested in the sustainable power. This is indicated above by “Power Zone Ave”. This represents the average power I generated from 20 beats below up to my threshold. This increase isn’t as big as the others, but it is going in the right direction.

The other metric I was interested in is not one you will find in “the literature”. I guess I sort of made it up (at least to my knowledge anyway). This is how many watts I generate per increase in Beats Per Minute (Heart Rate). Your heart rate is a measure of the stress your body is feeling as you produce energy, so I wanted to know how much stress each watt of energy was exacting on my body. I am happy to report that again, the increase wasn’t huge, but it was noticeable. I am now able to produce more energy per bpm.

I will soon post a similar progress report on my aerobic progress – also critical to overall success in any endurance event.