I performed a 20 min FTP test yesterday. I haven’t completed one for 6 weeks, and this was the first with a new trainer (Tacx Neo 2T).
I noticed that the Intensity control (bottom left on android app) had absolutely no effect during the assessment intervals while in resistance mode. It would scale up and down the blue area “target power” but not actually affect the load felt on the trainer. This was possible 6 weeks ago and/or on my old trainer. I find this very helpful for fine-tuning - often the jump between gears is too large when working at the limit of an FTP assessment.
Playing around with resistance mode during today’s workout confirmed the same thing…
I wouldn’t normally question this if it wasn’t for the fact that it was previously possible to make small adjustments to resistance/power using the intensity control.
Is this a bug, or expected. Is there something I can change, or configure differently?
So that works when you are using ERG mode. When fine adjusting Resistance or Slope mode you need to adjust the level of resistance which is a slider at the bottom of the workout screen. Keyboard shortcut is the left and right arrow keys for the desktop app, not sure on mobile but I’d imagine it would be a horizontal slider close to where the trainer mode indicator is.
That’s how Resistance mode works you can increase/decrease the target but are not actually held to it. There’s a separate control (at least on the PC) where you can increase/decrease the resistance.
Yes, there is a setting in the devices menu to adjust the trainer resistance amount. However, this is far too sensitive and imprecise to use via the touchscreen while training. Just a small nudge means I need 500w just to keep the pedals turning.
It shouldn’t have been possible before but I am going by the pc controls (target intensity and resistance are controlled separately) maybe android is different.
Like the others, changing the Intensity value while in Resistance mode should not have made any functional change in the resistance you felt on the pedals. If it did, THAT was the bug.
The previous trainer was a Tacx Flow Smart.
Attached are a couple of screenshots from my previous test… It wasn’t a good test and I started out too easy, as I realised this I increased the intensity throughout the 20-minute block.
You’ll see that I could affect a ~5w power difference at the same cadence. That kind of fine-tuning just isn’t possible using the gears.
Ditto, that sure looks like ERG mode to me. It’s impossible for us to know, but TR could actually review their internal logs for it to confirm, if you contact them about it.
If I were in ERG mode then the power would be tracking the blue target… Or would it… I’m not sure what target would be displayed after-the-fact in the ride analysis screen.
Maybe you’re right, perhaps my old trainer just didn’t shift automatically between ERG and resistance as it should. I certainly prefer this mode for doing assessments.
Nope. The picture of the blue target captured shows what SHOULD have been the case if you were at 100% intensity. The blue blocks do NOT capture any changes you make to the Intensity setting during the workout/test.
For the defined target, you need to look at the thin GREEN LINE. THAT DOES show what the effective power target was at that very moment, and DOES reflect changes to the Intensity setting. You can see a near match of the green line to the actual power (yellow line), so I am confident that you were in ERG mode there.
Which mode is that? I am unsure based on the conext.
Thanks for the info about the defined and actual target. That is really helpful. I’ve just looked back over this and other tests and it looks pretty conclusive that I was in ERG mode here. I think this clears up the mystery.
Apologies, I meant I prefer testing with ERG mode.
This does raise an additional question… During the 5 min clearing effort, when I realised the “problem” of not being able to tweak the intensity, I did try changing back to ERG mode. Whenever doing this, the trainer lost all resistance - even at 100%. Think I’ll leave this for another day though and do some more investigation!
Probably worth doing a dedicated test when you have free time to monkey around.
Load the test, use the ‘Scrub’ feature to jump ahead to the 5m effort, and retest the mode swap. I think it should work, but almost remember someone commenting a long time ago about it not working.
Based on your test results, you may want to contact TR support to see what they can tell you.
