Power Meter vs Trainer Power Data

Equipment
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Question about power meter source. Recently, I compared the power numbers from my Kickr with my Stages left crank arm meter. The rides were both Sweat Spot. Steamboat for the Stages and Geiger for the Kickr.

Max heart rate on the Stages ride was 132 while Max HR on the Kickr 155. I worked a lot harder on the Kickr ride, even though Steamboat is a little more challenging.

I use the Kickr indoors and the Stages outdoors. Is this why my structured indoor rides seem so much harder? How should I interpret these results? Is it just like wearing angle weights in practice and then removing them for the game?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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I moved your post out of the “Welcome” topic and into it’s own topic. We try to group these in appropriate categories (Equipment in this case) so people can find better info now and in the future.

I may also add links or merge your comment into another one that is closely related. We see questions like this and there are some answers already in place in those other topics that can give you some direction.

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Try this: With your bike on the trainer, run a TR indoor workout using your trainer as the power source. At the same time, have your head unit connected to your power meter. Now you can read both power sources at once and confirm whether they are different.

I had a big discrepancy too… my Quark PM was reading about 9% high, compared to my trainer’s reading AND Garmin Rally pedals I borrowed as a 2nd source. The fix was to adjust the slope value of my Quark down until it matched.

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I got a moment to do a quick search, which shows lots of related examples that are worth a look:

https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/search?q=Power%20Meter%20vs%20Trainer%20Power%20%23equipment

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Thanks so much. A number of things to try.

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Thanks Jesse

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You’ll certainly have a much higher heart rate indoors unless you have superb cooling.

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I think this is an excellent description of what these efforts do to you on a turbo.

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Are you able to use both at the same time?

To determine the descrepency I do this and record a ride in TR using the trainer and in Garmin using the power meter at the same time, then compare the power reports.

Kickr support may be able to guide you through this and update the Kickr to read more like your power meter, which is what Elite did for me.

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Differences between PMs and trainers aren’t unusual, but there may be some steps to mitigate this difference like checking for firmware updates for both your PM and Trainer, and double checking PowerMatch settings. The team at support@trainerroad.com can help walk you through these.

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