Probably stopped peddling…
When you stop or severely slow down your pedaling the erg mode is going to react by increasing the force required to turn the pedals. When you start pedaling at a normal cadence again, it will take a few second for the trainer to catch back up. You’ll experience a power spike while it catches back. The opposite happens if you increase your cadence by a bunch and then slow down.
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For ERG to be successful, you need to maintain a steady cadence. Looking at the graphs, it seems you may be fluctuating a fair bit.
Make sure to be as steady as you can, or the trainer will constantly be attempting to adjust resistance, which often leads to you making adjustment, and the whole cycle repeats. The smoother you are, the better ERG will perform.
Guess you guys are right. I can see that my power is fluctuating around my target power. So i am actually doing the same with the old Kickr, just not showing on the graph…
Thank you all for your answers. Looking forward to do a new ramp-test!!
Tegards
DrJ
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Bump. I’m having the same issue using TR and my new Neo (purchased in December). The firmware is updated through the phone app utility. I turned OFF the feature that allows TR to sync ERG with the power meter on my bike, so it’s only syncing with the Neo’s power meter. And I have devices set to the speed/cadence from Neo, the Neo trainer itself, my HR monitor (wahoo tickr), and the Neo power meter. I experience a lot of fluctuation, especially when doing 30 second or 1’ efforts that are 120%+ FTP. That’s where it’s the worst because I’m jumping from say 90 rpm / 90 watts to 110 rpm / 275 watts. In that situation, the ERG mode isn’t doing a great job of getting me up to the proper power and keeping me there. There are wild fluctuations in either direction. Seems like maybe it’s just the Neo and we will have to live with it? I thought maybe it was losing very brief connections with my dongle…
DC Rainmaker did a Neo 2 in-depth review, which includes a power accuracy check using TR. There is some variation around the set point, but in general you can see taht the trainer is very responsive and quite good at maintaining the power target. The fluctuations are always larger on higher power intervals since we all tend to be not quite as good at maintaining a set cadence, so the trainer hunts around to follow our variations. The key point, particularly for those who are less used to the peculiarities of erg-mode training, is to forget about power and focus on cadence. Trying to adjust the power yourself by pedaling faster/slower will only increase the fluctuations.
Did you try erg mode with other apps?
The Kicker is famous for smoothing the data (nothing wrong with that, as they said in the podcast once, you ask it to do 250, it reports it’s doing 250)
When the power requirement went up did you have to change you cadence to hit the power numbers , you have any smoothing in you settings, mine is set to 5 seconds and this is me doing spenser last night on a Neo
Neo is a very solid trainer. I have been using it for 2 years and zero issues. Mostly in ERG mode. Make sure you keep proper cadence so that trainer can pick up. Also set smoothing to 10 sec in TR app. Here is my workout from today.
I have the Neo 1, not the 2, but from what I read, this aspect of the two trainers is identical (there are other new features like a slightly quieter drive train). The problem with just focusing on cadence is you don’t hit your workout properly if you do that. You’re supposed to hit a power target and if the Neo isn’t letting you because of wild fluctuations, you’re essentially getting a shittier workout. When I just focus on keeping my cadence at a set number, the Neo takes too long to ramp up to the power and I end up being about 10-20 watts below the target for the duration of the interval. That’s no bueno.
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Here’s my workout from last night (this morning was Petite and nobody wants to see an hour of boring).
And here’s another to contrast, where there’s a little bit more of a steady effort, as opposed to 30" jumps followed by big drops. If the answer is there’s nothing wrong with your Neo, that’s fine, but it’s a little disappointing.
You will note that most of the power spikes corrspond to cadence drops/increases.
That’s because the Kicker reports the power request, not the actual power measured, in erg mode.
Use the Trainroad ride analysis tool and check the average power during the intervals in the workouts you posted and see how close they are to expected. I suspect they are pretty close to the target and not 10 - 20 watts below.
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This points to you trying to solve a problem, and effectively creating a new one (or at the least not solving the problem).
With ERG, the absolute, single most important aspect to make if function well is to hold your cadence steady, and I mean STEADY.
- Do you best to hold a predictable cadence that varies less than +/-5 rpm (and +/- 3 would be even better).
- Ignore the power target and focus on your cadence (see #1 above).
When you alter your cadence to adjust power, you are effectively breaking the process that ERG attempts to perform. In essence, ERG works great with constant input (rpm) and will apply the appropriate resistance to hit the power target.
Issues arise from inconsistent input (deliberate or accidental) and will cause the trainer to adjust more often than it should. Each adjustment takes some time, and is not instant (nor would we want it to be).
When you get into the shorter intervals (less than 60 seconds) and bigger jumps (40% of FTP to 150%+ FTP), you can hit the limit of what some trainers can practically handle. These short on/off types of workouts are often best when done in Resistance mode (and not ERG mode).
For longer efforts over 1 minute, you just need to ignore power, and hold the cadence. Let the trainer and app do the work. I find when you do this, you will get very close to the interval targets. If you are the type of person that frets over 1 watt variation, ERG may well not be for you.
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A smart trainer lagging 10-20 watts below target in erg mode is usually the result of a gearing that’s too short to generate the power request, so the trainer tops off at max resistance without reaching the target. Did you try the same test on a longer gear?
The Neo is (according to most reviews) particularly fast in reaching target power.
I assume you dont have power match enabled?
That’s not true. The Kickr (Core and Snap) offer two settings:
-
ERG Mode Power Smoothing, DISABLED / OFF
- Left side of pic and video below.
- Reports a more accurate and live style value, similar to what a normal power meter reports
-
ERG Mode Power Smoothing, ENABLED / ON
- Right side of the pic and video below.
- Reports a significantly smoothed value, as though you have the power smoothing set to eliminate variation
See this video for a great detail on the settings:
Neither of those settings report the Target power (“power request”) as suggested above.
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This issue may be relevant. In general, many trainers respond to power target changes faster in lower gears.
I don’t think the power ceiling/floor is really an issue with the Neo.
In some instances, it was close overall by the end of the interval. In others, it was 10-20 off. The ones where I “let” the trainer bring me up to power and then tried to smoothly pedal without trying to focus on the average were the ones where the power discrepancy was greatest. The ones where I “overcompensated” by pedaling harder and faster to try to force the Neo up to range were the ones where I came within 2-3 watts by the end. But if you look at my screenshots, you’ll see that the approach I just mentioned led to wild power spikes, which is what I was trying to avoid by getting a Neo in the first place.
Yes. That I understand. If I drop my cadence significantly, there’s a momentary spike and drop in power as the Neo adjusts. This typically happens if I get out of the saddle for a sprint or just a rest of my rear end. What I’m discussing here, though, is a little bit different. In the screenshot above for my steady-state effort you can see those spikes and they are indeed related to getting out of the saddle every so often.