No. He’s just a former pro with years of training under his belt. Just like Chad has zero data/science to suggest that Sweet Spot training is more optimal than a classic polarized approach, we still buy into what he’s selling because we trust his experience, even if he hasn’t conducted a scientific study to validate his approach. Not everything needs a lab test to prove its efficacy.
For me, I use ERG because without it, I would push up my power way too much during early intervals and sabotage the 2nd half of my workout.
The funny thing is that while I have absolutely no discipline in this respect when training, come raceday I consistently feel like one the better paced out there and execute very well.
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I might have responded last year when the thread came around, but I’ll post my thoughts again lol
I use ERG mode, I love ERG mode. When I got my hammer, I thought I’d be zwifting like crazy, but using ERG mode with workouts was a revelation. I have an 8 speed road bike and I can’t even begin to describe the frustration of trying to nail down a comfortable gearing to allow me to do the right power at a comfortable cadence. ERG mode eliminated so many troubles.
Nailing workouts in ERG does work as far as physiology goes. If you’re successful, you will improve. That said, though, I will be the first to admit that concentrating on power on the road is a challenge, and I don’t think it’s the fault of ERG mode, I’ve personally never been able to successfully do long interval training on rolling roads. So I’m not sure if the issue is ERG mode or just making yourself practice pacing on the road.
I’ll stick with the ERG mode!
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This brings up a few questions without even getting into whether you’re right or wrong.
- Does it matter?
In a race, you have the aid of a power meter for pacing and in many instances the requirement to stick on someone’s wheel. Being in a race, you’re also in a heightened state of alertness and motivation. So what does training in resistance mode really bring to the table? How much will it matter when you’re in an actual race?
- Where do you draw the line?
Indoor training is not the same as riding a bike outdoors. Along the same line of logic, you could say it’s a detriment to your bike handling skills and your position.
- Lower Hanging Fruit
Push comes to shove, what’s more important, having better pacing skill or increasing fitness? Great if you can have both, but I think for many, it’s one or the other until you reach peak fitness.
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not taking sides here, but all of his athletes under Cinch Cycling are doing very, very well in CO racing.
Erg is T ball and managing your watts your self is a HOMERUN.
This sounds like it should make mortals into gods and should be pretty attainable in a lab due to such a large increase. Why not do a study?
Not much. If your structured training is power based, hitting your power targets gets the physiological adaptations the session was meant to.
There is more to training of course than just that.
If anything, ERG can help with mental hurdles and help push through an interval. You can still select and vary your cadence, and to those who say that ERG does not allow for power fluctuations have likely never ridden in ERG mode, or just look at the billiard table smooth graphs generated by a Kickr and think “that’s how it feels”.
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OK. But in a world so often driven from data, stating anecdotes from personal ERG use and/or speculation from those who haven’t even done any ERG work… are not the most convincing info on offer.
I agree we don’t necessarily need “hard numbers”, but there is nothing even approaching science shared here.
At least when Nate shares wild ideas, he’s honest with the admission “I don’t have any data to back this up, but here goes…”. We have people here making pretty firm statements that Resistance is superior to ERG, and there is not much to even persuade in the argument other than “I think…”, “It seems like…” statements.
All of which are counter to my own personal experience (and that of many other frequent ERG users), so it’s hard to take the criticism of ERG seriously, for me at least. In all honesty there may well be some impact on the differences, but much like the ERG flywheel differences, I suspect we are well into the “marginal gains” part of training.
If it was as detrimental as some seem to claim, we’d see people taking notable back-steps in their results. Again, impossible to know without more structured research and data review. But I don’t get even a hint that ERG is holding people back or even hindering them.
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I love ERG mode because I don’t have to think about changing gears, can just pedal, I do wonder if it would make more sense to use a fixed gear or single speed bike on the trainer though… save wearing out one chainring and one cog on the cassette…
If you’re referring to @chad from TR, he literally has the largest database that exists or ever existed regarding the efficacy of sweet spot training in a cross sectional study of cycling athletes spanning almost a decade.
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Let’s try not to derail into other topics. We have other threads to discuss SS vs the world.
I think I’m clearly pulling a Nate here in stating my admission that I have never trained with ERG, but I’m postulating that riding in resistance mode might offer more real-world benefits than riding in ERG because it’s how we naturally ride.
Agree though, I’m mainly stirring a pot here that is likely boiled down to marginal or minimal gains, either way, if any. It’s interesting discussion/experimentation though.
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I don’t think anyone would disagree with that, but is that what we’re doing when we are on the trainer? Your physiological system doesn’t know if the demand is actual or virtual. During intervals we are training these systems and not necessarily applying “real-world” demands. Those demands can truly only be found outside.
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Then I hope you are adding a rocker plate or motion rollers to your training, since those are more like “how we naturally ride” than a fully rigid trainer inside
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Wouldn’t want you to miss out on those “real-world” gains
I’m sorry to say, but the entire Sweet Spot model is built on anecdotes. There are no lab studies that compare it to traditional base training. I’m not aware of any “facts” that support this training methodology. In FACT, the godfather of Sweet Spot, Frank Overton has said on numerous occasions that he would love to see a grad student thesis done on this very topic because it hasn’t been done before.
If anecdotal experience is a starting point then why do so many of us pay money for training subscriptions that prescribe a Sweet Spot approach, yet no one has science-based evidence to support it? Because anecdotal evidence is worth a TON.
To reiterate, this is what I said:
Observation/hypothesis: ERG mode is a detriment to your cycling; especially outdoor cycling.
Reason: we don’t have ERG mode when we ride our bike outside, it’s not natural to be held at a specific wattage regardless of cadence. It doesn’t train you to be able to fluctuate power (up or down) in a natural way.
I am curious to know if I would be fitter by riding ERG mode. I don’t have a smart trainer at the moment so I cannot experiment, but I would eventually like to try it.
It does take a good week of riding outdoors to get the “road feel” back. Rockers would be fun though…might have to make that upgrade.
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Again, leave the SS vs whatever training to other threads.
Yes, you’re enforcing my point that user-reported “data”, whilst not lab-tested/proven is very useful! We agree on that. Appreciate the back and forth. Happy training to you as well.
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I was likening it to the fact that none of us have lab-data to support ERG vs Resistance just like none of use have it to support SS vs Polarized. We just have our own experiences. Just drawing a comparison…not re-hashing another popular argument!
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