I realised after writing this I can actually find out – when I’ve finished my current plan, I’m going to do ramp tests on both platforms afterwards I’m going to do a full FTP test using the highest result (a one-hour interval at max power). Or, one is completely accurate regardless of your FTP, and the other isn’t. Or, Zwift produces more accurate results if you’re in the lower range of FTP, but if when you start getting closer to the big boy numbers like 300, 350, 400 watts etc., it becomes less accurate. So which one is accurate?Įither TrainerRoad’s test will produce more accurate results if your FTP is closer to 333.33 watts (or above, maybe, unsure), but produces less accurate results if you’re at the bottom end (hello), where the aforementioned effect is magnified. While looking around online I found a video of someone reviewing both tests with an FTP of ~340 watts, he achieved results within 3% of each other across both TR and Zwift, which is actually to be expected at this level as with his configuration these tests would perform pretty much the same.
I had a look at how these tests compare at different levels of FTP, the time differences (as above 333.33 watts your tests would be shorter on TR than Zwift, not longer) and kilojoules you’d be exerting to finish your test. Where the TrainerRoad test has step changes equal to a % of your FTP, the difference between the two tests is reduced the closer you get to an FTP of 333.33334, and then increased every watt thereafter. The energy expenditure here isn’t too important, and averages aren’t the best way to compare these two efforts (where you’re spending different amounts of time at different %s of your FTP, as well as your heart rate being in higher zones for longer – this is where the real difference is, why you would fail sooner and achieve a lower FTP), but it’s a good way of basically expressing how different they really are. On TrainerRoad, to achieve an FTP of 195 is to average 189 watts but over ~ 14 minutes, requiring 158.7 kilojoules of energy. On Zwift, achieving an FTP of 195 is to average ~190 watts over ~6 minutes (ish, and this doesn’t include warm-up and warm-down time, just the intervals), requiring you to exsert around 68.4 kilojoules of energy. one on Zwift.ġ watt is 1 joule of energy applied for 1 second, so to get our kilojoules for the efforts, we can use watts x seconds / 1000. The result being is that cyclists with lower FTPs (think bottom 10% – like me) will have to cycle for longer to achieve the same FTP in a TrainerRoad ramp test vs.
Both tests use 75% of the maximum one-minute power interval that you complete to determine your FTP.
TrainerRoad uses intervals that start at 90 watts and increase by 6% of the users current FTP.Zwift uses intervals that start at 100 watts and increase by 20 watts each minute.With this, both of the tests are practically different, even if similar in principle a ramp test subjects a cyclist to increasingly difficult one-minute intervals until they fail. TrainerRoad and Zwift both use different models for calculating their results, which could lead to quite varying differences in resulting FTPs depending on your configuration and fitness. I wasn’t overtraining and I didn’t feel fatigued going into the test today, I was at least expecting similar results. I wondered for a bit how I could have net lost fitness I had a week off before picking up TR, but I’d only trained for the following week, ate cleaner and slept well. I had recently done a ramp test on Zwift that put me at an FTP of 195 watts (for context, I peaked last year around at ~235 watts but I wasn’t training at all, just riding outdoors, up hills in the woods a lot – in terms of competitive male cyclists my age, an FTP of 200 watts would put you in the bottom 10%).Īfter finishing the ramp test today, fourteen days after my last test, I was pleasantly greeted with an FTP decrease of around 20 watts. I decided to start structured training so I recently picked up TrainerRoad to try over a season, I heard and read really good things and it’s been going well so far I did six fairly chill 1.5hr endurance workouts before getting into a base plan this week, the first day of the plan was a ramp test to ensure I accurately set the power of the workouts over the course of the training plan I’m doing.
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