I have used both as well. The Zwift training plans are really pretty basic in comparison.

The structure of the TR plans are excellent. Each session has a specific purpose and they build on each other as the weeks go on.

I agree. I guess thats why I love TR-there is a set workout and you have to complete it, no slacking off, its a constructive dedicated workout.

I don’t understand your argument. What you are seeing is directly correlated to the effort you put in if you dontrun trainer road on ergo mode. It’s exactly the same as doing a workout outdoors, do 2w/kg and you’ll go slow, do 4w/kg and you’ll go fast.

I write my trainer road workout down on a piece of paper and ride it on zwift, no different to a coach giving you a workout and riding it on zwift or outdoors.

I can’t comment on TR specifically, but I can on Zwift/Wahoo Kickr relative to outdoors and computrainer.

In my mind, I’m looking for the feeling I get from a good workout and the fitness that comes from a reasonable, thoughtful training program. The latter tends to be driven by “The Consevation of Motivation”. Simply put, if I can ride more often, at higher intensity (with appropriate recovery) and do so consistently and still be energized to swim and run enough, good stuff happens fitness wise and in the races.

Winter and bad weather make it hard to ride outside. I have no problem going out at 5am for a mid summer century on a beautiful morning. If it’s 15 and sleeting, whole other thing. Computrainer used to fill the gap but Zwift is light years better. I can hit a structured workout (and have built all of my favs from the CT days). I can ride Erg. I can enter any number of races or group rides. I can do the pretzel or Alpe de Zwift if I want to build the strength.

Its safe. Takes me less than 5 minutes from couch to watts. If the missus is getting ready to go out I can hop on for a quick 45 minutes with several jumps or work on high cadence or whatever.

All I know is I’m at 4200 miles or so sitting here in the end of April and as I’m beginning to move more and more outside, I’m finding I can bring August quality to a May ride. Can’t wait to layer on top of this base. What’s not to like?

I’m 60 years old and this is my 40th year of biking and I’m big M motivated....hell yes!

---

Randy Christofferson(http://www.rcmioga.blogspot.com

Insert Doubt. Erase Hope. Crush Dreams.

+1
If i'm doing long sweetspot intervals it can be fun to blast past lots of other riders and it gives you "something to do" while you enjoy the mild suffering.

There's always Sufferfest as well - that is the best way to really go hard into the hurt zone.

No, I think you're missing the point.
That's rather like saying that going outside on your bike is just for casual/leisure rides and is not a structured serious training approach. It's a deceptively selective description that has much more to do with your existing ideas than the reality. It can be used to train just as seriously and productively as any other interface. What matters is the work you do. The adaptations from training are unaffected by what you're looking at or listening to while you train. The relevance of the interface, be it Sufferfest, Zwift, TrainerRoad, or a stop watch and notepad is simply how your keep track, and keep motivated. They all work. Which works best for you is going to come down to taste and how you use it.

As I said in my previous post, Zwift is designed as an interactive environment to give some sense of progress and satisfaction for your effort. If you intend to use prescribed workouts the whole time that undermines it somewhat IMO. If you do group workouts where speed is neutralised that seems to further undermine that aspect of the software it in my view, although it has other benefits. Using ERG mode is also potentially putting up a barrier.

Not everyone trains by following a predetermined, structured, power based workout for every single ride. From your posts to date it seems like you are assuming all serious riders do and all other activities are "just" casual/leisure rides. Would that be accurate?

I don't think that accurately depicts what I was saying. I personally find that TR appeals to me. I get a lot from TR because it focuses in on the performance improvement. I like reading the training plan notes, the workout notes, even during each workout you get coaching tips. Plus there is the Podcast.

I am sure that some like Zwift more. I have done a few group workouts in Zwift and I find them pretty good.

Tried both, Zwift isn't for me. I think probably because I live somewhere I can easily get my group riding/racing kicks outside, so when I'm training indoors I just want to be hitting target numbers and doing structured training. TR is better for that, and if I'm doing my own thing I'd rather watch Netflix than watch virtual riders and landscape. If I couldn't do outdoor group rides and races regularly then I might see more value in Zwift, but then I would probably also be looking for a different sport!

You're right. It's pointless, unless it's useful as a mental tool.

Chasing other riders is most useful for me when I find someone going at an appropriate pace and use them as a short term incentive to raise or maintain a hard effort. If I'm doing an interval session and the interval ends, I instantly lose interest in the other rider. Same thing if they significantly change pace or I overtake them - time to look for another one.
What I would like to see added as an option for workouts is a non-user character on the screen who would follow your workout's prescribed pace so that you can simply chase them rather than have to watch power figures or use ERG.

There are plenty tools that are used differently by different people. I think you're using Zwift in a way that does not actually make sense for what you want it to be. Or perhaps it's just not the right tool to cater for your interests at all. However, it does come across a bit ignorant to me when you say your way is serious and what other people are doing is casual/leisure. I've a friend who does coach prescribed structured workouts week in week out. I use a broad mix of road riding, Zwift group rides, my own pre-programmed power based workouts on Zwift, free-form hill intervals either outside or on Zwift, and occasional Zwift races. My accumulated training load is bigger than his, I seem to enjoy my training much more and my results and as a result I'm train more consistently and get better results. My point is that it's not about the tool. It's how you use it and how that influences the work you do..

This was a reply to dunno's post specifically. I wasn't commenting on what you'd said.

Sorry I must not be understanding how it works properly. If I load a trainer road or any interval based type workout into Zwift for example won’t the resistance be changing independant of what I’m seeing the terrain doing in front of me?

For example-the beginning of an interval of increased resistance could start at the start of a decent, and then based on timing I could experience a decrease in resistance at as I start to go up a hill.

Or have I got this all wrong?

I don’t want to get into semantics but isn’t going out for ‘leisurely/casual’ ride by its definition is not a serious training approach. 80kms of balls to the wall intervals for example is going to do a lot for me than a nice leisurely 80km ride at a quarter of the effort with my wife IMHO.

But I understand the point you are trying to make so don’t take it the wrong way. What ever works to keep people moving is what works.

If you do a preset workout, then you will be defaulted to erg mode, which means that yes the resistance will change independently of the terrain. Your speed will adjust to compensate, so if you are going uphill with a low resistance then your speed will also get slow, as if you are climbing in a really easy gear, but still it doesn’t feel natural if it’s a really steep hill and really easy resistance. The problem is solved by simply selecting a flat course for your workouts, then you don’t get the huge disconnects.
That being said, you do know that erg mode is not the only mode on zwift, right? If you turn off erg mode then the resistance will change with the terrain. Then it’s harder to do structured workouts, but no more so than riding outside. You can skip the preset workouts and instead plan your workouts the way you would riding outside, using a group to motivate you, or using the terrain (eg. choosing a climbing route if you want to work on strength, or a short loop with a flat sprint if you want to do anaerobic intervals). Racing is where zwift really shines, as everyone is saying. For someone like you who is disciplined enough to do structured workouts, you may want to stick with trainer road, but just do a zwift race or something once in a while just to mix it up.

Also, if you're not watching Netflix it's important to ride with music ;)

Same. I do the TR/Zwift combo for rides > 1hr. A bunch of my cycling teammates have spent all winter racing on Zwift and came into the start of the season in peak form, blowing everyone up. The Zwift races are a great true 1hr FTP test and I find myself much more motivated to ride harder when I'm chasing someone vs watching a line on a chart in TR. Will be interesting to see if people hit burnout/fatigue early in the season on account of the earlier peaks but there is definitely a lot to be gained by racing over winter.

The trick is to have your laptop showing Zwift and pulling power from your trainer, but with the trainer resistance control unticked. You then run Trainer Road on your phone and control the trainer with that. Your feel is linked to the interval and independent of the terrain.

Are you intentionally misconstruing this?
No one but you is talking about leusurely rides.

Please re read what you quoted if this is an honest misunderstanding. It seems more like trolling but I don't think you're a troll.

The purpose of the quoted post was literally to point out that not all hard training needs to be structured workouts and thus characterising Zwift as for casual/leisure rides was nonsense.
Then you come back saying a nice easy ride isn't as effective as a hard one.
Playing games, or comprehension problem?

So if you are not doing intervals, then the only other option is to ride casually? Almost anything you can do outside you can do on zwift. If I want to do hill repeats, I can do that on zwift. If I want to do a lap around the island easy, then hard, then easy, then hard etc. I can do that. None of these things are casual riding, and all are good workouts. Also, I can assure you there is nothing leisurely about a zwift race.

In Red: That would be awesome like the pacer I can have on my garmin 910. Set a desired pace and try to stay ahead or keep up. Interesting idea.

i'm happy to have folks more knowledgeable than i correct what i'm going to write below.

you can ride as hard as you want on zwift. if you can imagine a workout, any workout, done on a bike, hard or easy, long or short, you can do it on zwift.

what TR has is a much better developed structured training platform than zwift, a much larger library of workouts, but there is no workout you can do in TR that you can't do in zwift.

zwift offers 3 additional elements: racing, group rides - and if you ride our thurs afternoon zwift ride tell me afterward if it was leisurely for you - and graphics (yes, that correspond quite precisely to the work you do, unless you have zwift in workout mode).

but, to me, none of that touches on the primary functionality of zwift. why did you post here? just to write? because, you could've written your post is ms word, without an internet connection. but, you wanted to share what you wrote. hence zwift.

my guess is the reason you do all of your structured training is not to get better at structured training, but to engage in the shared experience of racing. the largest point of zwift - to me - is that whatever it is you want to do, whether a structured workout, a race, a ride, hard or easy, is that it's a shared experience, and when it's shared there is the quality of the unexpected.

here's (according to me, in my experience) a truism: it doesn't matter that much what workout you do. what matter is that you do it. a lot of people (i'm one of them) are motivated, in part, by the group nature of a training session. to me, this discussion is a lot like the kindle discussion. the issue isn't do you like reading on a kindle more or less than reading a physical book. the issue is: are you reading more? it's not how you read the words. it's the words. with a lot of zwifters, and for a lot of TR's users, it's: are you riding more? what platform causes you to ride more?

i'm not saying that this makes zwift better than TR. it's what makes it different than TR. i'm not saying you ought to value that difference. but since you asked, that's the answer.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'm making an assumption here and guessing there are plenty of people who don't follow a predetermined, structured, power based workout every single ride. I know plenty of people who train mostly by jumping on group rides with fast people. That's what motivates them and gets them on the bike. Others love their indoor structured workouts or zwift workouts or whatever. TR has the huge library of structured workouts. Zwift is getting more. But Zwift, as slowman stated, has races, group workouts, group rides. So it's covering many different ways for people to workout.

Yep.
You can do workouts if you want. Perhaps the library is smaller but it's still got plenty there and you can add anything you want when you want. I do plenty workouts on Zwift and as often as not they're workouts I've programmed myself.

Another session I often do is hill repeats of the small climb in Watopia. I go up it near to the max power I can sustain for the length of the climb, which is the upper end of my VO2max range. I aim for a time on the hill rather than watching the power numbers. It amounts to the same thing but I find it more enjoyable. Then I spin back down easy and roll on a little before turning around to hit the base of the hill at approx 4mins which would be my typical recovery for another hard ascent. 8 of those plus warm up and cool down makes for just over an hour of riding with some good VO2max efforts.
Likewise I've often used the Epic KOM Climb from either side for long threshold intervals. Climb the hill at threshold, spin back down as recovery, and then back up again. It's fairly equivalent to a 2x20min threshold interval session, except it's based off terrain rather than the clock- oh and I take longer than 20mins to get up that hill so it's a harder session than 2x20.

And of course there's the group rides and races.
I also do typical preprogrammed

I tried zwift again recently for a few months after using it during it's beta period. I was impressed with the number of group workouts and group rides/races. I may or may not come back to zwift. I'm still undecided on what I'll do for indoor workouts. I often just do a couple of 1 hour long internal workouts each week on the trainer then do my other workouts on the weekends outside. Right now, I'm using perfpro but Zwift group workouts and group rides are enticing. My training is very casual this year with very little structure other than getting in a couple of hard internal bike workouts during the weekend and then some longer rides on the weekend. I like your idea of doing the hill repeats within zwift. That's a good idea.

Yeah, give it a try. It's a nice change psychologically but the physical stimulus is pretty much the same.
But no matter what way you cut it, I still prefer to get climbing outside if the weather is anyway bearable!

outside is always better and mentally much more enjoyable than being in a room staring at a computer screen. But during the week it makes much more sense as it's such an efficient use of my time. I can just hop on the training and being done in an hour. no driving anywhere to bike.