Hi Slowtwitchers… I need some help I am trying to figure out what some of they Cycling Dynamics that I get from my Rotor powermeter mean in laymans English. First my disclaimer…I am slow…don’t judge me!! 
Here are the numbers from some intervals I did today.
Torque Effectiveness 79 Pedal Smoothness Left 25% Pedal Smoothness Right 49%.
So basically I am trying to figure what this means (right leg vs left leg) and what pedal smoothness means. Thanks!!
Torque effectiveness is just a measure of how much of your pedal stroke is turning the rotor in the correct direction (let’s say this is clockwise for simplicity); this is because as one leg pushes the rotor clockwise, the other leg will usually be pushing down on the other side, opposing the clockwise motion - this force is counter-productive and so we would usually want this to be zero (you’re lifting the resting leg up just right so no force is on the resting pedal) or positive (you’re pulling up with your resting leg).
The idea of pedal smoothness is to measure how “creaky” your pedal motion is, if you only push down hard at one part of the pedal stroke and none at the others then you would have low smoothness but if you push down equally hard throughout the motion, then you would have high smoothness. What this means for you is that your left leg isn’t pushing down as equally compared to your right leg. It’s hard to say which is doing it “better” but you likely have some sort of flexibility difference between the two sides of your body and I would focus on fixing those.
Thanks for that, could it also be that my left leg is just a lot weaker than my right hence I cannot push down as much as my left?
If I understand it correctly, the smoothness doesn’t depend on how hard you can push down, so it doesn’t tell you which leg is stronger - a simple left/right power split would tell you that. It may be possible that a difference in leg strength could lead to different smoothness levels, but only you could determine that based on how it feels while you ride.
Pioneer has had these metrcis for the past couple of years. Have a look at their glossary section for definitions in the below link
Until there’s some evidence that these metrics are a) actionable and b) that taking said actions improves performance I wouldn’t treat them with much significance. Personally I’m not holding my breath for this to happen…
Until there’s some evidence that these metrics are a) actionable and b) that taking said actions improves performance I wouldn’t treat them with much significance. Personally I’m not holding my breath for this to happen…
Agreed. These metrics seem “significant” and interesting but so far any controlled attempts to improve efficiency through altering pedal technique have been inconclusive.
It may be interesting to see if your legs balance out over time just by cycling a lot.