Wattbike and SMART work out (Highway Star)

Support
1

I am just starting to use some of the workouts and I hit a problem today which Wattbike users may be able to help me with. It may be a Xert EBC issue as well.

I did the warmup (10 mins) and then couldn’t get the power up to 480w in the 15 seconds - made about 330w. No problem quite normal with every app.

The next sections were 4 * 2 :00 mins at 330 - 380w which should drop my MPA down to about 450. I could not get the resistance up to anywhere near that power - The Wattbike felt hard but definitely not pushing the watts out. I was in AUTO mode (100%) as advised in the workout notes. Even for the 6:00 minutes afterwards it was hard to get to about 270w or more and my MPA never dropped anywhere near target.

I then tried slope mode - which was defaulting to 1%. No difference, couldn’t generate the watts on the bike but it wasnt my legs that were not working. Raised it to 5.5%

ERG mode had a target of 10W - I didnt know what that represented. I cannot say I have ever noticed it before. Increasing it upwards didn’t seem to make much difference.

Resistance mode was low as well. Changing that didn’t really help.

I stopped the workout after 50 minutes as it was very frustrating.

My Wattbike has been working fine and I then did a 3 min test using the Wattbike app and the power number was pretty much where I expected it to be (334w). Yesterday using another app I was definitely getting the watts I expected.

I did a Xert Breakthrough workout last week in Auto mode but increased to 102% and that worked fine.

I was rather confused with the default resistance - especially in ERG mode. Not sure what 10w meant.

Any thoughts please

2

EBC on iOS or Android?

AUTO mode should control the trainer to match the targets required. However, Highway Star is a MIXEDMODE workout. Any slope percent you see is what is defined for that interval and assumes you will use gears/cadence to achieve the target. You could switch from AUTO to Slope mode and manually control the %.
Slope mode (manual) doesn’t have a default so you can adjust to whatever % works best with your trainer at the range of gear/cadence required to attain the workout targets.
ERG mode also has no default and is manually controlled to whatever watt target you define.
Resistance mode is similar to slope mode and should be manually set to a resistance that works best with your trainer at the range of gears/cadence required to attain targets.
I believe the defaults for Slope (manual), ERG and Resistance are simply what were used last time or what the trainer firmware defaults to.

Check to see if the Wattbike app has the ability to adjust transition response.
If you have the option to control the trainer by ANT+ or BT try changing protocols to see if that makes any difference.
Do SMART workouts without MIXEDMODE intervals work fine with EBC?
Perhaps another Wattbike user will have more insights. :wink:

Reference –
What Trainer Modes Are Available in Xert’s Workout Players? – Xert (baronbiosys.com)

1 Like
3

EBC on IoS

4

For those hard efforts, what was your cadence?

Are you able to change gears on the Wattbike?