Kickr - Garmin 520 resistance

Equipment
1

Hi, not sure if this is the right forum or not.

I’m trying to simulate courses captured on my Garmin 520 edge via the Kickr v6 and the resistance is not right. E.g. I was on a 5% gradient in granny gear and was needing 275 watts to spin the pedals - the real world effort is a lot less. I have the latest firmware, I’ve repaired the kickr to Wahoo app and checked all settings I can find, redone the kickr setup, etc etc. Any clues? Maybe there is a setting on the garmin?
C

1 Like
2

Welcome to the forums @Craig_W. You’re sorta kinda in the wrong place.

Wahoo has been using this as their community forum which began as a Sufferfest forum, transitioned to Wahoo X when Wahoo bought the Sufferfest in 2021 and this forum has kinda been the de facto forum for all things Wahoo ever since.

Right place cuz you’re on a Kickr, but wrong place in that you’re using a Garmin to control it. Nothing at all wrong with that but the issues you’re having would be specific to the Edge and the settings you’re using on it while this community is more of a Wahoo ELEMNT (eg. Bolt, Roam, Ace) head unit< ELEMNT Companion App, SYSTM app, and Wahoo Fitness aka Wahoo App sorta place.

Now, that said, I know there are lots of folks (it wasnt that long ago where I was one) who use Garmin head units so you may luck out in getting some tips from other Garmin users. My 2 cents, while you’re waiting, check out the Garmin user forums or contact Garmin support (I actually got pretty decent support from them when I needed it).

A quick Google search sends me here, maybe that would help:

3

cheers Glen, merry xmas.
C

1 Like
4

Possible things to check:

  1. Don’t have any other connections running at the same time as the EDGE 520. (I’m assuming you did not, but if you did, try again without them running at the same time. OR make sure the EDGE has control first before starting the other app, and make sure the other app is NOT CONTROLLING the KICKR.
  2. You probably did all this also, but make sure the EDGE has your correct FTP settings?
  3. Cadence might be a problem; it seems to me that if you aren’t turning the pedals fast enough (and I don’t know for certain HOW fast that needs to be,) your EDGE can put you in a world of hurt trying to match an otherwise moderate power demand. Be sure you’re aiming for somewhere close to 90rpm, and you probably will be fine even at lower rpm, but too slow seems to make the target power very hard to achieve until you can turn the pedals at a good cadence enough to settle things down.
  4. One question: how did you know you were needing 275W to spin the pedals? Is that what you were seeing on the EDGE as what you were actually producing? That’s a LOT of Watts to produce in a granny gear… Something sounds contrary about that. That would make me check the WAHOO app as to what that granny gear actually is configured to be.

All of these are just best guesses that may lead nowhere. I’ve used an EDGE 830 with my KICKR Bike, and now use an 840 with it. I do see some strange things from time to time, INCLUDING some sudden spikes of gradient that probably do not exist on the real world outdoor course but somehow snuck into the the GPS record, so they will throw you into a pickle when you try to do them inside.

2 Likes
5

I got the 275W from Strava summary of the ride. Yes its a lot, but I guess it reflects the massive resistance I was having to push against. Something aint right.
C

6

Ok, so… The Strava ride data… I guess you mean that you looked at the graphical analysis and it showed that at that specific point in the ride, you were putting out 275W?
It’s been my experience that when you are having to push extremely hard on the pedals, you can still only generate small Watts IF the cadence is very slow, like, you’re barely turning the pedals over. The REAL FEEL of what you’re doing is MASSIVE, but if those pedals are moving slowly, your output in Watts is TINY. That’s what happens with an ERG Death Spiral that is often encountered with sprints of very short duration. Unless you’re turning over a high cadence when the sprint demand starts, you can find yourself almost immediately unable to turn over the pedals, but you FEEL that you’re putting out INCREDIBLY HIGH EFFORT/FORCE.
I could conceive of this happening riding a GPS Course on your EDGE 520 if the EDGE GPS data include a very short duration but very high Watts target. And in that scenario, if the EDGE is in CONTROL of the KICKR, at least on my KICKR BIKE, it won’t matter much if you’re in a low gear or not, the EDGE is going to demand that amount of Watts and I THINK (I’m not positive of this) that not having your cadence already ramped up pretty fast could result in the KICKR applying so much counter-force that you just couldn’t overcome it.
One thing you might try to test this is to do some different courses, ideally fairly short ones that you can easily relate to from personal outdoor experience. (You can select segments in Strava and save them as your own private course, naming them as makes sense to you, and then sync them from Garmin Connect to your EDGE.) Then ride these on the KICKR and play with the results a bit. Pay special attention to your cadence as well as the power and gradients so you can see what’s going on. If necessary, create a new data screen that shows these all on one screen to make that easier to track and hopefully learn what’s going on.
Hope this helps you figure it out!

1 Like