Today i upgraded from 1st gen direto to an wahoo kickr v5.
To test the unit i wanted to do standing starts.
But i seems that when rpm are sub 60, the resistance drops( to prevent spiral of death i guess). So I can speed up from 20 to 60rpm without much strength, after 60rpm then the resistance kicks in( but that is kind of to late for this training)
With my old direto I would put it in level mode, and would feel good resistance from the first rooms.
Is there a way to change this behavour?
Are you in Level mode when doing this? If not, you ought to be, and if so, perhaps try one of the higher levels where the resistance kicks in sooner. Also, if you’re not, you should probably be in your big gear and closer to the small end of the cassette than the big end.
Glen, thanks for the reply.
I am in level mode, and in a big gear(kind of) 50-14…
problem is that sub 50 rpm i have little resistance, no matter what level i am in.
mind you, if i start pushing, i cant get past 70 rpm… so the unit is more than strong enough, but in low rpm’s there is some softwarething that decreases the resistance(probably to prevent spiral of death)
Weird. I have not found that. My Kickr is the '18 model and I have to do a spindown calibration thingy every couple of weeks. With the v5 there is no calibration needed so I dunno what’s going on. It’s been a SUFfing long time since I’ve done standing starts though (last time I did it I strained my low back )
If get the courage to do Standing Starts again, I’ll seek out this thread and let you know. I am afeared to do it at present given my lack of core strength (think doughy minion )
i seriously think my grandmother of 85 years of age can spin up from 20 to 50 rpm when in level 9 and 50-15 gearing…
she does have massive legs… although not all muscle hahaha
Here are the power curves for level mode for the KICKR. At low speeds, power is pretty low and builds as you speed up. Every trainer has its own curves. The KICKR one is supposed to more or less mimic the effect of slope and wind resistance.
If power seems way too low, check the wheel size setting on the KICKR. You find that in the configuration section of the wahoo app that you used to set it up. When the KICKR calculates speed, it takes flywheel speed (which comes from cadence x gearing ratio) times the circumference of the wheel you selected in the configuration. If you set it with a small wheel size, speed would be lower than you intend at any given cadence which would result in lower power. I’d check that out to make sure that’s not the problem before escalating the issue.
Dont forget to update Firmware, even with your new Kickr V5 & HRM
It helped me out with drops in cadence & strange power data, even weird heart registration.
i did the firmware update, which does have an effect.
also changed the size of the weel to 29"(to shift to the right on the powercurve graph)
its much better now.
but still, i have a full rotation before i feel a big resistance increase.
so when is start at 20rpm ive speed up to 50 rpm before i produce significant power
so for now, its much better then before… but still not perfect(even not as good as the old 1st gen direto - but kickr is way better in all other aspects)
but the minions are on it…(they are investigating the workoutfiles)
i’ll keep you informed
the kickr measures the cadance, but if you dont apply pressure on the pedals it isnt correct.(it measures a lower cadance than what it is in real life).
solution was installation of a cadance sensor attached to the crank.
do love the kickr now. And wow what a service from wahoo… just awesom! thanks!
Yeah. It obviously doesn’t know how fast your pedals are turning directly. So instead it measures power variation and makes an assumption that the two high points represent the downstroke on the left and right pedals respectively (and the low points the times when the pedals are roughly at 6 and 12 o’clock. If your stroke is reasonably smooth (and you’re applying pressure as opposed to being spun out), that works pretty well. But if not (like when there’s an abrupt power reduction in ERG mode and you’re waiting for the flywheel to slowdown while you pedal with no force), it can’t measure cadence properly at all.
hey nick, the original issue was with a particular workout in SYSTM called Standing Starts. And the Kickr in question was the v5. In that workout your instruction is to come to a near stop then to give it the beans to get your cadence up to as high as you can but all the while being in a Big Gear.
When doing that workout in SYSTM, you shouldn’t be using the Wahoo App and therefore shouldn’t be in “resistance” mode. In the SYSTM settings, for this particular workout, you should be in Level mode.
As for a cadence sensor, you are correct that you can’t pair to the the kickr. What a cadence sensor allows you to do is to get an accurate reading of your RPMs at the very low and very high ends where the algorithm used to display cadence from the Kickr itself is really only accurate once you’e got yourself going already, and maintain a fairly steady cadence.
Does this help? If not, can you maybe explain what exactly the issue is that you are having? I.e. what workout are you doing, what app are you using, what version of Kickr do you have, have you got the latest firmware for the Kickr and whatever app you are using etc etc.
Thanks for the complete answer. I didn’t realize there was a workout called “Standing Starts”, I thought the discussion was about standing starts in general.
I am trying to do low cadence, high force sprint efforts on my Kickr V5. I am controlling it with the Wahoo app in generic record mode, no workout selected. I am using resistance mode, set to e.g. 80%.
I was hoping it would be hard / near impossible to get the pedals moving, but its actually pretty easy, and then around 50 RPM the load kicks in and its hard to keep going. I can see how this might be good for the general user, but for this specific type of workout it totally defeats the purpose.
It has been a few years, but I seem to remember I could do this type of workout as intended on my Kickr V1. I feel like this “soft start” could be related to some improvements made to erg mode?
I don’t care about reading cadence from the Kickr because I get that from my crank PM anyway.
I realize this is a hardware question, and I’m not using the SYSTM app, so maybe I need to move to a different forum or open a ticket.
wahoo doesnt have any other forum but a support ticket is always a good idea while folks like me in the community try to help you out.
Your extra info is helpful though, and I think the solution may be to try the efforts in “passive” or “sim” mode, if you haven’t already. You would then be “tricking” the wahoo app in to thinking that some other app is controlling the efforts. I think, if you do it that way, it may end up defaulting to its preset level mode allowing you to complete a low cadence grind up to high cadence (eg. standing starts). Worth a try anyway. You’ve got me curious. My own Kickr is a v4 so it doesn’t have the same firmware and I can’t test out my theory.
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