HR Mode working like ERG (COMPLETED) - Perfect for Zone 2 HR training. Pedal and forget

Feature Requests Completed
#10

Yes, I agree on slope mode. Actually I have good news. :slight_smile:

We are going to start working on a very simple HR solution versy soon (I estimate a couple weeks). It won’t be intervals HR based automated adjustments but just a very simple single HR target. When you click on quick start you will have another option for HR, and you just use + - to set your target HR. You can either use our auto extend featue so you don’t worry about the length or change +30s to +5m and press it a few times to get your desired length. This just the first iteration of this focusing on the hard part which is to get the power to automatically adjust to target heart rate.

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You could press + - to do your own intervals but it seems for people with a smart trainer a single target HR focus is enough (for most), even if just for a warmup then can then merge with another workout. Let’s get feedback on this solution and then we can enhance it.

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#11

Hey @Alex ! Any news about ERG by HR? :v:t3:

#12

My developer is finally just starting it now. It’s probably still a few weeks away.

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#13

Hey @Alex : do I understand this correctly (because I believe this is what I’m looking for and with me several cycling friends. What this is about is instead of training blocks based on watts, training blocks based on HR ?

Soooo : I know my zone2 upper HR is 128. With this feature I could say : keep my HR between 120 en 128, adapt the power of the smart trainer as needed ?

If that works, it would make training session a lot easier :slight_smile:

#14

It will work almost like that, but for now it will be very simple. We will keep enhancing it but let me try to explain. It will only work for quick start with no workout selected and you just press + - to get your target HR, say in this case below 129. So if you go over about 5% or below 5% it will adjust your power to push you back towards the center HR target. Does that work for you?

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#15

That would most suddenly work for me to give it a go.
Just a mathematical reaction : the 5% might be a bit of a big gap. If you’re in my age group, it would work to do zone2 training. But if you’re younger and you zone 2 HR is still around 150, the 5% becomes a quite large gap. No idea about the development effort, but putting it at 5 BPM + or - would probably me more realistic for a training session.
And a question : in what time interval would you measure these boundaries? I did some reading on this yesterday and the time interval seems to be the “feature killer”. Trying to explain : imagine you put 129. Do you adjust the power down the second you go above 135 ? And then if it drops again, when do your adjust it down? The most logic scenario I found described is to work with a time interval you can use as an input parameter and use the average HR over that interval (to compensate for the HR lagging and variability due to stuff like cycling body position,…). So, imagine you put it at 30s : you calculate the average HR of the last 30s, if it’s above or below the treshold, you adjust the power. Wait another 30s, same calculation. and the 30s is a variable since depending on your training status or the type of training you want to do, you want to change this number up or down.
Let me know if this is clear. Just a quick write down, happy to document it properly if you want! (I’m in IT, can do it properly if wanted :slight_smile: )

#16

Wow great!!! I would love to have help designing this, especially with someone that is passionate about the end solution.

5% was actually just a simplified example, I had not fully designed it, and you are right 5 bpm sounds better.

If I am understanding you correctly then it was pretty close to my thinking, meaning take last 30s average. I am not 100% understanding what you mean though and would love to further understand. You gave me a thought here is that people that have very fast heart rate recovery should have a shorter interval than people that have slow heart rate recovery at least when you are trying to lower the power to get in range. Probably using some real examples of numbers of HR amounts and power adjustments might help. After I get back from vacation next week I would even be more than happy to discuss this on a call.

Additionally, it would seem like it would be optimum if we looked at trend lines in some way. Meaning is it trending up in the last 30 seconds and maybe make a larger compensation down in power then if it is flat for the last 30 seconds. Also when a person makes a change with + - the initial power target should probably be set based on the power to HR conversion ratios we have in our settings. See below.

So this is HR based is obviously best use for zone 2 and secondly zone 3 and 4. And really we recommend people doing middle of the zone rather than the top if they want to stay in HR zone.

I also know how hard power match is to get right (I believe we have it reasonable for longer intervals) and I feel HR match is like power match on steroids :slight_smile: One of the reasons I did not want to introduce interval HR training yet, is I think people will complain it is wrong trying to do VO2max intervals or something :slight_smile:

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#17

Happy to jump on a call after your holiday. I will take some time over the weekend to properly write down my thinking.

This is indeed for Zone2 first, maybe zone3 and 4. Make no sense for anaerobe interval training.
Looking at trending instead of average would indeed be an even better solution, but might be a lot more complex.

I’ll take some time to properly write it down. Enjoy your vacation!

#18

Sweet!!! I think trend in terms of looking at first 15s average vs second 15s average and if it is > X% then do a 2X w adjustment… something like this. Simple trends :slight_smile: My fear is if someone is ramping up quickly then it takes us 2 minutes to get them back on target, especially after a ± change. I will ping you when I am back and caught up. I am always a bit behind so my developer is starting this very soon, so I will tell him to read this thread again to at least get started. One of the keys is obviously “guessing” the right amount of power to increase or reduce.

  1. After + - set to HR conversion difference
  2. If 30s average is too high reduce watts by X
  3. If 30s average is too low increase watts by X
  4. If trend is going up/down by > 5% reduce or increase by 2X

But yes it would be great if you present your ideas, and I don’t know what this X value should be. Probably X should be a X%. Also also depends on how much too high. We should probably set a limit meaning for the first 5 minutes it could be very low and we don’t want to crank the power target up to 600w to fix that :slight_smile: So maybe we never set it more than than Y% > zone conversions other than adding X% each 30 seconds.

I am obviously just brain storming here.

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#19

I was actually just searching the forum to see if this functionality was available so you can imagine my delight to see it’s in the pipeline and being worked on!!

@Alex I do like your concept of rate of delta.

Just throwing out a suggestion for a more rudimentary and simple® solution may be to just track within a target HR range…
Solution example: User sets their target HR range (say 135bpm-145bpm) and your initial % of FTP (say 75%).
You start the workout. “Active HR tracking” only activates after HR breaches the lower limit for 30 seconds.
Once “active HR tracking” is activated, if HR breaches upper limit (145bpm), %FTP reduces by x% for every minute you are outside the upper limit of your set range (ie. if x is set to 5 then after 1 minute above 145bpm FTP will reduce to 70%, after 2 minutes above 145bpm FTP% will reduce to 65% etc…).
Same thing if HR breaches the lower limit (135bpm) %FTP increases by y% (ie. if y is set to 2 then after 1 minute below 135bpm FTP will increase to 77%, after 2 minutes FTP increases to 79% etc…).

EDIT to add: You could play with x and y to dial in HR recovery. A further enhancement could be to add a factor for x and y for every additional minute outside the desired range.

Don’t know if all that is useful or even makes sense :woman_shrugging:

#20

Sorry I did not respond. We are just finishing this HR mode now. It’s going into beta today. I think it will need some improvement but it solves the core problem now.

It only works in quick start not with intervals at this time. You just set your target HR%. If you start a new quick start workout, it starts at 40% of FTP as initial power and slowly rises until you hit your target. In this version below my target is 60% of Threshold HR, which obviously is different then 60% of max HR. As as said this is kind of V1 as a starting point and we can build from there.

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#21

So read and comprehended your suggestion now :slight_smile: Previously read it a few times but was not in the mental space to fully pay attention. So yes, I think our solution is similar but even more simple from our app/code perspective. We just take a mid-point say 80% of threshold and if it is ±2% we don’t do anything. If it is too high we go down by up to 5% every 30 seconds, if it is too low we go up by up to 5% every 1 minute. So it will adjust very slowly but for the purpose of this, I think it will work for most people. We just start at 40% of FTP. Now for some people 40% might be too low. An interesting “feature” is if you start in ERG mode for 20 seconds and set your baseline power it will take that as the starting point rather than 40%. This might not be obvious to people it works this way unless they read this forum post but basically switching on HR mode just continues from where you started.

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#22

Ok HR mode is here in it’s most basic form for now. It does not work with interval training yet. And it only works in quick start mode. It starts at 40% of FTP and builds until it gets to your target making adjustments every 60 seconds. Remember 70% is not 70% of max HR but 70% of threshold HR. We can make changes to this, just wanted to get V1 out there.

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#23

Tried this saturday, very promising, I like, but I seem to be having a issue with my threshold hr, in the web app it’s set to 172 (keep changing it between 171 and 172 to see if that helps), in the mobile app (iOS) go to settings and it’s 110, I edit it to 172/1 and go back, it’s 110 again

I think this is messing up how this feature works as I have to manually adjust the target, as the starting HR is less than my “sitting on a bike HR”

#24

Strange, ok, we will test this.

#25

Yep, my guys verified this. We will get it fixed ASAP.

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#26

used this again last night, knowing that the HR target was out, I set it manually from the start, I also had to adjust my %changes as they were a little to big a jumps

All i can say is this is a freckin brilliant app, worked brilliantly, even when I stopped for a pee it recovered nicely without jumping the intensity through the roof, love it

It does seem to crash Zwift though, wanted to ride Zwift for the LeCol 8848 challenge, and it’s the second time that when I’ve stopped, Zwift has crashed (hard freeze), not your problem, just thought I’d mention it

#27

A post was split to a new topic: Please allow creating structured HR workouts

#28

While the European days are getting shorter, I finally found the time to try the HR training. It’s A.M.A.Z.I.N.G !!! This will make my winter work.

The “fun” fact of my workout : in the middle of the session, I’m getting a phone call from my son. I picked up the phone, had to switch of the ventilator because of the noise. I kept on going. I started sweating like a pig. So : my HR was going up. In an ERG based Zone2 workout, I would have had to stop. Out of curiosity, I kept on going. When the phone call was done, I put the ventilator back on. My temperature went down, my HR went down and the power went back up. I perfectly stayed in Zone2…

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#29

Super cool. Nice story.