I'm a pretty serious road cyclist, so I get LOTS of questions about training, and about Peloton in particular, which is weird because serious outdoor riders are not really Peloton's market AT ALL. It's always been for spin people, and spin classes are their own thing entirely.
Certainly SOME of my riding pals do spin during the week, but most of them are doing structured workouts using TrainerRoad or TrainingPeaks or Zwift and a smart trainer attached to a real bike. (Mostly, it's their old bike, because cyclists nearly always have more than one bike.)
Indoor training for cyclists has, for the last 15 or so years, generally been focused on power targets. You do some fitness tests to determine your maximum hourly wattage, and then your workouts are expressed as a series of X minutes at Y% of your max power, etc.
This is tedious if you're using an old-style, fixed-resistance trainer, because you're watching the clock during the intervals and then shifting on the bike to achieve higher or lower levels of resistance in order to hit the right power target at a reasonable cadence. Honestly, this SUCKS.
Smart trainers take that out of it by dynamically adjusting the resistance for each segment during the workout, so all you really have to do is keep pedaling at the desired cadence (typically 90-95 rpm); sometimes it's harder, and sometimes it's easier. You don't have to manage anything. It's awesome. (I watch bad movies on the trainer now.)
The Peloton, as I understand, doesn't dynamically adjust its resistance. I'm baffled by this, given how home training is for go-fast cyclists, but maybe that's just not a thing spin people want.
The Peloton also has power zone training similar to what you mentioned. With the instructors nattering on in the background, occasionally rotating the dial isn't so bad.
I believe the newer version of the bike does have automatic resistance control, though.
Does the Peloton have ERG modus? Not only don't I have to mess with gearing/resistance as software can adjust my trainer, but my trainer will also make me keep my power target regardless of cadence. If I spin faster, it will make the resistance lighter such that my wattage stays the same.
There's no built-in mode for constant power. (Nor could there be, on the original Bike that I have, as the resistance control is manual.)
The new one might have it.
At a hardware level I'm not sure how well it would work. Out of the box, the tablet only queries the bike for cadence/power/resistance every 100ms, one query at a time in round robin, so your power reading is only coming every 300ms. However, the bike responds to queries much faster - on the order of 200-300us (https://ihaque.org/posts/2020/12/26/pelomon-part-ii-emulatin...), so an external device could certainly ask for updates faster. I'm not sure how rapidly the micro on the bike itself actually updates its own measurements and what ultimate time resolution is possible.
"Erg mode" is pretty core to expectations for smart trainers now. It can also lead to a sort of "workout failure death spiral" -- you start to fail at your interval, and your pedal stroke slows down, so the resistance increases to meet your power target, and you slow down some more...
This can end up chasing you up the cassette if you don't get back on top of it, or you don't adjust the workout bias (ie, reduce the overall power targets to something you can hit).
but you really want this, at least for structured training. It may NOT be important if your goal is "spin at home."
(Someone downtopic seems to think drawing a distinction between "people who mostly ride outside fast in pacelines" and "people who mostly just like spin classes" is somehow snobbery, but I don't see it that way at all.)
It’s also apparently a closed protocol, so Zwift and third party apps can’t use it. Maybe peloton will open that up at some point, it would bring it a new market. I have a bike on a wahoo kickr core and it’s great, and I don’t have space for a dedicated bike. If I did, I’d totally go for one of the newer all-in-one bikes (easier, less hassle) and peloton is interesting if it can do the same things as that hardware.
I'm a road cyclist as well, used Zwift + Wahoo trainer for a few years. My wife really wanted a Peloton so we got one. I've ended up selling my Wahoo and do power zone training on the Peloton. The pedal stroke is smoother, far less vibration and noise. I don't have to worry about keeping sweat off a bike or having a bike on/off the trainer. It's so easy and convenient to get a 45 or 60 minute session in that my FTP is higher than it's ever been.
I came in skeptical but it's been working well for me.
There is a ton of crossover. Unsurprisingly, I see quite a few serious Peloton riders who "graduate" to direct-drive trainers and zwift or whatever, but I see just as many who try it and come back, or who migrate from that world TO the peloton.
In particular, I hear a lot of complaints about Zwift getting really boring. I'm not a gamer, but as a Peloton rider, I find the gamification aspect kind of appealing. I like the idea of visually racing someone on the screen, I'm competitive. It's the most appealing part of the platform. Changing gears and attaching my bike to the thing and finding room for it, and getting all teh sensors sorted is definitely NOT the appealing part.
The direct drive trainers of later years are much much better than earlier trainers. The 2018 kickr for instance is much more smooth and silent than earlier models. So you may be comparing an obsolete $ trainer with a $$$ peloton bike.
It seems unfair to impugn the peloton bike as being "$$$" where a direct drive trainer is only "$" when the price difference is far from an order of magnitude, especially when you consider that you still need an entire bike to use with the direct-drive trainer.
Granted, the direct drive trainers and related software have functionality the Peloton does not have, particularly the pre-Bike+ peloton.
The Peloton, as I understand, doesn't dynamically adjust its resistance.
On a $4K machine? The $800 NordicTrack rower we bought automatically adjusts resistance with their iFit programs. So people were just paying for an exercise bike with a big LCD screen? I'm astounded that they stayed in business long enough to release a second version that fixes this. VC money can fix that problem, but I'm also astounded that anyone actually bought one.
The bike is 2K for the one without a motorized resistance knob and I bought one despite this feature because it takes me 1 second to turn the knob to the dynamically adjusted value on the display.
It's less than half the price now. That's a pretty big detail to get wrong. You may be thinking of the Kickr bike, which is much more full-featured, and $3500 (so, still not $4k), but doesn't have a screen at all from what I can tell.
I'm actually thinking of their treadmill, which is $4K. But okay, fine; it's "only" $2K. My question is just as valid: "on a $2K machine? My half-that-price rowing machine can adjust resistance on the fly."
Hell, the pricey-but-not-as-pricey-as-Peleton computerized trainer I had almost 15 years ago could adjust the resistance on the fly. I just figured that was table stakes these days.
Its a device that you set on the Peloton that does the automatic resistance changes to match the hills in Zwift by using a motor to turn the big red knob. Basically it converts your Peloton into a smart trainer that you can use with Zwift without having to mod your Peloton at all.
Note: I am not affiliated with the project but I have backed it.
I do a lot of power training on the Peloton (had it for 4 years now, been doing power training for.. 2.5?)
I agree that "serious outdoor riders are not really Peloton's market", and it comes across in literally every piece of snobbery about how a spin bike can't simulate real road feel and you'll never get your proper position and couldn't possibly train the same muscles and so on. I just smile and nod. The bike world is full of snobbery.
The older Pelotons do NOT adjust their resistance dynamically, you're right. I wouldn't call it baffling. I only change my resistance a handful of times (okay maybe 10, including little tweaks) during a class. Honestly it's kind of nice having those micro-steps. What else are you doing? It's sort of like people who can't be bothered to use their turn signal. I'm just sitting there pedaling away. I might as well turn a knob from time to time.
>it comes across in literally every piece of snobbery about how a spin bike can't simulate real road feel and you'll never get your proper position and couldn't possibly train the same muscles and so on. I just smile and nod. The bike world is full of snobbery.
None of that is actually WRONG, though. A spin bike is its own thing, with its own set of desired features and aesthetics and behaviors. It's not snobbery to say it's different from training done with cycling trainers and "real" bikes.
Your final paragraph is kind of odd, since the questions you asked were already answered. Power interval training for competitive cyclists involves longish (45-120 minute) workouts with many intervals set at different percentages of your functional threshold power.
Manually adjusting for each one is a tremendous pain in the ass. For example, on my workout last night, I would've had to manually adjust it 16 times in 55 minutes.
Smart trainers have more or less taken over for serious riders precisely because they remove this problem.
If this isn't a problem for YOU because you prefer the way spin-type workouts go, that's awesome for you, but it really just points out that serious outdoor riders are mostly looking for a different experience than Peloton sells. Again: not snobbery. Just an acknowledgment that spin <> outdoor cycling.
Certainly SOME of my riding pals do spin during the week, but most of them are doing structured workouts using TrainerRoad or TrainingPeaks or Zwift and a smart trainer attached to a real bike. (Mostly, it's their old bike, because cyclists nearly always have more than one bike.)
Indoor training for cyclists has, for the last 15 or so years, generally been focused on power targets. You do some fitness tests to determine your maximum hourly wattage, and then your workouts are expressed as a series of X minutes at Y% of your max power, etc.
This is tedious if you're using an old-style, fixed-resistance trainer, because you're watching the clock during the intervals and then shifting on the bike to achieve higher or lower levels of resistance in order to hit the right power target at a reasonable cadence. Honestly, this SUCKS.
Smart trainers take that out of it by dynamically adjusting the resistance for each segment during the workout, so all you really have to do is keep pedaling at the desired cadence (typically 90-95 rpm); sometimes it's harder, and sometimes it's easier. You don't have to manage anything. It's awesome. (I watch bad movies on the trainer now.)
The Peloton, as I understand, doesn't dynamically adjust its resistance. I'm baffled by this, given how home training is for go-fast cyclists, but maybe that's just not a thing spin people want.