Subject: RE: trainer resistance or gears? with a mag trainer, resistance will increase as your wheel spins faster, so assuming you hold constant pedal RPM's, shifting will alter your resistance. A mag trainer has a linear resistance profile, so if you drew a graph of speed vs resistance, it would be a straight line. This means going from 10 mph to 15 mph will give the same increase in resistance as 15 mph to 20 mph. When you adjust the resistance, you adjust the steepness of that line. So on an easy setting, increasing 5mph may signify a 5 watt increase in power (to turn the trainer), but on a hard setting that 5 mph increase may now requre 10 watts, or 20 watts. So in essence, what the resistance setting is doing is determining how much more resistance shifting a gear will add or remove. I usually keep the resistance on a fixed level and change gears to increase resistance. If I play with the resistance it's because the workout is getting too easy and I need to increase the challenge. fluid trainers have a exponential profile (it curves) so at slower speeds you get less added resistance from shifting, while at faster speeds you get a lot more. |