Smart Slopes — A New Way to Train
Creating and riding slope based workouts is fun and new. You can only do smart slopes in our training app. Smart slope workouts are especially perfect for short-intervals. On many smart-trainers ERG mode is not good for short- intervals. I think all trainers are bad for 5-second intervals in ERG mode. Science has shown that very short intervals can be a great minimalistic method of training.
Sprinting in slope mode by shifting gears and increasing cadence makes it more like an outdoor sprint. Smart Slopes or automated slope mode allows the trainer to change slopes automatically, similar to Zwift except that you are programming the slopes. Slope workouts are very individual.
Slope mode workouts require practice. Practice in creating the perfect workout and practice executing the workout. We will start creating a list of recommended slope workouts, but you will still need to perfect your gears and cadence to hit the targets. When you are creating workouts, you are setting the slope, but you are also setting the target power/percent. This target power is a visual representation of what you are trying to hit, but since you control the power output by changing gears and cadence, it’s only a reference point.
Mixed slope and ERG mode. If you have ever taken a 20-minute FTP test or 8-minute FTP test on most platforms, they go in and out of ERG and slope or resistance mode. You can design your own workouts to do exactly the same in TrainerDay. Any interval you can change to slope or erg just by clicking the switch in our app.
See our editor before on how to create slope workouts. You don’t need to set slope in the interval type unless you want it to automatically change for you.
To use smart slopes you must have a premium account.
If you have a premium account now, you can start creating your first workout in our workout creator.
A great example slope workout
Here is a link to that workout
https://app.trainerday.com/workouts/4-second-intervals
This workout first increases slope right before the 4-second intervals. Then you should shift and increase cadence and go as hard as you can for 4-seconds.
Here is a study showing this can be great for general fitness, but 4-second workouts can be fun when you need something else to do as well as bringing great sprinting benefits. You must have a trainer that is capable of more watts than your 4-second limit.