Training With Power

Keiser M3i Indoor Cycle Console with Power/Watts measurement.

Module Objective:

Understand the basic concept of Power
Learn how you can introduce Power into your classes for riders you feel have reached the Athlete Level.
Use the combination of Power and Heart rate to track progress and motivate participants.

Does your facility have indoor cycles that include Power/Wattage meters?

If not, then you can skip this section if you choose. There are no questions on the final quiz about this topic.

If you do, then it will be possible to incorporate Power into your Parkinson’s Cycling Class. Power can be used to motivate your experienced riders during class and to track improvements in fitness over the length of the program – which can become hugely motivating to everyone!

Here’s how…

You understand that Power/Watts are simply a measurement of the amount of “work” being done by someone riding an Indoor Cycle. “Work” is the combination of the amount of Force applied to the pedals times the Speed in which it’s being applied – RPM or cadence.

Force x RPM = Power or Watts

So to increase your Power, you need to:

Increase the amount of Force you apply while pedaling at a constant RPM/Cadence
Or pedal at a faster RPM/Cadence, with the same amount of Force
Or increase both RPM/Cadence and Force at the same time

Increasing your Power/Watts output by any of the above methods will typically result in an increase in Heart Rate BPM. Which makes sense as your Heart responses to increases in intensity by beating faster to supply more blood and O2 to your muscles.

Benefits of using Power along with Heart Rate

At the onset of the Parkinson’s Cycling Program, the use of cadence and heart rate to guide intensities is sufficient to achieve the goals of the program. However, as the fitness level of the participant improves, the amount of Power they can produce at a specific Heart Rate BPM will increase. This is the most basic indicator of increased fitness.

Training people with PD and without PD is essentially the same.

Here’s an example

Bob joins your program as a Level 1 beginner rider. After a few weeks he has been able to increase his cadence on request to 80-90 RPM and can successfully maintain that cadence with an increase in resistance during the intervals.

Reaching this level of success, Bob’s coach feels he’s progressed to a Level 2 (Transitional) rider and begins having him wear a Heart Rate monitor and participate during the aerobic threshold assessments. Bob learns that his aerobic threshold comes around 120 BPM. Another level of success as Bob now understands how hard he needs to work during the intervals. He can bring himself to that level of intensity with little or no additional coaching – he simply adds load to his 80-90RPM cadence when asked.

During an interval, Bob’s coach asks that Bob observe the Watts number on his console and make a mental note. Nothing more. The first step in the introduction of Power is just observing the numbers.

After sufficient recovery, Bob’s coach requests another interval… but this one will be a little different; instead of adding load at 80-90RPM and waiting for your HR to respond, just go back to the Watts number you saw in the earlier interval. Maintain your cadence and adjust your load until you see the correct Watts number. Now after a minute observe your HR BPM… where is it?

Each week, Bob’s coach records both the Power/Watts # and the Heart Rate BPM where it occurs and when graphed, shows a steady increase in watts at the same HR BPM over the duration of the program. This is a clear indication of Bob’s success with the program!

Using Power/Watts is a much more accurate and instant measure of how hard the participant is working. Heart rate monitors measure the body’s reaction or response to physical activity whereas a power meter measures the actual activity itself. In addition there is often a time interval between effort start and the heart’s response. This time delay does not exist when using power meters. The wattage shows immediately. This has a powerful effect on the rider because it shows immediate feedback. The wattage numbers solidify the improvement of the Parkinson’s Cycling rider. It encourages the rider and the coach that positive advancement is taking place.

For most of your participants, maintaining their newly found level of fitness is the goal.

A plateau is expected

Setting proper expectations is important for both you as the coach and your participants. It will be very common to have participants see substantial increases in their fitness during the early stages of the program. Which will be very exciting to many of them and makes complete sense when you think about it. Many will be coming to you with no real level of fitness – so regular attendance to your classes will have a profound affect on them during the early weeks and months.

But then their increases will be smaller and tend to plateau. This is perfectly normal and this should be seen as another marker of success by both of you 🙂 Here’s where they enter the maintenance mode – something you should encourage everyone to continue for as long as possible.

Depending on where you are located, you may have a few “snow birds” who attend for half the year or so. Just like able-bodied people who take a break from their fitness routine, your Parkinson’s Cycling participants will need to add back their fitness over a series of classes, if they’ve taken some time off.

In the Parkinson’s Cycling Program, power or wattage can be used efficiently and effectively when the following guidelines are implemented:

There is no “rule of thumb” for the amount of Watts anyone can create. You may have a 90lb women who can comfortably push out 100 watts, or a 180lb man who struggles to create 50 watts.
Increments of power should be voluntary – not prescribed amounts like “give me 10 more watts or I need 10% more watts. Instead ask questions; can you increase your watts at this RPM? If so, by how much? There is no right or wrong answer… you’re letting the rider decide.
People with Parkinson’s have Good and Bad days. The Bad days will often show as lower than normal wattages at typical HR BPM’s. Try to recognise these Bad days early so you can coach them with empathy.
The wattage readings on some indoor cycles can vary between individual cycles. There are multiple ways to address this: try to keep the riders on the same bikes each class, only use watts for that class (don’t keep a record if you sense they’re not accurate) or perform calibration of the bikes more frequently. This page includes information on calibrating; Keiser M3, Freemotion S11 and Schwinn AC indoor cycles. There is no option to calibrate the Spinner Blade Ion – which doesn’t mean it’s more accurate… there just isn’t any option to adjust them.

Additional research

We offer a dozens of pages and interviews with information about effectively Training with Power at ICI/PRO. Here are two we suggest starting with:

If the use of Power is new to you, here’s an interview that describes how to teach your first Indoor Cycling class with power that features Cameron Chinatti – Education Director with Stages Indoor Cycling.