 So welcome back to the Friday vlog series where today I'm going to share with you a video I have been meaning to do for a very long time and that is share with you my four thoughts from a coach's perspective. I'm a road cycling coach. I'm two of the biggest indoor cycling training apps out there which I'm using quite a lot at the moment. Thanks to the rain season here on the Sunshine Coast being Zwift and what is now formally known as not the SufferFest but the WahooSuff training app to highlight the fact that they're now one company with Wahoo. And in this video I've got a special gift to share with you from the WahooSuff. They've kindly given me an access code that's going to give you a free trial for 30 days. That's on top of their already 14 day free trial. So potentially you're getting 44 days of use on the SufferFest for free. So if that sounds good make sure you give the video a like. I'm going to share that code with you at some point during the video so stick around and what I'm also going to do is share with you my favorite WahooSuff workouts for getting stronger for Zwift, racing and bunch riding. Now for transparency purposes just know that the WahooSuff are partners of my online coaching business called the Uplevel Road Cycling Course which opens four times a year. We make 50 spots available and it's open right now. For anyone that's interested you can check out links below but just know that this video is not sponsored by WahooSuff. They're not paying me for the video. This will be the first time that they see it and personally I use both Zwift and WahooSuff because ultimately I believe they don't so much compete with each other. More so compliment each other. Now before we split this video into four main parts which include number one the biggest mistake cyclists make before they start indoor training. Number two how Zwift and WahooSuff vastly differ. Number three where they compete and their strengths and weaknesses and number four how they compliment each other. So they're the four things but a quick funny story for you before we get into them. I rode my first Zwift race in about three or four months on the weekend that's just gone and I got dropped on the second lap in a city crit race really struggled and I was really down on myself. I thought I've lost a lot of fitness. Asked my wife I was quite depressed for about three or four hours and then I realized something. I had changed my weight in Zwift from 78 kilograms to 120 kilograms in order to race my wife on Zwift. You can check out the video up the top of the screen and I forgot to change my weight back. So racing with an extra 42 kilograms this guy's a dickhead. So the first thing that I wanted to share with you is the big mistake cyclists make before they start indoor training and that is they go straight to the bunch rides the racing the high intensity workouts in the Sufferfest before they've properly developed their aerobic fitness. Now what I take members of my coaching course through the up level road cycling course is what I'm going to share with you right here and the first thing that you want to do is get your functional threshold power number to begin with. Now if you don't have an indoor trainer you can go do the 20 minute test outside which I recommend but because we're talking about indoor cycling here I'd personally recommend either the ramp test in Zwift or the half Monty in the Sufferfest. The second thing you'll do is calculate your zone two endurance power number. I like to go 65% of your FTP for a condition rider and 70% of your FTP for a non-condition rider. Now that may seem counter-intuitive but what I find with uncondition riders those who have not trained properly before is that they're less likely to get through the testing protocol as well as a condition rider and they improve quite rapidly. So say your FTP was 250 watts as an uncondition rider go 70% of 250 watts and would go 175 watts as your zone two number then you'd pedal at 175 watts for one hour consistently no stopping and see what happens to your heart rate. What we're essentially doing here is assessing how your cardiovascular system responds which the heart is the corner stone of to aerobic base training. To give you an example here so we can look at some data from an up-level road cycling course member called Ali. Many months ago he did this test at 210 watts for him and his heart rate measured at 15 minutes in which is when you're settled into the test at just over 150 beats and he finished off the one hour with a heart rate drifting into the mid 160s. Fast forward a few months to the same test but for two hours now and his starting heart rate at around the 15 minute mark is in the mid 130s and at the hour he's drifted to 140 so marginal and finishes off the two hours which is a long time on a trainer at the same point he basically started the test many months prior. In other words his base aerobic engine is so much more efficient now than what it was previously and what we did with Ali is we got him on a base fitness program before getting into the high intensity training which is what you should do before getting into the hard high intensity training and races that's on offer in these magnificent apps and look you can focus on base aerobic training in both these apps and the Wahoo Suf now has mini cycling documentaries you can watch while training the base engine and the base engine is definitely where you should focus pending your cardio drift results. Number two is how Zwift and Wahoo Suf vastly differ so the obvious one is Zwift's virtual world erasing bunch rides virtually having a social ride with your mates that stuff is heaps of fun it hooks you in and does not exist on the Wahoo Suf and that's the primary reason why I use Zwift for the erasing component in terms of how Wahoo Suf differs and I think this is an interesting one because not many people know it exists and that is there's a library of number one mental strength and visualization training videos number two core strength flexibility and yoga videos and number three off bike strength and conditioning videos all sequenced in a way that enable you to go from a beginner level to an advanced level and what I say to people that I work with is you don't actually need an indoor trainer in order to get value out of Wahoo Suf you can purely use it for off bike training to enable you to improve your performance on the bike so that is how they differ number three is where they compete which is indoor cycling workouts and plans to me this is where the Sufferfest wins hands down for three primary reasons which we'll get to in a second because Zwift does win in this section on one component and that is where you can create your own workouts in Zwift using an incredibly intuitive and easy to use drag and drop functionality which you cannot do in the Wahoo Suf but personally I've never really desired that functionality in the Wahoo Suf because their library of workouts and plans is so comprehensive and what you may not realize is the workouts and plans are created by Neil Henderson a highly regarded coach of world champion cyclists and his team whereas Zwift I don't know who's creating the workouts and plans and to be honest I've been left a little confused regarding some of them which we'll get to so the first thing that I like about the Suf workouts which I feel is superior is I feel like generally they are better crafted for example I did this training session on Zwift last night called Wave Rider there's an eight minute warm up without any openers with only a two minute warm down after the eight minute warm up I then went straight into a 525 watt effort to me this was ludicrous I'd much rather firstly flip that around a little bit so spend a little bit more time on the cool down and less on the warm up so maybe five or six minutes on the warm up and in the warm up have some opening efforts say below threshold or around threshold instead of essentially going straight into a 525 watt effort and there's plenty of workouts like that in Zwift Wahoo Suf on the other hand you will always be given a good warm up period opening up your upper end systems before you really start to go deep you'll also get a good spin down afterwards which is critical to clear byproducts from lactate accumulation in regards to testing protocols as well I genuinely believe the Suf is your better option there I particularly like the half Monty as a ramp test as it also incorporates a sustained effort after the ramp to provide a more accurate functional threshold power number and additional data points such as your maximal aerobic power number and your lactate threshold heart rate reason number two is the plans are better crafted for example both apps appear to have plans that are suited for criteria and racing so I went and investigated both however before I did so I thought surely there's the old one minute on one minute off efforts incorporated into these plans however if we look at the Zwift program there's no real one minute on off efforts they do form part of some of the workouts but with two minutes off or five minutes off and strangely there's a lot of sub-threshold and zone four workload which is fine I just don't think zone four threshold work should be the cornerstone of a criterion program if we look at the equivalent in the Wahoo Suf one of the very first workouts is the revolver which incorporates 11 one minute on one minute off efforts before getting into some nasty 15 second on off efforts and these type of workouts are incorporated throughout the plan reason three is the Wahoo Suf workouts to me are more motivational so the structured workout I did on Zwift last night that was the first time I've ever done a structured workout on Zwift and to be honest I found it quite boring finding myself staring at the window quite often however with the Wahoo Suf you're watching real race footage with GoPro cameras set up on pro cyclist bike during some of the biggest world tour races on the globe the efforts you do align with the race footage and so does the music that goes with it and while some of the music isn't my liking that's very easy you can switch that off put on your own and off you go and I think it's a blend of the music and the race footage that aligns to the intense efforts that makes the sessions feel like they go a lot faster which is always a good thing now one issue with both apps is I feel like there's a lot of high intensity in many of the plans and I feel like even if you're not doing the plans there's an inclination to do a lot of high intensity so cyclists if they do too much high intensity they tend to plateau because they're riding in a fatigue state they can't get the most out of their high intensity work and as a result they can never achieve what they want to achieve Julian is a prime example of that somebody I've worked with who did one of these 12 week programs plateaued at 282 watts we got him to 311 just by getting the blend right of base training and also high intensity work now the last one number four is how both these apps complement each other for me the wahoo surf has the best independent workouts plans and off bike workouts in fact I don't think swift even offer anything off bike so if you can leverage that capability in the wahoo surf and then take it into swift I could almost guarantee your bunch riding your e-racing or any virtual social riding you do will go to the next level so I'll put the 30 day free code for the wahoo surf up on the screen and workouts you might like to consider in the wahoo surf to get you stronger for swift bunch riding and racing include the attacker the defender ftp build eight times two ftp map builds eight times three hell have no fury power station team scream and the bat so that's pretty much it if you new to the channel and you got value out of this video today and you want to see more content like this please don't forget to hit that subscribe button below and I'll catch you all in the next video