Frequently Asked Questions/Coach’s Tips

Is It Time to Buy a Power Meter?

I’m a lower category racer looking to improve. I use a heart monitor and have been considering a power meter, but they’re still expensive. I guess the price won’t be coming down, so should I suck it up and spend the big bucks, figuring that it’s a good training investment that’ll help me improve faster?

I get this question a lot. My first response is a couple of questions. Are you finishing your races with or close to the pack? Are you comfortable in fast pack situations? If you answer NO to either of these, than save your money for awhile. Work on overall conditioning — your current heart rate monitor will be good for this. Do more group rides or look for a bike handling skills clinic in your area. If the answer is YES to the above, then read below.

Think of your training as a stool with 3 legs, namely heart rate, power output and perceived exertion. Each leg is important if the stool is going to support you.

Heart rate tells how your cardiovascular system reacts to training intensity. But realize that heart rate can be misleading. Heart rate is affected by many factors, including hydration, temperature, fatigue, glycogen status, and mental state. So while heart rate seems like an objective number that can be relied on from ride to ride, it isn’t.
Power metering tells how great that intensity is in watts. Power meters are excellent training devices because they give you a measure of your effort that really is objective. They’re great for doing repeatable training sessions, accurate measurement of above-threshold efforts, and for testing your progress.
Perceived exertion (PE), once you learn how to use it, tells you both of those things at once. It’s a holistic measure of the reaction of your body and mind to the stresses of training. I make sure my athletes understand PE, what it is telling them, and really pay attention to PE in a racing situation, since most of the time you don’t have time to look at a power meter. Sometimes in talking with them about a ride or a race I will just ask them their PE and doublecheck what they are telling me with their ride file.

Taking into account all of the above, the athletes I have worked with that have gone from Heart Rate only, PER only, Heart Rate/PER only, to a Power Meter have increased their performance approximately +25%. There are many reasons for this: weakness identification, ability to design workouts that focus on weaknesses, more exacting workouts, and ability to better avoid overtraining.

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