Power meter – what to set on smoothing?

When using power meter, normally what smoothing do you guys set. My Garmin 800 has 3s,10s and 30s. Couldn’t find none, whereas Trainer Road has none. What’s the advantage when set to the min? The figures becomes so spiky. My friend told me the more pro you are, the setting shld geared towards none or min smoothing so you will have immediate feedback to adjust your pedaling to optimize your power. Frankly, I find the min. setting is one of disruption that make one so engross in monitoring the figures than focusing on the actual ride.

What about setting it to read average?

For a serious but not competitive riding, what’s the best setting?

 

FWIW, I use the 5s option on my PT. I find 1s to be too variable and 10s is too slow to respond. Remember that you are not producing constant torque throughout the pedal stroke, so you can have more precession effect with short averaging durations. But, whatever averaging duration I use, I don't constantly monitor power. Rather, I first set up my drivetrain to get me close to my target power at my preferred cadence. Then I manage cadence until the resistance changes significantly, then I go through the process all over again. Most of the time, I am monitoring and managing cadence much more than power.

 

I use 3s.. 3s power is always on my screen but I tend to look at it only going uphill.

 

I just look to keep the "tens" and "hundreds" digits in the range I want and not worry about the spikiness.

 

3s for me but recently went back to 1s for hill climb races because I found 3s to be too much of a delay in short races (2-3 min steep climbs).

You get used to the spikiness, you have to train your brain to read between the numbers so to speak. I also use lap average power for intervals though.

 

Like to hear further comments. Anymore your thoughts?

 

The bigger question is what you want to use the power meter for.

Think of the smoothing as "how long do I want to be off before I can correct my effort".

Zero smoothing is VERY jumpy, but if you're doing 5- or 10-second sprints and trying to see your current exact power, it's useful.

If you're doing 5 minute VO2 or 20 minute threshold intervals, 3 second rounding lets you see what you're doing and any corrections you make, but not see the number change so fast you can barely tell what your power is.

The 10 to 30 seconds rounding, I believe, is for people who are using the power meter as an expensive speedometer and don't understand how to put this expensive training tool to good use.

Average power alone is pretty useless during the ride. Since you don't know what you're doing at that instant, you don't know if you're above or below that average or by how much. Since the Garmin 800 series has so many fields, you can easily set it up to show both current power and lap power so you can see both your current and the average since the last time you hit the Lap button, giving you the average for your current interval/hill/effort. (Average power for the ride is neat trivia, but not useful in the overall scheme of things).

 

I use 10s. I like the slow change of numbers. It comes down to looking at the speed of how fast the number changes and you still know very well if you're above or below what you are aiming for. I've to say though that I live in a really flat part of the country, and variations in the flat due to mostly strong wind, cars, and small changes in road gradients are a lot harder to control than the much slower speeds uphill. The 3s avg is definitely too jumpy for me.
There's another thing to consider. At the higher speed you're going at in the flat and maybe even with cars around, 3s can be too short to get a good handle on what power you're actually riding at as 3s requires you to keep looking at your Garmin more often than you have to for the 10s avg. Just bc 10s avg contains 10s of information, 3s just 3s
I'm fine with the 10s avg even for 60s efforts. 3s avg or even none avg might be beneficial for shorter stuff, i.e. 5-15s sprints (as mentioned before).

 

I'm probably one of those who through the years forgot how to put this expensive training tool to use.

I use it maximum once or twice a month for testing, on my training bike. I prefer riding my other bikes without any computer and train by feel.

 

Tks guys for all your inputs. I'll chew over it what's best for me. Gues it would take me a couple of rides to decide.