Weight in CyclingPeaks WKO+

madone550 said:

What are most people doing with their weight settings? Should it be
set to Bike+Body Weight? Body Weight? This will effect my w/kg, so I'd
like to get it right, or at least right using the "best practice".

Athlete weight should be body weight only, to give the correct reference values for the Power Profile.

madone550 said:

This is one of the threads that confused me the most:
www2.cyclingpeakssoftware.comviewtopic.phpOpen ↗

What does he mean it will affect all previous data?

He doesn't want his current weight to recalculate the W/kg values and show higher values on the graphs for previous seasons when he was heavier.

madone550 said:

Here's what I'd like to know. How does the weight on the Athlete's homepage work. How does it effect new workouts, how does it effect old workout's.

For instance, I am in a weight loss mode now, so I plan on having to
update my weight with lower numbers as time goes on (if all goes well). If I change the setting on the athlete's homepage to be my current weight weekly, is that going to affect past data?

The homepage weight becomes the default for each new workout that is created and probably the weight used for generating the power profile, but I thought that once the workout is saved that the weight on that day is saved with it. That seems to contradict Hunter's answer on the other forum, so I'll have to check that when I get home.

You can test it out by looking at a W/kg graph on the homepage, and then changing your weight to half of it's previous value and seeing if the old values on the graph change dramatically. If so, then just put your weight back to its previous value.

madone550 said:

...What are most people doing with their weight settings? Should it be set to Bike+Body Weight? Body Weight? This will effect my w/kg, so I'd like to get it right, or at least right using the "best practice"....

I can't really answer all your WKO+ questions in terms of how the weight entry is applied, but I just enter my morning body weight.

The way I see it, your question is really about how the performance tables that break things into categories were tabulated. I mean your own W/Kg data is only relevant to you and your own progress unless you're trying to hold it up to those tables and compare to other folks. We all do it(and usually [censored] about how low it places us on the table) but Andy at least has told us a number of times not to take those category labels too seriously. It's better used as a rough estimate than hard guidelines.

But even as a rough estimate you've got to ask how the data that built that table was collected. I suspect the weight used for W/kg calculations was rider weight alone. I also suspect the power data was SRM based or upstream measurements either directly from the pedals on a calibrated erg or from an SRM. If those were measured from a cycling dynamometer or using rear wheel based PTs then that skews things a bit. These are just guesses based on the fact that SRMs were used in the pro cycling ranks before PTs really hit the market and that it would be easier to get rider weight data than combined rider/bike weight data. But I don't really know and it would change things a bit if power was measured at a different reference point or weight included full kit.

I have no problem tracking my progress by just using my body weight and using a rear wheel based PT for power measurement. Would it place me differently in the table if I used an SRM and added the weight of my bike, water bottles, patch kit and clothes? Probably but it doesn't matter in terms of guiding my training and I'm never going to use that table or any other to decide when I'm ready to race. I'll let the races determine if I'm in the correct category.

Good luck,
Dave