Daily suggested bike sprint intervals too short to work with trainer

The daily suggested workout feature seems to sometimes give cycling workouts with sprint intervals that are too short for indoor trainers. Today my watch suggested a Sprint workout with three sets of four 10 second efforts at 455W. I did it using a Tacx Neo 2T trainer controlled by the watch in erg mode. The problem is that the trainer takes a few seconds to increase resistance to the target power level, and by that point the short interval is almost over. So my average power during the sprints was only about 390W.

Is there some way to make this work or is it just pointless?

  • Someone suggested me, and it works on my Flux S and will work for You, don't connect the Neo as smart trainer but instead of that, connect only speed/cadence and power from your trainer. Than the power is upon You. You'll speed up 5to10s before interval and everything will be fine ;-).

  • For the workouts lie that you have to set your trainer in the "level" mode in the workout/trainer settings

  • I haven't really found it to be a problem with my Neo 2. Sure, there is a delay for the resistance to ramp up, then a power overshoot, then adjustment and finally a delay for resistance to reduce. Overall the average for the interval seems quite close to target, even if it is moved by a few seconds in the timeline.

    What helps is to anticipate the sprinterval a few seconds in advance and to slightly build cadence so that you can stay on top of the resistance change and not get bogged down. Also, I think the more important thing is to "sprint" rather than to worry about the exact numbers. The workout is the workout. The limitations of the trainer aren't really something the watch can address.

    Close up view....

  • Thanks I guess that will work, but then why did I pay so much for a "smart" trainer?

  • the solution mentioned by @ is the way to go IMO. As he said, remember to ramp up the RPM few seconds before the interval and then sprint without looking at the numbers. After the workout it should all be like in the pictures above.