Holy shit!!! Finally someone on the same page as me. When someone asks me what the setting does, my reply is, "you're changing to a cassette that serves the terrain"! Great job!

I've seen this slider best described as a "virtual cassette". That totally explains it to me.

It would be great if you entered your gear ratio into Zwift (50/34 - 11/28) then the Trainer difficulty would show a different setting gauge on the slider that then shows you an 11-28 has now changed to a virtual 11-34 etc.

This explanation makes the most sense to me. Thank you!

Thanks Max for taking the time to explain this so clearly. Great job, Ride On!

My man... I only started on zwift recently... I must be 50 hours of videos on videos, yet you're the 1st to come up on my feed solely explaining this. Many thanks!

Thanks for the explanation! Perfectly clear!

Just came across this, pure enlightenment, now it all makes sense! This is also great to know if you have a separate "cheaper" setup for your turbo, it wouldn't matter the size of cassette and rings you have because you can balance it out in the "gearing selector". Great work, thank you!

You're spot on. I have it set so that the majority of my riding is in the middle of the cassette offing the most range.

Absolutely the explanation I was looking for. Thanks.

THANK YOU!!! I know this is 2 years late lol, but you are the first person to make sense to me. Honestly when I first started I put it on MAX and thought "this seems more realistic on a very small incline"... it looks like my instincts were correct. I did notice on RGT that if I turned it down to MIN my bike wouldn't go very far and I had no power :)... This explanation is perfect! Thanks again for taking the time to figure this out by experimentation, and better yet, to share this so eloquently!

Thanks Max, a very clear and helpful explanation of what trainer difficulty is.

you made my day. I have an old Trek SLR 2300 Alpha with Ultegra Groupset that I bought this summer. 53/39 and 11/25 is the gearing. I live in Switzerland and I have a hard time on some hills and won't even tackle others (I tried, but failed miserably). I am on Zwift for the second week now and found that setting yesterday...I was so happy to have climbed 10% grades and then dissapointet after finding the slider. Your video now just proved that I only did a virtual switch to a compact crank and 32ish in the back :) (I have the slider at 50%), thank you for rebuilding my confidence that was destroyed yesterday.

Thank you. This is the best explanation I’ve heard about trainer difficulty!

Bravo! Finally someone who explains it the same way as I do. Thank you for making this video!

You made it all clear! Thanks a lot!

Great explanation. Riding up a volcano in the big ring was having a hyperinflationary effect on my ego. This will keep me in check. Thank you very much!

Finally first person who explained this that I can understand, and this make absolutely sense! Thanks a bunch !!!!!

At last - I understand - thank you very much for posting!

Thanks for the explanations! Very informative.

Even better explanation than some other bigger channels. Bravo.

Thank you very much for doing all the research and testing. Makes 100% sense now

Excellent explanation. This is how I can ride my singlespeed bike on zwift!

Crystal clear explanation 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

That’s a really comprehensive information about the trainer difficulty. Thanks so much

Thanks! That was a crystal clear explanation... I've just changed the drivetrain on my designated trainer-bike, now I can adjust for the smaller cassette:)

Excellent! At last I understand what this is for. Thank you!

Finally found the explanation !! Thank you ... I gonna set it to 100% right now....📿🚀💥

Thanks, this is such a good explanation 👍🏻

Awesome, Perfect explanation! Thank You.

This is exactly what I was looking for to understand what this feature is.

Thank you for this. I thought it was something like this from doing my own experiments. Excellent

BEST explanation of this setting I've seen. Thank You. perfectly explained and now it all makes sense. now i can stop watching endless youtube videos trying to explain this. thanks max.

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great explanation - i ride my 1x with 46t front and this is a great feature

Finally a good explanation, I understand now! Thank you so much!!!

thanks so much for clearing this out.

Finally, a great explanation. Thank you.

Best explanation I’ve seen ever about this confusing issue.

Brilliant video Max, thanks!

This was very helpful . On the road I like to spin at 87-93 rpm. But on swift I’m constantly at 80rpm !!! Thank you !!!! I’ll get spinning again

Finally!.. Well explained.. Thank you very much for the info!..

Thanks Max ... very clear explanation

Brilliant! Did my FTP test last night and I was on the big chainring and halfway over the cassette. What that meant was when I needed to add more power, changing up one gear added too many watts for me to maintain (jump was 40 watts or thereabouts) so I had to change back down and increase my cadence to add a smaller amount of power. Theoretically then if I set it to max, that could put me on the middle chainring during the next FTP test so gear changes won't be as big allowing me to record a more accurate FTP. It also means I won't be running out of gears as I have been on flat sections in free ride. Excellent explanation. Going to play around with it tonight. :-)

Thanks, this is the very first explanation that I understand and makes sense.

That makes complete sense to me. Thank you.

This is awesome!!!!! Thank you so much, it’s totally makes sense and will save a lot of people wasting a lot of money! Great job.

Excellent explanation! I had no idea you were a cyclist, I had you rework the forks on my '02 Goldwing years ago, rode like a dream after that.

I cycle gills a lot on my normal bike outdoors, as Ive got older I've started getting knee pain, so last year I changed my cassette to have and extra gear or 2 and don't get knee pains anymore. Thanks for the explanation, the way you put it, is so simply put.

Prefect explanation! Thank you

Great explanation. Trainer settings is like having a CVT gear, instead of discrete step jumps and choices, you can have almost unlimited choices depending on where you set the setting between Min and Max. However, the specificity of training in such a way is obviously a whole other issue. To attain the specificity needed to riding IRL with a "limited" set of gears, and to train for the feeling (load/biomechanics etc), the trainer has to be set close to 100%, if not AT 100%. Secondly, wheel-on-trainers may add higher specificity since even IRL, you have a tire making contact where that contact force and rolling resistance becomes an appreciable factor when riding up very steep slopes. IRL, you may find despite having the lowest gears possible, you still zigzag all over the place and need to spin really high in order to keep the momentum, which may not be very efficient. Besides, there's also the issue of loss of inertia and tire slip at the extreme grades, all I think which can be simulated well with a combination of trainer settings and the wheel-on-trainer. For me, that's the biggest takeaway & independent thoughts inspired from this video.

Thank you, finally I understand the setting. It's basically a gear ratio changer if I understand correctly.

Hi Max, you are a genius communicator. You have explained this brilliantly. My only suggestion for even further clarity (! if poss) - would be - when you say MAX = Reality, what you mean is "the reality of THAT cassette on THAT hill". If you ever remade this video, you could dramatise this by simply having 2 bikes in front of you - one with 12-25, and another with 11-34 for example... This is what you mean by reality - how it feels to ride up with Bike A, vs Bike B. They both get to the top at the same time (same watts applied), but the dude on the 12-25 (me) will have been doing weight-lifting with my legs.... The Zwift game can allow you to choose which cassette you prefer for climbing. Which is a great feature, as you say. Thanks again for making my day, I was getting stressed by misunderstanding the slider!

Perfect. Thanks Max. That’s what I actually expected the setting would do but the other videos I watched seemed to overcomplicate the issue. Essentially, I just want to set it to a point where I’m using the same gears on my bike on the trainer as I would if I was on the same bike on the road for the same gradient of climb.

Brilliantly explained . Thanks a lot

Nicely done Max. Very clear.

Excellent explanation thank you 👍🏻

Excellent!!!!! Thank You!!!

Was amazing explanation , thank you 🙏

Thank you, great explanation.

Wow I had a pretty good handle on this but this just made it all very clear. You need Zwift to watch this and then change the DIfficulty heading to Gear Selector. Then have a description as to why you do this. Well done Max.

Just got a new smart trainer this really helped. Thanks

Thanks mate, this actually helped a lot!

Thanks for this vid, very well explained.

Great explanation, thanks mate.

Thank you! Great explanation

This an excellent video. Thank your the explanation.

Thanks. As a new cyclist, new to Zwift, this helps.

Thanks for this excellent explanation.

Finally, finally it makes sense. Heard many definitions of what this setting does and none of them really seemed "logical"to me. As soon as you explained this I thought, of course! Thanks and subscribed.👍

Thank you! I wish all Zwifters would watch this video!!

Well done!!!

Love it. Great explanation. Thanks

Took a while to get to the point, but very helpful.

That's they way it has to be explained! Thanks!!!

Thank you! You explained perfect for me! Tommorow i'll try to ride Alpe du Zwift with reality settings using 50/34 (11-32 cassete). If i can't do it i'll mount a virtual little chainring to help me 😂

Super Erklärung. Endlich verstanden. Vielen Dank. Great explanation. Finally got it. Thanks a lot.

That's exactly right! We'll done explaining!

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Finally. This is the best explanation on YT. Thanks

Finally an explanation that make sense!!!! Thank you 😊💘😊

This is sooooo helpful! I can't get up steep hills in Zwift. I have a really old bike on my trainer and it only has 7 gears on the cassette. I just thought I was a weakling but turns out my bike isn't geared for climbing... looks like this setting is no longer in the settings section anymore

Thank you, Sir! 👌

Great explanation

Thanks man, I've been absolutely killing myself on a 15% or so uphill with cadence of line 50/60 because I thought anything below max is cheating.. Thanks for saving my knees man!

Everything in the video is correct for a trainer capable of recreating all teh gradients in Zwift. We need to add additional considerations for trainers with more modest capabilities. A trainer that maxes out at e.g. 7% gradient loses any kind of fidelity on climbs steeper than 7%. All climbs greater than 7% feel constant, with no undulation. Immersion vanishes. Climbing Alpe du Zwift, for example, would be a constant resistance with momentary dips in resistance at bends. The continuous changes in gradient between 7% and 15% would not be felt. Lowering the trainer difficulty setting to half means that same trainer can now recreate undulations on climbs up to 14% gradient (7% x 2). Sure, they're only at half difficulty, but now do have some texture and immersion reappears, so perhaps max reality for that hypothetical 7% trainer is with the difficulty slider halfway, not at max. If we try to guess what equipment a typical first time user of Zwift is using, it's probably not the high end direct drive trainers capable of 15-25% gradients, so having a default in the middle kind of makes sense, even if misguided. I agree though that the label "Trainer Difficulty" has probably caused many of the problems. Renaming to "Gradient Simulation," or "Gearing Simulation," may help. Another approach might be for the the slider to ask the user to set the maximum simulation capability of the trainer. It would be possible to literally keep the same slider and algorithms and relabel it from "Min" and "Max" to "0%" and "16%" to perfectly scale any trainer to recreate Huez & Ventoux to the best of their abilities. (Or 0% & 25% if we want to also capture the brief steep bit at Richmond, but we reduce resistance on all other courses without increasing the resistance at Richmond (the trainer is already maxed out)) But then we realize most users probably don't know the max resistance of their trainer (I don't, and I'm a nerd), so that approach is dead in the water. Maybe there is a way for Zwift to do it automagically? - Zwift knows which trainer we are using, and having a reference table of trainer capabilities to pre-populate that slider would be trivial.

very clear thank you

Best explanation I’ve come across. Thanks. Makes me not feel as bad now from having to down the setting to 50% cos I couldn’t keep up with group rides on the steep climbs. Does seem strange though that I couldn’t even turn the peddles on the radio tower in my lowest gear yet when I turned it to 50% I then proceeded to catch everyone up and drop them. I’m on a compact group set. I did wonder if there was a bug that if you change it mid game it performed differently.

Well done a good explanation

Thank you I was thinking aboutt getting a new cassette , dont have to now.

thnx for the clear explaination!

Thank you. That helped a lot.

Thanx. Clear !!! Good story

Very well explained!

If this is it its AWSOME! What a Great video! I understand it completely

the best explanation

Great explanation. with a 11-28 cassette and 36-52 chain ring I could not climb 15% grades with 100% diff so I set it to 75%. You may have heard of GP Lama he just did a video where talks about how Zwift halves the gradient percentage sent to the trainer on downhills etc.

Been saying this for months!!! It is about making a trainer useful for more people! . 1) 250w up a climb equals a given speed for your Avatar. You still have to produce 250w regardless of your cadence and what gear you use....but 2) the difficulty slider allows people to make full use of their gear ratios depending on their ability. If you build a trainer capable of handling 500w in a high gear, but a user can only hold 150w, then that Smart trainer would be 'too hard' for them on any steep incline, and they would spend whole time in bottom few cogs. The slider allows for the differences in smart trainer ranges, AND the differences in user's capability. Some lesser trainers might not go up to the 15%+ incline that Zwift 100% setting would force, so may not be an issue, but a top end trainer can, and it would just make it impossible for weaker riders to use. It does not make pushing a wattage in game easier

That was just a perfect deskription - loved it, and it makes so much sense - i know this depends on individual effort/perception/fitness - but has anyone made a schematic of where to categorize gearing in between, this should be the same for everyone (the feel of gearing in between - not the categorizing on the scale), - im riding singspeed (1x10 - 52T front - 11/36 rear) on my roadbike and love it - newer installing a front mech again. I however have no idea how this compares to other setups, but know i probably would need a smaller chainring if I were to ride actual mountains (my zwift setting is currently at standard 50%.)

Great explanation, which has answered, a question I've had for a while. On my daily commute is a 22% 60m climb, which I've learned to cope with, but similar gradients on Zwift, feel easier. After watching your video I checked the Difficultly and it's set to default so by changing it to nearly Max, it now feels more realistic to my commute climb😁 (Still bl**dy hard though, ha ha ha). Thanks, Max