Glossary
Last updated: 2026-05-10
Your Trainer is a multi-rider indoor cycling app for Android tablets. Smart-trainer control with local data + local control. One-time purchase.
Cycling, training, and hardware terms used across the Your Trainer manual. If a term isn't here that you'd expect to find, drop us a note at [email protected].
This glossary covers cycling, training, and hardware terms used across the manual. For features and modes (Personal Bests, Ghost Rider, Free Ride, Zone Ride, Visual Editor) see the dedicated pages linked from each entry.
A
Ask AI Coach (history)
The Workout History screen has an Ask AI Coach input that takes a question about your training and returns a text answer ("Am I improving?", "What was my hardest ride this month?"). Uses the same AI provider you've configured for the AI Workout Coach. Read-only — it doesn't change your data, just summarises it. Available on Pro and Family tiers.
ANT+
An older wireless protocol for fitness sensors (heart-rate straps, power meters, cadence sensors). Your Trainer uses Bluetooth Low Energy rather than ANT+, so ANT+-only sensors aren't supported. Most modern sensors speak both.
Auto-label
An interval label generated by an editor preset rather than typed by the rider. Auto-labels resolve live against the device's locale resources, so they don't need per-locale entries in the workout's strings block. The flag flips off the moment the rider edits the label by hand. See also: autoLabel.
Auto-pause
The ride pauses automatically when the trainer reports zero cadence for several seconds (rider stopped pedalling) or when an HR-Zone workout's HRM disconnects. Resumes automatically when input returns.
B
Band (rider rating)
The descriptive label that sits in the top-right of a rider card, derived from the rider's overall rating: Beginner (under 30), Recreational (30–49), Competitive (50–69), Elite Amateur (70–84), Professional (85–94), World Class (95+). See also: Riders & Family → Overall rating and band.
BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)
The wireless protocol Your Trainer uses to talk to smart trainers and HRMs. Requires the Nearby devices permission on Android 12+ (or Location on older versions).
BPM
Beats per minute — the unit for heart rate. Resting BPM varies hugely between riders; what matters for training is your BPM relative to your LTHR or max heart rate.
C
CLB
Climbing — one of the six axes on the rider card's radar chart. Rated on the same scale as PWR (FTP relative to body weight in W/kg), since sustained power is what climbing rewards. See also: Riders & Family → The six attributes.
CON
Consistency — one of the six axes on the rider card's radar chart. Measures how steady the rider holds target wattage during structured efforts. Steady riders score higher than ones whose power swings around the target. See also: Riders & Family → The six attributes.
Cadence
Pedal revolutions per minute (RPM). Steady endurance work usually sits at 80–95 RPM; low-cadence climbing at 60–70 RPM; high-cadence drills at 100+. Your Trainer reads cadence from the trainer or from a separate cadence sensor.
Coaching cue
A short text overlay that appears on the cockpit during a ride. Cues fire at scheduled offsets within an interval. See also: workout schema → coaching cues.
Connect
Linking your tablet to a smart trainer or HRM over Bluetooth. Your Trainer saves the device against your rider profile and reconnects to it automatically on the next launch. Some other cycling apps call this "pairing"; same idea.
CSC profile
Cycling Speed and Cadence — a Bluetooth profile that reports speed and cadence but doesn't accept resistance commands. Your Trainer connects to CSC-only trainers but can't control resistance on them; only FTMS trainers get the full ride experience.
D
Device backup
A portable .ytbackup.json.gz file containing every rider's complete data on the device — profiles, sessions, personal bests, favourites, and custom workouts. Export via Settings → Data → Export Device Backup; restore via Settings → Data → Import Backup, where on collisions you choose merge (keep existing rows, add new ones from the backup) or overwrite (replace colliding rows). Credentials (Strava, AI API keys) are not included. Distinct from per-rider export (one rider) and Android system backup (Google-account-managed).
Dashboard
The live ride screen — terrain visualization plus the live metrics panel (power, heart rate, cadence, gear). What you watch while you ride.
E
Equipment Hub
The connection surface on the workout-selection screen. One slot per equipment type (smart trainer, HRM); each slot shows the device name, a Bluetooth status badge in the bottom-right (the app accent colour when Connected, amber while Connecting…, neutral when the slot reads Tap to Connect or Tap to reconnect), and a ⋮ menu in the title row with Forget device, Change device, and Device info (name, address, connection state). Long-press on the slot opens the same menu. Tap an empty slot to open the scanner; tap a slot in the Tap to reconnect state to retry the connection.
END
Endurance — one of the six axes on the rider card's radar chart. A composite of weekly training load. Rises as you ride more total time at meaningful intensity. See also: Riders & Family → The six attributes.
Efficiency Factor
Power per heartbeat — average wattage divided by average heart rate, scaled. A measure of how much work you're doing per unit of cardiovascular effort. Rises as you get fitter on the same workout.
Energy
Total work done during a ride, in kilojoules (kJ). Roughly equal to Calories at typical cycling efficiency (1 kJ ≈ 1 kcal at ~24 % efficiency). Shown in session history alongside the time-and-power metrics.
ERG mode
Trainer-control mode where the trainer holds a target wattage regardless of your cadence — pedal slower and the trainer adds resistance, pedal faster and it lets up. Best for structured power workouts.
Elevation profile
The list of elevation points along a route, used by ROUTE workouts to drive slope-based resistance. Files without elevation can't be ridden as routes.
F
FIT
A binary file format from Garmin used for both rides (recorded data) and routes (planned activities). Your Trainer accepts FIT files for route imports.
Forget device
Clears the saved preferred device (smart trainer or HRM) and stops the auto-connect on launch. Available in three places, all equivalent: Equipment Hub slot → ⋮ → Forget device; Settings → Hardware → tap the device row → Forget device; Profile → Connected → tap the HRM row → Forget device. Add the device again from the Equipment Hub scanner whenever you want it back. Useful when swapping trainers, replacing an HRM, or moving the household to a different rider's HRM.
Follow view
A route view mode that keeps the rider's position centred and rotates the map so the upcoming road always points up the screen — a sat-nav style perspective for indoor riding. One of four route layouts the cockpit can show; pick the layout from the toggle on the Route tab. See also: routes guide → view modes.
Free Ride
The unstructured-ride card on the Route tab. Simulation mode with slope and virtual gears, but no loaded route file. The Power tab's equivalent is called Quick Ride (ERG); the Heart Rate tab's is Zone Ride (HR Zone-Lock). See also: Quick / Free / Zone Ride.
Quick Ride
The unstructured-ride card on the Power tab. The trainer is in ERG mode and holds a wattage you choose; the +/− buttons step the target up or down. See also: Quick / Free / Zone Ride → Quick Ride.
A binary file format from Garmin used for both rides (recorded data) and routes (planned activities). Your Trainer accepts FIT files for route imports.
FTMS
Fitness Machine Service — the Bluetooth profile for controllable smart trainers. Your Trainer requires FTMS to control resistance, set target power, or simulate slope. See also: hardware guide → trainers.
FTP
Functional Threshold Power — the highest steady wattage you can sustain for roughly an hour. Your training zones (Z1–Z5) are anchored to your FTP. Get an estimate from a 20-minute test (FTP ≈ 95 % of your 20-minute average) or from a structured ramp test inside the app. See also: getting-started → FTP test.
G
Ghost rider
A replay of your previous best lap or ride on a route, shown as a translucent rider icon on the terrain visualization. The ghost moves at the speed your previous best moved; if you're ahead, you're beating your PB. Family ghosts let you race other household riders' PBs the same way. See also: Personal Bests → Ghost Rider.
GPX
An XML route format — the most common format for routes from RideWithGPS, Komoot, Strava routes, and Garmin Connect. Your Trainer accepts GPX files for route imports; the file needs elevation on every track point.
Gear (virtual)
Your Trainer's virtual-gear system maps your cadence range onto a configurable gear curve. Three presets sit on Profile → Virtual Gears: Road (22) models a real 50/34 × 11–30 road cassette; MTB (12) models a real 32T × 10–50 MTB cassette; Linear (26) is a synthetic preset with the broadest resistance range and evenly-spaced steps — no real-bike analogue. See the routes guide for which to pick.
H
HRE
Heart-Rate Efficiency — one of the six axes on the rider card's radar chart. Power per heartbeat (W/bpm). A higher number means the same wattage is produced at a lower heart rate — what gets-fitter looks like over time. Requires HRM data; rides without an HRM don't contribute. See also: Riders & Family → The six attributes.
HR-Zone workout
A workout where intervals target a heart-rate zone (1–5) rather than a power percentage. The trainer adjusts wattage live to keep the rider's HR in the target zone — useful when cardiovascular load is the training metric (recovery, base, polarised work). The START button reads LINK HRM until an HRM is connected. See also: training zones.
HRM
Heart-rate monitor — chest strap or arm band that reports heart rate over Bluetooth. Required for HR-Zone workouts; optional otherwise.
I
Intensity zone
A visual token (Z1–Z7) that drives the colour of an interval on the terrain visualization. Distinct from the actual power or HR target — the same wattage can be flagged as different zones in different riders' workouts depending on FTP. See also: training zones.
intervals.icu
A third-party training-log and planning service that pairs with Your Trainer over OAuth. Once connected, Today's plan and the next few days of planned workouts appear at the top of the workout-selection screen, the rider's personal intervals.icu library is browsable inline, and completed rides upload back to intervals.icu as FIT files. The integration is opt-in per rider and lives on Profile → Connected → intervals.icu. intervals.icu is built by a small team led by David Tinker. See also: workouts → intervals.icu integration.
L
Location permission
On Android 11 and older, the system requires Location access for Bluetooth scanning. Your Trainer never reads or stores your location; the permission is a side-effect of how older Androids gate Bluetooth. Android 12+ replaced this with the cleaner Nearby devices permission.
Lap (route)
One pass through a route's elevation profile. On a multi-lap ride the cockpit shows the current lap and the laps remaining; per-lap times are recorded separately and each lap gets its own Ghost Rider playback of the rider's previous best. The workout-side equivalent — looping a whole structured workout — uses the cockpit Repeat button. See also: routes guide → multi-lap routes.
LTHR
Lactate Threshold Heart Rate — your heart rate at lactate threshold, roughly the HR equivalent of FTP. Used to anchor HR zones the same way FTP anchors power zones. From v2.1.0 the seven-zone Friel/Coggan LTHR model drives HR-Zone workouts and the Heart Rate tab: enter LTHR by hand on the rider profile, or pull it from a connected intervals.icu account. See also: training zones → heart-rate zones.
N
Nearby devices
The Android 12+ permission for Bluetooth scanning. Replaces the awkward Location-permission requirement on older Android versions. Your Trainer prompts for it on first run.
O
Overall rating
The 0–99 number in the top-left of a rider card, calculated as a weighted blend of the six attribute ratings (PWR, SPR, CLB, END, CON, HRE — power and climbing carry the most weight). Drives the card's band label. See also: Riders & Family → Overall rating and band.
Over-under
An interval pattern that alternates between just-below-FTP (e.g. 95 %) and just-above-FTP (e.g. 105 %) without recovery between. Trains your ability to clear lactate while still working hard. Common shape: 3×(2 min @ 95 % / 1 min @ 105 %).
P
PWR
Power — one of the six axes on the rider card's radar chart. Based on FTP relative to body weight in W/kg. The single most-weighted axis in the overall rating. See also: Riders & Family → The six attributes.
Per-rider export
A portable .ytrider.json.gz file containing one rider's complete data — every session, profile field, personal best, and saved workout. Useful for moving between devices or sharing a rider's history. Export via Profile → Export My Data. Three restore paths: rider-selection screen → + Add Rider → Import from file, Settings → Data → Import Backup, or Profile → Data → Import & Merge on an existing rider to fold the file's sessions and PBs into that rider. For all riders at once, see device backup.
Personal best (PB)
The best result a rider has on a given workout. The metric is workout-type-specific: heart-rate cost for power workouts, average wattage for HR-Zone workouts, completion time for routes. PBs are per-rider — every rider on the device has their own set. See also: Personal Bests & Ghost Rider.
Planned workout
A workout scheduled for a specific day on the rider's intervals.icu calendar. When intervals.icu is connected, the workout-selection screen shows Today's plan at the top and a short Coming up list for the next few days. Planned workouts can be ridden straight from these rows, marked complete on intervals.icu when the ride finishes, and (via the kebab menu) re-dated or sent to intervals.icu from a library workout.
Power meter
A sensor that measures your wattage directly — pedal-based, crank-based, or built into the trainer itself. Most smart trainers report power directly, so a dedicated power meter is rarely needed for indoor training.
Primary locale
The locale a workout's strings were originally authored in. The runtime falls back to the primary-locale strings when the rider's own locale isn't present in the workout's strings block. See also: workout schema → localized strings.
R
Ramp interval
An interval whose target wattage changes linearly from a start percentage to an end percentage — useful for warm-ups and FTP tests. In the schema, set both targetPowerPercent and targetPowerEndPercent.
Ramp test
An FTP-estimation protocol: a long, gently-stepping ramp until you can't hold the power any more. The app's variant uses 10 W steps every minute; FTP ≈ 75 % of the highest minute completed.
Repeat button
The Repeat-icon button on the active-workout cockpit. Cycles Off → 1× → 2× → 3× → ∞ → Off. Loops the workout's main intervals; the warm-up runs once at the start and the cool-down runs once at the end after the last loop. The badge shows the count remaining (or ∞). Toggleable while the main intervals are running. The workout-side equivalent of multi-lap routes. See also: Workout Library → loop the whole workout.
Repeat group
A schema construct that authors one block-pattern once and tells Your Trainer how many times to play it. Repeat groups are expanded into individual blocks on import, so the rider sees each block in the upcoming-intervals strip during the ride. See also: workout schema → repeat groups.
Rider card
The portrait-style card that represents each rider on the User Selection and Workout Selection screens. Shows the rider's name, FTP and W/kg, weight, last 7 days' rides and hours, all-time rides and hours, and the date of the last ride. After 5 completed sessions, the card also surfaces an overall rating, a six-axis radar chart (PWR, SPR, CLB, END, CON, HRE), and a band label. Full treatment: Riders & Family.
ROUTE workout
A slope-driven simulation ride. The trainer follows the elevation profile from a GPX/FIT/TCX file; the rider chooses cadence and gearing. Distinct from POWER and HR_ZONE workouts, which are interval-shaped. See also: routes guide.
RPM
Revolutions per minute — the unit for cadence. See Cadence.
S
SPR
Sprint — one of the six axes on the rider card's radar chart. Based on the rider's 5-second peak power in W/kg. Captures the explosive end of the power profile — short, hard efforts. See also: Riders & Family → The six attributes.
SIM mode
Trainer-control mode where the trainer simulates the resistance of a slope (a 4 % gradient feels like a 4 % gradient). Used for route rides and when virtual gearing matters. Requires an FTMS trainer that supports slope simulation.
Slope behaviour
The Settings → Hardware option that chooses how the app commands the trainer: Auto (trainer picks), SIM, Resistance, or ERG. Most riders leave it on Auto.
Strava sync
Optional one-way upload of completed rides to Strava. Off by default; rider opts in via the Strava section on their rider Profile. Authorisation lives on your device; rides go to Strava only after they finish.
Strava route
A route you have saved on Strava. From v2.1.0, with Strava connected, your saved Strava routes appear in the route picker alongside imported files — tap to download and ride. See also: routes guide → Strava routes and starred segments.
Strava segment
A starred Strava segment surfaces in the route picker as a short route. The segment's GPS trace becomes the elevation profile; ride it indoors as you would any other route. Cleaner for repeated efforts than carving the segment out of a longer ride. See also: routes guide → Strava routes and starred segments.
Sweet spot
The training zone roughly between 88 % and 94 % FTP — fitness-effective without the recovery cost of pure threshold work. Often used in mid-volume training plans.
T
TCX
An XML route format from Garmin. Your Trainer accepts TCX files for route imports.
Terrain visualization
The mountainous-landscape view on the dashboard during a ride. The terrain ahead reflects the upcoming intervals or route slope; the rider's avatar sits at the current position.
Threshold
Riding at or close to FTP — typically Z4. Threshold intervals (2×20, 4×8, 5×6) are the bread-and-butter of fitness building.
TSS
Training Stress Score — a single number per ride that combines duration and intensity into an estimate of how taxing the ride was. A 60-minute ride at FTP scores 100 by definition; easier or shorter rides score less. Useful for tracking weekly training load.
Training zones
Bands of intensity defined relative to FTP (for power) or LTHR (for HR). Your Trainer uses the simplified Z1–Z5 model on the dashboard; some external plans use the seven-zone Coggan model. See also: training zones for the full mapping.
V
Visual workout editor
The drag-and-drop interval editor on the workout-create screen. Drag a block's height to change its target wattage, drag its edges to change its duration, tap to edit the label or coaching cues, drag the grip handle to reorder. Preset templates (Sweet Spot, Threshold, Pyramid, etc.) seed common shapes you then refine.
VO2max
The training zone roughly between 105 % and 120 % FTP — short, hard intervals (3–5 minutes) targeting the highest sustainable aerobic effort.
W
Watts (W)
The unit of power output — work done per second. Your dashboard's primary metric on POWER workouts.
Watts per kg (W/kg)
Power normalised by body weight. The cycling community's main "fitness number" because it predicts climbing speed: a 3 W/kg rider goes uphill faster than a 2 W/kg rider regardless of absolute wattage. The dashboard shows W/kg alongside raw watts.
Workout type
The category that selects the interval shape and the dashboard's primary metric: POWER (FTP-anchored), HR_ZONE (heart-rate-anchored), or ROUTE (slope-driven).
Y
.ytw
Your Trainer Workout — the file extension for Your Trainer's native workout format. Plain JSON; author by hand or generate from the AI Workout Coach. Imported via the share sheet. See also: workout schema.
Z
Z6, Z7 (seven-zone HR)
The two top heart-rate zones in the v2.1.0 LTHR system. Z6 covers VO2-max efforts above threshold; Z7 covers neuromuscular / sprint work above VO2-max. The five-zone Z1–Z5 vocabulary still applies to power; the seven-zone vocabulary is HR-specific and anchored to LTHR. See also: training zones → heart-rate zones.
Zone Ride
The unstructured-ride card on the Heart Rate tab — pick a heart-rate zone and HR Zone-Lock keeps the trainer's wattage adjusting live to hold your HR in zone. Cardiovascular intensity stays constant even as wattage drifts with fatigue. See also: Quick / Free / Zone Ride → Zone Ride.
.zwo
Zwift workout — an XML workout format. Your Trainer's Power tab accepts .zwo files for import.