Training Zones
Last updated: 2026-06-14
Your Trainer is a multi-rider indoor cycling app for Android tablets. Smart-trainer control with local data + local control. One-time purchase.
Training zones are bands of intensity defined relative to a personal anchor — your FTP for power, your LTHR for heart rate. They're how a workout written by someone else lands at the right effort for you instead of generic "moderate" or "hard".
From v2.1.0 the heart-rate zones follow the seven-zone Friel/intervals.icu model anchored to LTHR. Power zones still use the simplified five-zone model.
Power zones
Your Trainer's power zones follow the simplified five-zone model. Each band is a percentage of your FTP and corresponds to a different physiological adaptation.
| Zone | % FTP | What it feels like | What it builds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Z1 — Active recovery | < 55 % | Easy spin, conversational, you barely notice it. | Recovery between hard days, warm-up / cool-down. |
| Z2 — Endurance | 56–75 % | Steady effort, full sentences possible, you could hold it for hours. | Aerobic base, fat oxidation, mitochondrial density. The bedrock of fitness. |
| Z3 — Tempo / Sweet spot | 76–94 % | Working but controlled. Sweet spot (88–94 %) sits at the top of this band. | Sub-threshold fitness without the recovery cost of pure threshold work. |
| Z4 — Threshold | 95–105 % | Hard, focused, single-word answers only. The classic 20-minute effort. | FTP itself — the highest steady wattage you can sustain. |
| Z5 — VO2max & above | > 105 % | Burning, breathing fast, can't sustain past a few minutes. | Top-end aerobic capacity, neuromuscular power. |
The dashboard's terrain visualization colours each interval by its intensity zone. The colour is a visual cue — the actual training stimulus is the wattage your trainer holds you to.
Heart-rate zones — seven-zone LTHR
From v2.1.0 the heart-rate zones follow the seven-zone LTHR-anchored model used by Friel and intervals.icu. LTHR — the heart rate at lactate threshold, roughly the HR equivalent of FTP — anchors every band. The earlier five-zone Max-HR-anchored model is gone; existing history migrates automatically the first time the app opens after the update.
| Zone | % LTHR | What it feels like | Approx. power-zone match |
|---|---|---|---|
| Z1 — Recovery | ≤ 80 % | Very easy, recovery breathing. | Power Z1. |
| Z2 — Aerobic / Endurance | 81–89 % | Conversational. The "all-day" pace. | Power Z2. |
| Z3 — Tempo | 89–93 % | Moderate-hard. You can speak in short sentences. | Power Z3. |
| Z4 — Sub-threshold | 93–99 % | Hard. The HR equivalent of riding at FTP. | Power Z4. |
| Z5 — Super-threshold | 100–102 % | Very hard. Heart rate sitting just over LTHR. | Power Z5 (lower end). |
| Z6 — Aerobic capacity (VO2max) | 103–105 % | Burning, breathing fast. | Power Z5 (VO2 region). |
| Z7 — Anaerobic | ≥ 106 % | Spike territory; you can't hold it. | Power Z5 (anaerobic). |
Drivable Z1–Z5 vs display Z1–Z7
HR-Zone Ride locks the rider's heart rate by adjusting the trainer's wattage live. To do that, the controller needs a target band with both a floor and a ceiling it can track against. The workout editor therefore authors targets in Z1–Z5 only:
- Z1 drivable narrows to 70–80 % LTHR — the upper sub-band of the display Z1. The full 0–80 % range has no meaningful ceiling, so it can't be driven against.
- Z5 drivable widens to 100–105 % LTHR — merging display Z5 and Z6. Those narrow 3 % bands aren't drivable separately, and physiology smears the rider across both at that intensity.
- Z6 and Z7 are display-only — they appear in time-in-zone history and on the cockpit's HR colour band, but the editor doesn't expose them as targets. Z7 in particular is a spike band, not a sustainable target.
If a workout pulled from intervals.icu targets HR Z6 or Z7, Your Trainer rides it as drivable Z5 — the same physiological territory in practice. The history view records actual time-in-zone across all seven bands.
Heart rate lags behind power — when you ramp up, HR takes 30–90 seconds to catch up; when you ease off, it stays elevated. HR-Zone workouts account for this by giving the rider longer to settle into a zone than power workouts give to settle into a wattage.
Coggan-7 vs the app's Z1–Z5 (power)
External power-based training plans sometimes use the seven-zone Coggan model rather than the simplified five-zone version. The mapping isn't quite linear — Coggan splits Z5 into three (VO2max, anaerobic, neuromuscular) and the app folds them back together for power. (HR is a different story; see the seven-zone LTHR table above.)
| Coggan zone | Coggan name | Coggan % FTP | App zone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Z1 | Active recovery | < 55 % | Z1 |
| Z2 | Endurance | 56–75 % | Z2 |
| Z3 | Tempo | 76–90 % | Z3 |
| Z4 | Threshold | 91–105 % | Z4 |
| Z5 | VO2max | 106–120 % | Z5 |
| Z6 | Anaerobic capacity | 121–150 % | Z5 (folded in) |
| Z7 | Neuromuscular power | > 150 % | Z5 (folded in) |
If a plan from elsewhere says "Z6 for 30 seconds", treat that as a Z5 block at the top end of the band — well above 105 % FTP, short duration. The colour on the dashboard will read as Z5; the wattage tells the real story.
Finding your FTP
Four methods, in increasing order of accuracy:
Educated guess
If you've never measured: 2.0 W/kg is a reasonable starting point for a recreational rider new to structured training; 2.5–3.0 W/kg for someone who rides several hours a week; 3.5+ W/kg for a regular endurance cyclist. Multiply by your weight in kg. Refine after a few rides — the app's training-load metrics will look weird if FTP is wildly off.
In-app FTP estimator
Quicker than guessing W/kg yourself. Profile → FTP → Estimate… opens a three-question dialog (experience, weekly riding hours, self-rated level) and returns a wattage scaled by your recorded weight. Accurate to roughly ±15 % — better than a cold guess, not as good as a real test. Set your weight first; the estimator needs it.
20-minute test
Warm up for 15–20 minutes, do a 20-minute all-out steady effort, take your average wattage, and multiply by 0.95. The 5 % haircut converts a 20-minute power into a sustainable 60-minute power. Mentally hard but the most reliable for trained riders.
Ramp test
The app's built-in protocol — a long, gently-stepping ramp until you can't hold the power any more. Less mentally taxing than the 20-minute test because each minute is short. FTP ≈ 75 % of the highest minute completed. Best for newer riders or riders coming back from a break.
Finding your Max HR
Max HR is your peak heart rate under all-out effort — the ceiling that anchors HR-zone calculations. Two paths:
In-app Max HR estimator
Profile → Max HR → Estimate…, enter your age, and the dialog returns the Tanaka formula result (208 − 0.7 × age) in bpm. The Tanaka formula is more accurate than the older 220 − age rule, especially past 40. A sensible starting point for HR-zone calculations.
Max-effort test
The only way to get your real personal number. After a thorough warm-up, do a series of all-out short efforts — a 3-minute hill repeat with the last 30 seconds at maximum, or a flat-ground sprint after 5 minutes hard. The highest value your HRM records is your Max HR. Hard on the body; not something to do casually. The age-based estimate is good enough for most riders.
Finding your LTHR
Three paths:
Pull from intervals.icu
If you keep a training log on intervals.icu, the simplest route is to connect the account (Profile → Connected → intervals.icu) and let Your Trainer pull the LTHR your intervals.icu profile already holds. The seven-zone bands are the same on both sides, so the numbers line up bpm-for-bpm. Re-derives whenever you change LTHR on either side.
Use the FTP-test by-product
If you've already done an FTP test, you already have an LTHR estimate — your average HR for the final 20 minutes of a 30-minute hard effort is a good proxy. From a fresh rider's perspective:
- Warm up 15–20 minutes.
- Ride at the hardest steady pace you can hold for 30 minutes.
- Average HR for the final 20 of those 30 minutes ≈ LTHR.
Enter it by hand
Profile → LTHR → type a number. Useful if a recent test or a coach has given you a value to work with.
HR varies more day-to-day than power does (sleep, hydration, caffeine all move it), so treat LTHR as a less precise number than FTP. A range — say "168–172 BPM" — usually fits reality better than a single value.
When to retest
Your FTP rises as you train. Old FTP numbers make today's Z3 feel like Z4 — the workout author intended sweet spot but it lands at threshold. A few signs FTP has drifted up:
- Threshold intervals stop feeling threshold-shaped — you finish them with energy to spare.
- Sweet-spot rides feel easy.
- Heart rate runs lower than the wattage suggests it should.
Retest every 6–8 weeks during a structured block, every 12–16 weeks during maintenance phases. After a long break (illness, injury, off-season), retest before your first hard session — both up- and down-drift happen.