How to Climb the Alpe du Zwift FASTER! 📈 Zwift Cycling Tips and Tricks Tutorial

📈 Coaching available at: trainingpeaks.com/coach/brianmusum
🤩 Instagram: https://instagram.com/breakawayb?igsh...
📍 Strava:   / strava  
⚡ Daily cycling content: YouTube.com/@BreakawayB?sub_confirmat...

🎬CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Intro
0:17 - AdZ info
0:54 - Tip 1: Execute a pacing strategy
3:11 - Tip 2: Proper bike selection
3:44 - Tip 3: Use your seated power
4:15 - Tip 4: Pedal at a high cadence
4:40 - Tip 5: Fuel during the effort
5:42 - Review of my AdZ attempt
6:38 - Outro

📈 The Alpe du Zwift is a challenging climb in the virtual world of Zwift, and a benchmark climb for many cyclists. Here are five tips to help you climb it faster than ever before:
The first and most important tip for improving your time up the Alpe du Zwift is to have a pacing strategy. Maintaining a steady effort without surging is what we’re aiming for here, and there’s a couple simple ways to help you to figure out which wattage you should be aiming for. One way is to look at the data from your previous personal best time up the climb, like I showed you in the beginning of this video. Give an honest assessment as to what your Rate of Perceived Effort was on that attempt, and then adjust your wattage goal to be correspondingly higher than that personal best. If your personal best Alpe du Zwift time was achieved with a 200 watt average and your rate of perceived effort was ten-out-of-ten, then your next goal may be to hold 205 watts. If your personal best was achieved with a 200 watt average and your rate of perceived effort was an eight out of ten, then you can aim for something higher, such as 220 watts.
So that’s one great method for setting your pacing strategy, and the second method for determining a realistic wattage for the climb is to use your FTP. If you’re doing a climb that will take over an hour, you can’t realistically expect to maintain a level of effort that is above your FTP. So, even if your FTP is different than mine, the concept is the same: if you do your homework prior to entering the climb, you can set a wattage pace that you can hold steady for the duration of the entire climb. I’m not saying it will be easy, because it will most definitely be the opposite, but if your FTP is set properly, the science says that you can closely estimate the amount of watts you can hold for a specific duration. The closer that duration is to one hour, the more accurate your estimation will be.
The Alpe du Zwift is the best climb within Zwift for nailing your pacing strategy, too, because it displays your average watts for all 22 sector times on the left side of the screen. You should use these sector averages to ensure you’re sticking to the pacing strategy.
Make sure you’re using the best bike and wheels available to you, as this can make a significant difference in your overall time. The ZwiftInsider website has all the different frames and wheels ranked in order of their climbing abilities. As a level 28 Zwifter, the best climbing combination currently available to me is the Canyon Ultimate CFR frame on Zip 353 NSW wheels that you see here. Listen, there’s plenty of great choices, use ZwiftInsider’s website and don’t let me catch you slogging up this climb on a mountain bike.
I’ve said it a million times, and now I’ll make it a million and one: the next tip is stay seated: Try to stay seated as much as possible while climbing, because standing up is less efficient, and therefore it’s more tiring. However, if you need to shake out the legs or the gradient is too steep: don’t be afraid to get out of the saddle for short bursts. At the end of the day, though, your body will generate power more efficiently while seated than if you’re standing, so do your best to remain in the saddle and focus on being smooth and maintaining a good cadence.
Speaking of cadence, the fourth tip is to pedal at a high cadence. Select a gear that allows you to pedal at a cadence of around 80-95 revolutions per minute, as this will allow you to pedal more efficiently and reduce the strain on your muscles. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous tip, and falls under the bigger umbrella of movement efficiency, which results in less wasted energy where it can be avoided, meaning you can spend more energy where it matters.
The fifth and final tip for climbing the Alpe du Zwift faster is to fuel your body during the effort. You’ve probably noticed a trend by now, where the previous tips have been been focused on making the most efficient use of the energy you have in your system. The average time spent climbing the Alpe du Zwift is between 60 and 90 minutes, and you’d be crazy not to be putting energy into your system for a grueling effort that takes such a long time. PPut more energy in, so you can push more energy out.
Climbing any mountain takes practice, especially one as intimidating as the Alpe du Zwift, so don't get discouraged if you find it difficult at first.

#cycling #RideFaster #cyclingperformance