For athletes using a stationary bike, this chart is meant to provide you guidelines for setting the appropriate tension level. You may have to experiment with your settings on your trainer to match these Effort Levels. There may or may not be a Tension level 1-5 setting on your trainer. Just remember to try and match the Effort Levels with the Gearing that Coach Troy is calling out in the workouts.

If you have compact cranks (FSA style), you should use this chart instead. It was developed by Dr. Elvis Cepus, a Research Associate at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Materials Engineering. We wish to thank Dr. Cepus for his efforts in putting compact crank chart for Spinervals.

Notes:

53 = the big chainring in the front where your cranks are (see picture below)
39 = the small ring

Please note if you have three chain rings in front you will not use the smallest one.

When in the small ring, tension will always be considered "Easy."

The image below shows a training zone intensity scale. You may use this as a reference for what zones correspond with the intensity percentage scale used in our DVDs.

Below is an example of how the gearing/tension, rpms and intensity percentage may be displayed throughout our workout videos.