The 3 Best and Worst Zwift Workouts, reviewed and ranked | 4 part scoring system

I take a look through the Zwift Workout library and pull out the best and worst workouts to review them.

Video was running a bit long so only ended up doing 3 best and 3 worst, not 4.

0:00 Intro
0:29 Scoring System
1:27 Best workout 1
4:22 Worst workout 1
6:26 Best workout 2
8:39 Worst workout 2
10:58 Best workout 3
13:54 Worst workout 3

[MoreBoingPlox]

It would be nice if the public could rate the workouts.

[minchia]

Thanks for the great video. Couple of suggestions, I preferred the rating out of 5 as it gives more range between bad and good, and maybe turn down the FTP setting for the review (maybe to 200w) to give us mere mortals a better perspective.

[adamsims]

'The McCarthy Special' is the hardest Zwift workout I've tried. So hard. 3 x 9min ramps. (3min @100% + 3min @112% + 3min @125%) x 3

[lsc]

Thanks Jesse. Watched in anticipation for The Gorby and pleased to see you rate it. I did that one a lot with great improvements. The trainer resistance gets harder to make you fail on last two. This is the best part! Beating the machine if you can. It’s like mtb death climbs.

[mohelu]

That’s was worth the watch!
Would you consider reviewing Zwift Plans?

[saracen]

The Gorby aka The Quitter
Me - fuckkk that
*Jesse Coyle* - It’s a tough workout, I love it; inspirational

You’re built different mate 😂

[petercallow]

I’ve looked at the SST(Med) workout myself. If you plot the workout by %FTP and use the Coggan - based definitions, the harder 5-min blocks are on the boundary between sweetspot and threshold and the easier ones are on the lower boundary with tempo, so it looks like sweetspot training to me? Of course, each target has a range around it …. I agree that the short surge in the middle seems a bit pointless and I definitely agree with the point that doing this every day will quickly lead to burnout; so the description needs changing. Also, returning to Coggan, the tougher intervals are shorter than he would recommend (and, as you point out - are the easier ones needed at all?).

You may argue that over-unders or threshold intervals are more efficient workouts (I agree), but some people get scared of these - because, as another YouTube channel presenter said “threshold intervals just suck” (not to avoid them, but if they’re done correctly, they are pretty tough).

I can’t really comment on the other workouts, but Zwift does seem to have quite a lot of gimmicky ones that don’t really seem to achieve anything (other than getting you on the trainer - which is training, of sorts).

Overall a video which made me stop and think a bit.

[tobiau]

14:40 The range of those power numbers is from 110% to 118% of FTP. Coggan's Z5 is 106 - 120% FTP. So it is entirely, medium to upper Z5. At least as accurate as anyone can guess someones Z5. Zwift thinks the same as expressed by the colour of the bars. Do you use different zone percentages?

[GrouEEf]

The Gorby is a quite classic 5x5 vo2max tbh... It's slightly low imho, you should do it at 112%-115% from what I understand. That's propably not valid as the zwift ramptest overestimates FTP signifficantly.

[griffin_cycling]

Did the Expand yesterday, before seeing this video, and found it quite good. What I hadn't expected from the description was the focus on high cadence - those high intensity sections were at a cadence of over 100rpm. I had thought the high intensity blocks looked low but doing the ride they were much tougher than I expected.

[alessiozanon]

Hi, cool video. For the first “Best workout “ I was thinking to reduce to 8 min the recovery from the two sets then add a 16 min recovery at the end, then repeat the two sets. Long story short : 18 min effort, 8 recovery 18 min effort, 16 recovery, 18 effort, 8 recovery 18 effort, cool down… yes not so “short”😅

[dan]

ZwiftInsider brought me here, nice video. Could you do a similar video with a workout plan or two in Zwift? I know that will be a lot more work, but doesn't hurt to ask!

[robj]

Great video will definitely give the recommended workouts a try.

[devidia]

Cool! implemented a few into my database of workouts

[MateusMartinss]

I like the video, In summary: 5x5 @ 105% and 6x3m @ vo2Max and 2x20m sweet spot, that's all that matters

[winbrendan]

Can you do best and worst base, build, race workouts -agnostic to zwift

[svh]

would you recommend to just bump the percentage up a bit in the 'step by step' workout, so all of the blocks will be solid zone 5 work? Might be a solid workout then, considering your critique on it

[jhref]

They give massive recovery intervals because most people on zwift are rolling around with a FTP estimate that is WAYYYY too high. They'd have tiny completion rates if they did the 6-8 min recovery.

[akiofearth]

What do you think about the Zwift cardio crusher workouts?

[zBordiYT]

The Gorby is definitely too hard for me!! Can't push that power from the 4th set 🤔😱