Getting Started with Velocity: The Data Geek’s Indoor Training Platform

As time continues its relentless march forward, daylight is in ever shorter supply here in the Northern Hemisphere. At Slowtwitch’s Tundra Division outpost, we’re at a whole whopping 9.5 hours of light and fading fast. With that means the wind is colder, the shadows longer, and riding time, if you can get it, requires more and more preparatory time.

In fewer words: this sucks, it’s not worth it, I’m just going to ride inside.

It’s not like that is a particularly sizable change for me; after all, I did 95% of my riding mileage leading up to this year’s IRONMAN attempt on my reliable Wahoo KICKR. And although my stubbornness to do something about saddle pain was the likely culprit in my ongoing injury battle, training indoors typically limits injury risk and increases the potential for training plan compliance. After all, there’s little excuse for not knowing how long an interval is supposed to be when you have either a timer, or a structured workout, staring you back in the face.

The indoor training industry exploded during the pandemic. We’ve seen a lot of platforms debut over the last couple of years, entering into a crowded marketplace that includes everything from Peloton to Zwift to myWhoosh to IndieVelo (which will soon be part of TrainingPeaks). One of the newer entrants into this arena is Velocity — and they’ve carved out a niche for themselves that I think will prove to be popular with athletes, coaches, and clubs.

The Big Sell: Coach-Led Virtual Training Sessions

At its core, Velocity currently offers a stable of cycling and strength workouts (either as a plan or a choose-your-own-adventure). It’s not too dissimilar from, say, the library of workouts that you might find on Zwift — although Velocity’s organization of their content is far easier to navigate. You then complete those workouts by pairing your smart device to the platform.

The big differentiator when doing those workouts, though, is that they are virtually led by a coach. There’s a coach video, talking through the purpose of part of a workout, or talking through the execution tactics for that workout. It’s not just some text flashing across the screen as you go along; it’s a person. Better yet, occasionally these workouts are live — where you can join the coach (and other riders) in a virtual setting to work out together.

If this sounds a bit like Peloton, well, you’re not far from the mark — minus, of course, the hefty venture capital backing and the requirement of buying a specific bike or treadmill to do the workouts.

Going for a Ride

Velocity, on desktop machines, is built directly on Google Chrome architecture. It means that you’re running everything off of Chrome; no app to download. Log into the platform, and then you’re brought to the Home Screen to select your workout session.

Once you’ve picked the workout that you want to ride, you’ll click to start it, and then you are brought to the pairing screen. Pairing devices utilizes Bluetooth; my KICKR connected faster than it usually does when I’m trying to ride on Zwift. You’re then asked to turn on your camera and microphone so you can interact with others during the ride (and, potentially, for coaching feedback — more on that in a bit). Once you’ve gotten through those checks, you’re ready to ride.

The main screen view once into a workout is of the instructor. The volume of the recording is high without getting distorted, which is good when you as an athlete may need to turn volume up on your machine in order to hear over your trainer or fan. On the left hand side you find the upcoming parts of the workout. And then at the bottom are the two main “tachometers,” as I referred to them: power to the left, cadence to the right. Each of them gives you a highlighted range for each section of the workout based on the proscribed power/cadence. You also receive a compliance score when in slope mode; compliance mode turns off in ERG mode.

Now, for the data geeks amongst us who have been begging for this kind of information: you don’t only see instant power and cadence. You also get averages. It’s something we’ve seen riders clamoring for from other platforms for years. Well, here’s one that’s in tune to that request.

I personally preferred using Velocity in ERG mode; I don’t like having to manipulate trainer resistance during structured workouts as it takes me away from the gamification of the ride. But from a ride experience perspective, it was otherwise flawless; no lag, no connection dropouts, and no “ERG death spiral” that can occasionally plague other systems.

For Coaches and Clubs

Remember that thing I mentioned about camera analysis? Coaches, how would you like to be able to review an athlete’s position on board their bike, or their body language during a particular session? Or perhaps you simply just want to engage with some of your team at once, and don’t want to have to run both a training platform and a conferencing system and maybe even a chat app like Discord?

You’re in luck. If you’re a coach (or a club) that signs up for Velocity, you can be the coach on screen; host live rides; review athlete data; or connect with your team. It’s a white label platform that includes your company logo and destination for athletes brought in through the portal.

I think particularly for coaches who strongly prefer heavily structured rides that require a hefty amount of athlete compliance, this is a breakthrough offering. Off the top of my head, I know that there are coaches that I have worked with in the past (either on a personal athlete or professional level) who would benefit from the content delivery and community building aspects of this; they may have wanted to deliver a community riding experience but the multiple apps dissuaded them from pursuing it further.

In all, it’s a pretty compelling package for both athletes and coaches/clubs. It’s as if you took elements of Sufferfest, Peloton, and TrainerRoad and turned them into an all-in-one solution. That’s a really interesting place to be — and one we will continue to investigate further over the coming weeks.