Zwift revolutionized indoor training, but they didn’t stop there. We talk with Nick Kalkounis and Ryan Cooper about both the history and future of Zwift’s innovations.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Trevor Connor: Hello and welcome to Fast Talk your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host, Trevor Connor, here with Chris Case. The myth of Eddie Merckx was that he’d go into his basement to do six hour rides on a trainer staring at a wall to build mental toughness that might have worked for him, but for cycling mortals before the advent of Zift in 2014, 15 minutes felt like six hours.
It just wasn’t very fun. A dozen years ago when Zw first gamified indoor training, it instantly became more fun. Since then, WT and other platforms like RGT Training Peaks Virtual and my whoosh have evolved beyond simple games to become social hubs, training platforms, coaching tools, and legitimate racing platforms.
Zwift with its 1 million users, has become its own ecosystem, evolving far beyond its humble origins. The question is, where will it go from here? Joining us today to talk about the past, present, and future of Zw Ft are their two directors of product development. Nick Cal Conus leads the training and competition features for Zw.
Well, Ryan Cooper recently joined the company to lead science and performance. Together, they’ll share Zw T’s history, describe the million users, and help us understand why people currently come. Towt. More importantly, we’ll talk with them about how Zw continues to evolve. Well, it started as a virtual gaming platform.
It is rapidly becoming a full training platform, helping athletes meet their goals, refine their training, and may even start to help them know when to go hard and when to rest. Ryan brings a background in AI development. The question we have for him is if AI can bring new intelligence to the virtual platform, it’s a whole new virtual world, so bust out your virtual bike, put on your virtual kit, and let’s make it fast.
[00:01:47] Chris Case: Hey listeners, come ride with us now through March. Trevor Conner and I are hosting Zw rides every Tuesday with special guests like Neil Henderson, Brent Buckwalter, Dr. Steven Seiler, and more. Each workout will be an easy no drop ride, so you can chat your cycling training questions to our experts and get instant answers, all while enjoying a one hour workout.
Register for Fast Talk Labs, zw rides on zw.com or see our guest list and register on Fast Talk labs.com/zw.
[00:02:18] Trevor Connor: Well, Nick and Ryan, first time on the show, so a big welcome to you.
[00:02:22] Ryan Cooper: It’s great to be here. Yeah. Thank you, Trevor.
[00:02:24] Trevor Connor: Well, today we are gonna talk about Zw and how it’s evolved and what sort of role it’s playing in athlete’s life.
And so before we dive into the history of zw and its original intentions, just give us the couple minutes who you are and what your role at Zw is.
[00:02:44] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, thanks Trevor. My name is Nickel Kuni, director of Product Management at Swift. I lead our training and competition features. My background is I really am building consumer products at scale.
I worked at Amazon on Alexa for many years. Blackberry Messenger at Blackberry, as well as a whole bunch of other tech companies, including eBay for a bit. So my whole career has been about taking products that serve millions of people and making those experiences feel personal, but obviously a lifelong cyclist.
I’ve been racing the Provincial Road Series in Ontario for almost 20 years and have been on Zift since the. Beta in 2014. So yeah, when we talk today about Zw being a training platform, a virtual platform, it’s really my world, both professionally and personally. It’s what I obsess about and think about every day.
And Ryan, tell us a little bit about your background.
[00:03:39] Ryan Cooper: So my background, it’s kinda funny. I’m similar to Nick. I was a original beta tester, so 2014 Onw. At the time I was. Working on a project that became a company called Best Bike Split. We ended up selling that to training peaks. I spent seven years at training Peaks.
Then oddly enough also went to Amazon. But my role at Zw now is also director product, but in charge of kind of science and performance. So most of my background in endurance sports has been around kind of digging into the science behind metrics, the science behind performance. Then trying to bring that to the masses.
So at Best Bike Split that was around race strategy at Training Peaks. A lot of it was around kind of the WKO background and then now as we we move to Zw, kind of bringing some of that same science and performance background into Zw. So yeah, super excited. It feels like I’ve kind of gone full circle, so I remember 2014 really.
Seeing Swift for the first time and going, oh man, this is gonna change training game. And then now, oh man, 12 years later, actually being part of the team is pretty awesome.
[00:04:46] Chris Case: Why has it taken so long?
[00:04:47] Ryan Cooper: It’s a good question, but unlike Nick, he leveled up a lot faster than I am. So I’m trying to close the gap now.
So since I’ve been here, it’s only been three months. I’ve gone from level 50 to 62, so I’ve been starting to put in some of the time in the basement.
[00:05:03] Trevor Connor: I’m gonna say I was proud of my level 82, but Nick, you got me killed.
[00:05:07] Ryan Cooper: There’s a lot of peer pressure at Swift to level up, that’s for sure.
[00:05:11] Trevor Connor: My problem is that I have constantly gotten really close to the top level, and then when I’m like a couple levels away, you guys increase what the top level is.
So I’ve never been able to quite get there. But I think you hit on really where we wanna start, which is 2014, this came around and really changed things, and I remember. In 2013, I wa wanted to do a five hour ride. It was the middle of winter. I went outside, it started snowing. I only got like two and a half hours in.
I came home, went, oh God, I gotta do two hours now on the trainer. Paid way too much money for a bad movie and managed to suffer through an hour. I couldn’t even make it to the end of the movie. Now I can go down in my basement, get on zw. I don’t do too many six hour rides, but three hour ride, four hour ride, no problem.
So it’s really, at least for me, and from a lot of people I’ve heard it’s changed things. But tell us a little bit about its origins and what it was trying to do in those early days.
[00:06:18] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, I mean, I think you’ve pretty much hit on it, right? So John Mayfield, who’s one of the co-founders, as well as Eric Min, who’s our CEO.
Basically looked at ways to just make indoor training not suck, sitting in your basement on a Kirk Connect the Green Machine or whatever. There’s a whole bunch of different names where you’d have to manually adjust a dial to increase the intensity. You’d burn out wheels on trainers at that time. You know, I think there was, compu trainer was sort of born, but it was really complex and very expensive to get started.
So. Indoor training was just really boring, right? As you mentioned, Trevor, you’re staring at a wall or watching a a movie was really the only way to kind of get through some of those long rides. And I think training too was a lot different, right? So Zw really just gamified that pain cave and looked to add some social motivation.
And I remember coming indoors in the winter and seeing the same people that you’re riding outside as a virtual avatar. Having the same conversations that you would have riding with your friends outside, that just kind of continued on and uh, that was really the early ethos that set up the community Ofw.
I remember my first
[00:07:32] Ryan Cooper: experience using Zift, and I think Nick mentioned a lot of the old equipment that we used to have. And so I had bought into all of it because I was very time constrained and so I just didn’t have the time to go outside and do five hour rides, four hour rides, these long group rides.
’cause I was doing school and working full time and so. The most efficient way to get workouts were was inside, but it was just so tedious and so boring. And so you just sit there with comp trainer or with just little lines kind of following lines on the screen, and it just, you couldn’t do more than an hour, like you said, Trevor, right?
And so this wt comes around and then suddenly. You’re on this little island to start with just Jarvis. But you could spend an hour and a half, two hours going around the same island ’cause it was just so much more engrossing. So soon as I got on it for the first time, I was like, okay, this is it.
[00:08:24] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah. For our 10 year anniversary last year, we actually relaunched Jarvis Island with a lot of the.
Original things that we had around like the Blue Robo Pacers and just a whole bunch of stuff that brought back the early days of Jarvis. So it was quite fun.
[00:08:43] Trevor Connor: So it sounds like really the origins of this was just based on creating something enjoyable, creating a, an indoor experience. That doesn’t suck.
That actually makes it palatable to get on the trainer and do a couple hours. So the question I have for you is now looking at the 10 years, there’s now a whole lot of big players in this cycling world, like training Peak, Strava. There’s a whole lot of other platforms I’m very interested in how has your place evolved?
What really is the niche for Zift?
[00:09:18] Ryan Cooper: I think. The main thing for SWT is that it’s, it becomes a destination because there’s so much content in SWT that it becomes a destination for athletes that are training for events or just athletes that are trying to explore new types of riding. So racing on swt or riding in large robo pacer groups where you have.
A lot of chat going back and forth. So it really is like a group ride. And so we see athletes that build it into their training programs. We see coaches that send athletes there ’cause they know they can have a controlled environment. And then we see people that just like to play the game. So they like to have fun, like to level up, like to gain xp.
But we see these different kind of cohorts of people come towt for all these different reasons. And so something that maybe started off to just. Make indoor cycling not suck has evolved into a full-fledged gaming platform as well as a training platform. So it’s this content. Having this community and a large group of kind of critical mass of riders really makes it something that it’s hard to kind of replicate with other training platforms.
[00:10:27] Trevor Connor: Was this evolution something that you anticipated? Was it something that they expected when they first created this, or did this really just kind of happened as you saw how people are using it? You now have literal swift racing leagues. There are now professionals, WT racing teams. In the early days, was that something that they anticipated or is this just something that revealed itself?
[00:10:50] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, I think it’s more of the latter where the evolution of eSports has just come to, to be realized. And what we’re seeing is that it’s not just with us, right? And so Training Peaks has their virtual platform now in Maro. And you know, really tells you something important, which is that the category is real and it’s growing.
As you mentioned, Trevor W Right. With the professional teams, and it’s almost, I mean, it’s essentially another discipline, right? Within cycling.
[00:11:18] Trevor Connor: I found that evolution really interesting because it was just a way to make. Things a little more enjoyable and has sense evolved into becoming its own thing.
It’s almost something in and of itself. It’s not just a tool to help with quote real racing and real riding, but it is actually now its own form of real racing and riding. So last question I have for you about where you’re currently at was wt. I know you have over a million users. What type of people are coming to Swift?
Is it everybody under the sun or do you find that there’s particular categories of users that make up the bulk of the over a million people?
[00:11:56] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, it’s definitely sort of everyone under the sun from total beginners who might not even have outdoor bike or any sort of two wheel vehicle to World Pros, world Tour pros.
So we’re seeing, a couple weeks ago I was on a ride with Matthew Vanderpool. Eric Min doing a big ride. So it definitely crosses a, a very large subset of riders.
[00:12:22] Ryan Cooper: One of my favorite things is that like you’re riding and then as you’re riding you’ll see a rider come by you. Well, usually it’s coming by me anyway.
And they’ll have the little pro jersey on, right? And like, so we have a little emblem next to a lot of the pros and it kind of shows that they’re a pro. And it’s just so cool to go. This is a World Tour Pro that just rode past me, and we’re on the same course. We’re doing the same. Not the same watts for kilo, but we’re doing the same route.
Then you kind of have that sense that everybody is on this platform. The other thing I thought was really interesting that I learned since joining is the number of people like Nick mentioned, that their first. Entry into cycling at all is wt. And so whether they bought us Wif ride, which is our hardware kinda hardware frame and trainer, a lot of people buy that and that’s their first cycling experience.
And it’s is really cool to see like people getting into cycling indoor and then saying, okay, well now I need to go outdoor. Right? And so you have that full spectrum of riders on the platform and it’s, yeah, it’s just amazing to see it as a growth driver to cycling as opposed to just a destination.
[00:13:30] Trevor Connor: Which is really interesting because I know the common belief was Zift was the tool for people who were training.
So people who were racers, people who had a structured training plan, they went towt, where the more fitness oriented person would go to things like Peloton. But it seems like that’s changing as well. Sounds like you’re getting a lot of the people who are just there for fitness.
[00:13:54] Nick Kalkounis: We’re definitely seeing that, and as Ryan mentioned, I think WT has done a great job lowering the barrier to entry in the sport, right?
You’ve seen the cost of Smart Trainers drop most recently and over the holidays you could buy Aswt Ride with a very high-end smart trainer for less than a thousand bucks. We also had the Tour de France, right? The virtual Tour de France happened on Zw as well during COVID.
[00:14:23] Trevor Connor: I heard stories over in Europe of people actually going to the lawns of some world tour riders and trying to cheer them, like looking in their window, seeing them on their trainers, doing this WT race, the virtual tour de France, and trying to cheer ’em from the, I guess, the sidelines of their front yard.
[00:14:41] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, absolutely. That’s funny. And then again, as part of that introduction to Tour de France. Sponsor of the Tour de France, FMA Vic Swift, which has, uh, been super successful and I think elevated the sport of women’s professional cycling as well.
[00:14:55] Ryan Cooper: Yeah, I, I got the chance to go see it for the first time last year, at least a couple stages of it.
And it was such amazing energy and like to see the Women’s Tour France, and I think it was eight stages this past time and the level of competition was amazing and the, but. What was more exciting was just the level of crowd that you had and like cheering everywhere on the sidelines.
[00:15:17] Trevor Connor: So let’s shift gears here and look ahead a little bit.
Very interested in where you see these virtual platforms going. What do you feel? So we just talked about the fact that it started as just make inside riding more enjoyable. To, it’s now become a thing in and of itself. People race on it. There’s actually professionals, WIF teams. What is the next evolution, not just for Zw, but all these virtual platforms?
Where do you see them heading?
[00:15:49] Ryan Cooper: It is interesting ’cause it’s not necessarily new, right? Like, so if we think back a few years ago, there was some, some virtual platforms that had kind of come around. So if you think of Road Grand Tours, which. Changed to RGT. Obviously training Peaks recently launched Training Peaks Virtual, which came outta Indi, I believe.
I think the next iteration of a lot of these platforms though, they’re gonna kind of naturally find their niche. So with training peaks, obviously they’ll likely lean into coaching, right? And so leaning into their coaches and having a place where kind of coaches and riders are doing more workouts. And so kinda leaning into the training side of things.
Whereas other platforms may lean more into the social aspect or races the benefit, I think that Zw has obviously as a first mover, but also as an established social hub and an established content. So as people come in, they start to learn what they like to do on the platform and know that’s gonna be available.
And so I think that’s. For us continuing to listen to our audience, our customer base, and being obsessed. This is something Nick and I well versed in from Amazon Days, but being obsessed with the customer and so being able to listen to the customer and iterate on things that benefits everybody and the platform.
So I guess to, to kinda roundabout answer your question, I think what we’ll find. It’ll be hard for all these virtual platforms to succeed at being everything for everyone. And so I think what we’ll kind of see is them starting to focus heavy on their particular niches.
[00:17:17] Trevor Connor: So is this becoming something like social media where originally there was really just one or two social media platforms.
Now we have multiple, but you go to X if you want this particular type of social media experience, you go to Instagram if you want that particular type. You go to Facebook if you’re looking to talk to friends and see what’s going on in their life. Is that what’s happening with these virtual platforms is they’re each kind of finding their social group and their niche.
Or is there a lot of overlap?
[00:17:48] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s definitely overlap, but as Ryan mentioned, I think what we’re seeing, and this is anecdotal from riders that we follow as well, is people will go to the platforms for specific needs, right? So as Ryan mentioned, Mai Rou with Sunday Race Series and there’s certain races that people like to do there.
So we started off making suffering in the basement less, a lot less boring or horrible. Then making it better with the evolution of the hardware and all the advances that we made there across the industry, right? With with better trainers, ZW. Most recently with the dozens of trainers that are zw ready, right?
So you don’t even need a cassette now. It’s a single cog. It’s all virtual shifting. So making that experience a lot better. So that was making the experience better. Now I think it’s making you better as a, as an athlete, right? And so I think personalization is definitely something that we’re seeing more and more, right?
Getting these platforms to know who you are. I think one of the things, we recently launched a feature called Next Up, which is our personalized recommendations and. What we’ve learned from that is that we getting to that point where we needed to launch it was understanding who that athlete was, right?
Not being just the place where you go and you execute that, that workout, or what your coaches told you, but also understanding what the user has done outside, right? So connecting with other services like Garmin Guru Hammerhead as well, so that we have that holistic view. And understand who that athlete is.
And so making that experience, I think better and more personalized is definitely where I think we’ll see these virtual platforms and platforms like Zw go.
[00:19:29] Trevor Connor: I am glad you brought that up because that was one of the questions I really wanted to ask you. Obviously, training Peaks, which is a training platform, so I’m using training platform to talk about a tool that helps you map out your training and where you can record All your training has entered into the virtual platform space.
They now have theirs. So I’m really interested in whether this is a direction that we are seeing in virtual platforms. Are you gonna start seeing a merger of the virtual platform and the training platform to create a more comprehensive tool for the athlete?
[00:20:09] Ryan Cooper: I think it’s very dependent on the specific platforms.
Nick can go into detail, but I think there’s over 20 partner integrations that we have. And so for us, we look at it and we say, okay, well. As a first step, let’s connect with all these existing training platforms so that people can then come in and ride on Zift and do their workouts, do their training. As you start to see, like a training piece will obviously as a training platform targeted particularly at coaches.
Coaches and athletes are coached to athletes. They’ll start to integrate more of that likely into their virtual platform, but it doesn’t mean that. You don’t want to give options to your users. And so we know there’s a lot of users that still want to ride onw. They love the gaming aspect of Swif. They love the social aspect of it.
So making sure that we continue to be a partner for these other training platforms that wanna push workouts and content to us. But I think in terms of us, we already see. Aspects of this with our next step card. And so being more personalized, having an underlying kind of goal that we’re driving towards with every athlete that’s personal to them.
[00:21:17] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, I mean, to reiterate Brian’s point around our training partners, it is something that we’ve heavily invested in and will continue to grow with more and more partners. I think there’s not a week that goes by that I’m getting hit up from different training partners, and I’m sure after this podcast I’ll probably get a lot more emails from founders and startups and all kinds of fantastic and innovative.
Training tools that want to have those experiences show up in Swift, right? So that will continue to grow. I think, as Ryan said, one of the biggest things that we hear from a lot of athletes that don’t have that structure, might not be integrated with another partner might be new to cycling, is because we’ve been around so much or for so long, the amount of content and type of content that we have has grown and grown.
There’s something like 240 routes, over 3000 different workouts. The endless events and group rides that happen live on a daily basis, and so being able to filter through that and understand what I should be doing right, especially again, if you’re not coached, if you’re a new athlete, is super important, and that’s one of the reasons we launched the next UP card.
Which is on the home screen of of the game, and then also in Inw Companion, which is our companion app that runs on mobile devices. And so at a glance, a user can come in and see what they should do today. Now what they should do is. Informed by what I mentioned before, which is understanding who that person is, right?
Connecting to their outdoor, seeing if they did a big ride yesterday. If you did Century Ride and you come onto Swift, like you should probably recommend something a little bit lighter that day. So understanding their training load, understanding their habits a little bit more, and then matching that to content.
We’ve all been in this situation where you get on your trainer, you see you have your workout that’s pushed. From your training app or something that you had planned, and you’re just, you’re not feeling it, right? Legs are heavy or you’re tired. You had horrible sleep, busy day at work, and so. We also give users the ability to tune that recommendation, right?
So you can kind of adjust that based on how you’re feeling.
[00:23:28] Trevor Connor: Well, first of all, I’m gonna say I am convinced you guys are just out to taunt me because you were talking about the routes and I got to the point where I had completed every single route except for that a hundred mile route in England, and I was getting ready to do it just so I could say, I’ve done every route in Zw, and then all of a sudden you added like 50 new routes.
[00:23:49] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, I think it was 60 routes last year or something like that. Yeah. Have you done the PRL full? Did you finally end up doing it?
[00:23:56] Trevor Connor: Not yet. I’m looking for a group ride that’s gonna do it so I can at least do it with other people. I’m not sure I could do it solo.
[00:24:02] Nick Kalkounis: I mean, that’s the whole point. Yeah, there’s tons of group rides to
[00:24:05] Ryan Cooper: get that going.
[00:24:06] Nick Kalkounis: That was a tough one for me,
[00:24:07] Ryan Cooper: for sure.
[00:24:08] Trevor Connor: Yeah, it looks tough.
[00:24:09] Ryan Cooper: That could be one that you could invite people too, so you can set up your own group and do it. And I haven’t done it either, so if you do set it. Let me know. There you go. ’cause I need to, I need to be in it.
[00:24:19] Nick Kalkounis: You have one more, Trevor.
[00:24:21] Ryan Cooper: That’s right.
[00:24:21] Trevor Connor: How to do it. But I have noticed this, that, that personalization, so something I’ve been doing always seeing more and more is when I come into Swift, I. Track my training through training peaks. I plan out my training and training peaks, and if I have an interval day, I come onto Zift and it shows right there on the main screen.
Here’s the interval workout you have planned today, but it also then has, here’s some recommendations for you that you can do. And so I was wondering about that. Is that one of the big things you’re really trying to do to help users of giving them recommendations, giving them guidance? As opposed to come into the platform and just figure out how you’re gonna use it, which is probably what more the way it was when I joined back in 2015.
[00:25:08] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s the evolution, uh, that we’re talking about, right? Making that experience way more personalized. And like I said, right now. The recommendations we have are focused on users that aren’t coming in with a training plan. We’re assuming that if you link your Trainer Road account or Tri Out or the other 20 plus partners that we’ve, we’ve integrated with, we kind of assume that your coach or your platform is managing that for you.
And you see those right up front, right? So it’s very easy. As you sent, as you mentioned Trevor, you get in and you see that workout that you need to do right away. But for the ones that don’t, we make that a lot easier. And last year we launched tracking your outdoor activities. And so when you link your Garmin, wahoo, or Hammerhead account to Zw, we pull in those activities and then we show you in the Zift Companion app your training load, your historical week over week training, load your training status, whether you’re fresh or productive or overreaching, and then we can use that to then inform, uh.
Recommendation for you that day.
[00:26:11] Trevor Connor: That’s what I was gonna ask, and I didn’t know if that was something you could answer or not. Ryan, I know your background is in AI is Zw now looking at the sort of training the athlete is doing and making a. Very intelligent recommendation saying, Hey, you really need to take a recovery day today, or Your training load’s been pretty low.
You should think about some high intensity work. Is it looking at all those factors and making intelligent recommendations based on where you see the athlete being?
[00:26:39] Ryan Cooper: Yes, and I think like if you look at. Industry as a whole, it doesn’t matter what industry. If you’re not looking at leveraging like the latest LLM type models in addition to your own data using ML modeling, uh, kind of in the background, if you’re not doing that, then you know it’s gonna be hard to catch up at some point.
Just the rapid pace that this technology is changing means that you kind of need to be at least experimenting with it. And so. At the same time, you wanna make sure that you have guardrails in place. And so we do have coaches that we talk to. We have fish and Armstrong is very influential at Swift. And so we talked to her quite a bit and other coaches around philosophies, around guardrails because as we start to build this, these different concepts and test different concepts, we wanna make sure that we have the right validity to ’em.
And so that one of the things we see in the industry, in, in multiple industries is. The speed to try and get something out right? And, oh, well, let’s just use AI and we’re gonna, we’re gonna put something on it and we’re gonna, we’re gonna get it out there. And to me, I think that can mess up some of the credibility.
And so we wanna make sure that. Anything that we produce, that we’re vetting things behind the scenes and that we have all the kind of controls and guardrails in place to, to make sure that it’s quality and that it’s not just using it to use it, that we’re using it in the right ways. And so a lot of times in my previous roles is using the right tool for the right job, and so you don’t have to use.
LM AI for everything, right? You can use machine learning or traditional machine learning in the background to have basis for, you could look at detection of fitness, or you can look at behavioral patterns and things like that. Looking at it through the customer’s perspective and say, what’s gonna help this person?
Get the most out of their training time or what’s gonna help this person? If you think about endgame or things like that, what’s gonna help them with their personalized? If somebody likes to do certain types of content, making sure that they have access to that without having to endlessly doom scroll across like different content and modalities.
[00:28:46] Trevor Connor: Fast Talk listeners. During a recent listener survey, you told us you wanna be able to listen to Fast Talk at work on workouts, and during housework and YouTube, you talked. We listened. The Fast Talk podcast is now available on YouTube. We’ve added more than 100 of our best episodes of more releasing every day.
And soon we’ll offer video summaries and other featured content that you won’t be able to hear on the audio only. Podcast. Search for Fast Talk labs on YouTube and be sure to subscribe. Do you ever see a time where the athlete just comes onto the virtual platform and every day it’s just telling them, do this, do that, and it’s basically directing all of their training.
A, is that a possibility in the future? And B. Is that a good direction to go? Is that something that you’d wanna see or do you think that takes too much of the power out of the athlete’s hands and the coach’s hands?
[00:29:41] Ryan Cooper: It’s nuanced. And so for the broad like swath of athletes that we have, there’s some where simply being consistent.
Is gonna be the biggest driver in consistency, I think about, is really a motivation type thing. It’s keeping somebody at the right load with the right motivation so that they’re not overtrained, they’re not getting undertrained. Everybody gets super excited when they first get on Zift, right? Like I do.
I’m like, oh, I’m gonna ride six days a week. And it’s like, well, if I’ve only been riding one day a week and then I jump to six days, that’s maybe not the best use. And so I think what we see is the majority of people just aren’t used to structured training and so. Do I think the coach is gonna be replaced?
No. I don’t think a coach is ever gonna be replaced. Like we talk to coaches daily and there’s so much nuance for every athlete, but at the same time, not every athlete a certain point in their journey and their fitness journey needs that level of coaching right now. They can graduate to it or as they get more complex or whatever else, and you kind of start to gravitate to that naturally.
But to your original question, like the controls and the levers that athletes and coaches have, I think those have to be respected. So yes, there’ll be a path at some point for everybody, and we have this with the next step card, is there’ll be a path for somebody to have content and training that is right for them in the moment.
But there’ll also be athletes that want more control over that training, and then obviously have a. Conduit to where the coach can still always be the most personal high touch piece
[00:31:12] Nick Kalkounis: on the extension of coaching. The one thing that we always say internally is, you know, if we get those users down the path of that consistency that Ryan mentioned, it almost introduces them to what being coached feels like, right?
And introducing them to other possibilities, whether that’s an actual physical coach or other training platforms that can extend. The specificity and the training that they need. So that’s definitely a goal that we have is like, Hey, this is what it feels like to be on. A little bit of a plan or like something habitual and structured, I guess.
[00:31:46] Ryan Cooper: Really good point. We see this feeling that some athletes have where they just don’t feel like they deserve a coach, right? Because they’re, oh, I’m not a pro, I’m not this, and it’s like, well, no. I mean, if you’re out there and you have a goal and. When we talk to Kristen, it’s like if an athlete comes in and says they don’t really have a goal, they actually do.
Like everybody has a goal in their back of their mind, whether they say it out loud or not, it could just be my goal is I gotta ride four times a week around all my kids’ practices and things like that. Right? And that’s my goal. And hopefully. Maintain some healthy weight and lifestyle, but everybody has a goal, but not everybody feels they deserve to be coached.
And so as Nick was saying, like having this pathway into habitation or into this kind of structured, this is what I should do today, this is what I should do and why, and that’s what next step is kind of giving is really almost a funnel driver to some percentage of those people going, okay, now I know what it feels like, so I wanna kind of take that next step to actually be coached.
[00:32:41] Trevor Connor: Are you helping with that next step? Are you bringing coaches and athletes together? Are you helping coaches to, to work with their athletes through the virtual platform?
[00:32:50] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah, I mean, I think introducing them to a lot of concepts that, I think, as Ryan mentioned, maybe athletes that haven’t been coached before or haven’t gone into any more serious training or down any of of those paths and introducing them to what a training load is or.
What overreaching feels like. Right. So I think that’s definitely one thing that we are seeing people just getting more familiar. When Zift first started, I think one of the things we always talked about was people don’t understand what is an FTP. What I don’t get it. You. Right? Like I, what is a lot of these terms?
And now they’ve just kind of become more and more. Common. Right. And people kind of understand like, oh, okay, that’s the power that I can do for about an hour. Right? Or like that’s kind of the you. So these are things that I think these virtual platforms and SWT has really helped introduce that into common athletes.
[00:33:40] Trevor Connor: And you mentioned that you, you have coaches like Kirsten Armstrong really using the platform. Are you seeing that a lot where coaches are using the platform to interact and to coach their athletes?
[00:33:53] Nick Kalkounis: I have a quick anecdote and Ryan, you can jump in after if you hear anything else but, and when I was chatting with Kirsten, one of the things she tells her athletes is we have the insw companion, the training widget or the fitness widget we call it, and she tells her athletes, I want to see all of this blue this week.
Right, and it shows obviously the different zones. And zone two is blue in that weekly graph and she’s like, just make this blue come back to me when this is, the entire week is blue. So yeah, those are definitely things that we hear. Another one is replacing high intensity workouts with races, right? So instead of doing a VO two max and Trevor, you and I were chatting on the ride.
On Tuesday. And I guess there seems to be a little bit of, uh, controversy between you and Chris in terms of whether our race is a threshold or vo O2 max.
[00:34:39] Chris Case: That’s with Grant? Yes. Not me. With Grant.
[00:34:42] Nick Kalkounis: Oh, with Grant. Okay.
[00:34:43] Trevor Connor: Well, you said it’s a good VO two max work, and I will tell you, but I jump into Rift Race and my tongue is hanging out and I’m hitting huge numbers that I don’t normally hit.
But Grant’s the one who comes in and goes Swift is just a threshold workout.
[00:34:58] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah. So we’re definitely seeing that where you can replace and it’s the motivation, right? For anyone that hasn’t tried. As with race, I encourage you to give it a try. It will push you to limits that you didn’t know you had,
[00:35:11] Chris Case: especially if you forget to turn your fan on.
[00:35:13] Nick Kalkounis: I was just gonna say, I think I have never fallen over on my physical bike from a, you know, a real bike, from a, you know, a race or some crazy ride. But I have absolutely fallen off my indoor. Trainer from just almost throwing up and passing out. So yeah,
[00:35:32] Chris Case: in terms of the suggested rides that you are attempting to give to these various levels of athlete, sometimes you’ll probably have a lot more context than at other times.
Sometimes you’ll get information about what they’ve done outside. Sometimes you might be missing that. How do you manage that? And also, what is the, perhaps training philosophy, if you will, that is driving the suggestions? Are you saying to the system, we want people to be training on a polarized training method or parametal, or how do you manage that?
[00:36:10] Ryan Cooper: So the first question is kind of a coldstar slash lack of data. Question. Right? And Nick mentioned earlier, like the tune function is really like kind of there for that reason, right? So with the knowledge, we have the next step with the personalized recommendation, with the knowledge that we have. But obviously you as an athlete have the real knowledge, right?
And so there is some level of needing to know your body and needing to know where you are to be able to say like, okay, today. I had this long ride yesterday. Wft obviously doesn’t know about it. Let me tune and I can go do a route, or I can do a Robo Basser. I can do one of these other content pieces. In terms of the philosophy, I think that’s one of the things that I mentioned earlier, like the things that we test in the background, right?
And so. Being able to run different types of methodology in the background for different types of athlete personas and really trying to find what works best for these different personas based on the data and the information that we have. So for instance, like you don’t necessarily have to focus and say like every athlete has to do polarizer, every athlete has to do pyramid.
’cause it, it’s very. Athlete, goal constraint dependent. And so if someone just doesn’t have a lot of time, you’re not gonna have to, you’re not gonna have the scope or you’re not gonna have the volume to be able to build them up over time. Right? So you may have to go to a more polarized. So that didn’t really answer all the questions, but I like.
It’s not just one methodology, I guess, and these things are kind of constantly tested and tweaked and then back tested in the background.
[00:37:40] Chris Case: Yeah. You got at a pretty good answer. I think hidden in that message is it’s complicated.
[00:37:45] Ryan Cooper: Yeah. It’s weird. People are complicated, so the answer can’t be super straightforward.
Yeah.
[00:37:51] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah. It is and it isn’t. I think the main thing is. We do have a sense of what the user’s goals are for the most part, right? You have the ability to set that goal, so if it’s a distance or time or stress points, which is, you know, our equivalent of TSS, we can use that as an input. We can use the input of their outdoor activities.
We can use the input of their historical information on Thw and how often they ride and how many days a week and how long, and all of those things in addition to. All the different training philosophies and heuristics that we can apply to that. And as Ryan mentioned, we test and iterate and give the user the best thing that we think.
But again, at the end of the day, and hence why we provided the tune functionality, is like we can guess or we can try and infer it as close as possible, but the user at the end of the day is making that decision and has the ability to adjust that.
[00:38:46] Trevor Connor: So that kinda leads to one of the last two questions I wanna ask you, which is.
I would, just thinking in my own head how much Zift has evolved since I joined it in 2015, so, so 10 years now. How much is being driven by innovation on your end where you’re saying, we should do this and we should do that, and how much of it is being driven by the users? The users, figuring out what they want it to do and using it the way they’d like to use it, and then you’re just responding to what you see them doing?
[00:39:20] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah. As Ryan mentioned earlier, we are very customer obsessed. We have numerous ways for our users to be in contact with us. We have our forum, we have our customer service channels. We have. Reddit channel, Facebook groups for new riders, for racers, we have our racing community. We have community leaders that run all our content and a lot of our rides.
So there are many channels that provide input into helping us. Craft our roadmap. And so we use that. We use that feedback. We use different innovations in the industry that we’re seeing. So it’s, I think it’s a combination. It’s not one answer like we use to a combination across different channels, but we’re very data driven, customer focused.
There’s tons of ways that we use to, to prioritize all those features.
[00:40:10] Ryan Cooper: Yeah. Nick Point, that’s one input. And then the other point, if you’re gonna be truly innovative is. To do things that, that people haven’t really seen before, right, too. And so there’s a component of that as well where it’s an amazing team internally.
So like the employees and everybody that that work at zipped is get only been there three months, but it’s, it’s like a breath of fresh air. ’cause everybody comes with so much passion for the sport, for the product, for the customer. And so you see a lot of these innovative ideas and prototyping and behind the scenes things happening all the time at the company too.
And so. You kinda have these multiple legs of a stool where you have the feedback from the customers, but then also this internal product feedback loop, which is amazing to see. So it’s just to reiterate what Nick was saying, it’s really kind of multiple lenses that we look at innovation through. So like the draft indicator, which was really relatively recently, is something I think people have wanted for a long time.
And it’s sometimes hard to do something that is very easy and very simple and and concept. But to do it really well and so on. My rides recently, I’ve been asking just texting people and say like, how are you liking the draft indicator? Everybody loves it. ’cause it’s so, so simple. It’s just easy to see when you’re in how much you have.
Doesn’t have to have any specific numbers or anything on it. It is just a really simple indicator to say, okay, you’re in the good draft zone. Right? And so I think innovation comes from knowing the problem that you need to solve and then finding the best way to, to solve that problem within the platform itself.
[00:41:41] Chris Case: Let me hit you with one final question before we get into the take homes. What’s your advice? What’s your recommendation for the different types of people that are coming? Towt? How do you use it in the best way?
[00:41:55] Nick Kalkounis: I would say for that un coached athlete or new user, let Z WT guide you. Make sure that you’ve set a goal.
We talked about connecting your outdoor devices and start looking at those personalized recommendations. At the end of the day, I think consistency beats complexity or specificity, and so doing a recommendation or maybe even it’s just a pace partner is better than spending. 20 minutes scrolling and then deciding that you don’t wanna do anything ’cause you’re just tired for the coached athlete.
I think use WWT as that sort of execution layer connecting your coaching platform. And we talked about Trainer Road and all these other platforms that have built these integrations into Zift and let your workout sink and jump on and you’ll see that right away. Use the social features, right? Races for hard efforts, and, uh, group rides to help motivate you to stay on a little bit longer.
Maybe finish that PRL full route that you mentioned, Trevor. And then for coaches, I mean, lean into zw as a tool, right? Not as a threat. I think prescribing specific workouts and routes. That sort of align with what your intention for that athlete is, right? If you’re climbing, like there’s many climbing routes that you can push different intervals for your athletes.
Uh, and then also as a coach, I think as an op opportunity to promote yourself as well. There’s groups, there’s events that you can join and help push your brand as a coach as well.
[00:43:26] Ryan Cooper: Great.
[00:43:27] Trevor Connor: Well, I think it’s time to dive into our take homes. Both of you are new to the show, so we generally finish our episodes.
Where everybody in the room gets basically one minute to say what they think is the most important lesson for our listeners to take away from the episode. And I’ll say, we’ll give one of you the last word and one of you the first word. Who would like to be the one to go first?
[00:43:52] Ryan Cooper: I can give first. We’ll let Nick finish it out.
I think the great thing about Zw is from the very first time I used it in 2014. You knew it was gonna be something different, that it was a place to ride, a safe place to ride, whether you had a workout, whether you just wanted to do a route and look at scenery. As it started to grow, you had more and more social components, so you’re riding with more and more people.
And yet it’s a destination, but it’s also a place where you can meet like-minded writers. You can ride with pros. You can. Go do a training plan. You can do your recommended workout or ride of the day, your next step. So it becomes more than just a destination, right? It’s a training platform, it’s a exploration area, it’s a video game.
And so if you want to do any of those things, zift is a place to do it. And so I know Nick just mentioned the different types of athletes, but for me, I come to it for all of that. And it does help build consistency and help me with my goals. So the take home, the one minute take home, that’s probably now two minutes, is it is a place where you can ride with friends and meet your goals.
[00:45:01] Trevor Connor: Chris, you wanna go next?
[00:45:03] Chris Case: Sure. It’s interesting to have you describe the evolution, and in some ways it’s not too dissimilar from where it started, but at the same time it’s far more advanced because you’re meeting people and a whole diverse range of people where they want to be, right? Like world tour pros and people that have never ridden outside could get on this one place and have the same type of experience and.
You continue to evolve and offer more tools to help people have a better time, but also get more out of it in terms of health and fitness. So that’s, it’s been great to see that evolution.
[00:45:44] Trevor Connor: So my take home, we’ve been advertising this on the show so our listeners are probably aware of the fact that Chris and I are now running a Tuesday morning fast talk ride.
And before we did the first rides, Chris and I got on Zw together and just did a ride together to, to kinda work out the kinks ahead of time. And I remember on that ride. Explaining a bunch of things to Chris, like the different Pacers and the fact that on Zw, they don’t refer to it as a Peloton, they refer to it as a blob.
And we were getting into all these little nuances about zw and it kind of struck me that I’ve been on it so long. I think of it as this really simple tool, but actually. It has grown this huge robustness with its own lingo and its own way of doing things. And as we said at the start, it was just a simple tool to make indoor training more enjoyable.
Now, I would say if you asked what the purpose is, WT is it’s how many people are on zw. ’cause there’s probably a unique purpose for each person. And to me when a tool or an application or something. Goes to that point where it has that robustness, it has its own lingo, its own way of doing things. It’s kind of jumped a precipice to something entirely new, kind of a world of its own.
So what I kind of enjoyed talking to both of you about and hearing about is how do you maintain that world and what people enjoy about swift? But at the same time, be constantly evolving and offering more and not lose what has made it what it is. And it was really interesting hearing both of you talking about that balance throughout this episode.
So Nick, what’s your take home?
[00:47:28] Nick Kalkounis: I mean, funny enough, I think it’s very much aligned to what most of you said. I think Zw started by making indoor cycling fun and that. Still matters very much, right? The group rides the races, chasing someone up a volcano or just someone right in front of you. We’ve all in there.
I think that’s what gets people on the bike, what motivates them and keeps them in the community, right? You log in at six in the morning and there’s tens of thousands of people riding and you find your group. I talked about friends that I’ve met that I’ll probably never meet in person, but I see them every single week at.
Five 30 or six in the morning that hasn’t left the, the ethos of Swift and will. I think it’s the sky’s the limit in, in how we can sort of keep expanding that and using that community as the engine.
[00:48:20] Trevor Connor: Great responses. Well, guys, real pleasure having you on the show, so look forward to seeing what you do in the next couple years was the wt.
[00:48:29] Nick Kalkounis: Yeah. Thank you so much Trevor and Chris. It’s been great. We’re big fans and yeah, continue doing what you do.
[00:48:35] Trevor Connor: That was another episode of Fast Talks. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast. Be sure to leave us a radio on review. Don’t forget we’re now on YouTube. Give us a like and subscribe there too and help us reach new audiences.
As always, remember the thoughts and opinions expressed in Fast Talk are those are the individual we love your feedback. Join the conversation@forums.fast talk labs.com or join us on social media at at Fast Talk Labs for access to our endurance sports knowledge base. Continuing education for coaches as well as our in-person remote athlete services.
Head to Fast Talk labs.com. For Nick Calas, Ryan Cooper and Chris Case, I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening.
