Indoor cycling app with no power meter: what you get and what you don't

There are two ways to write about riding indoors without a power source. One is to list everything that still works and quietly skip the rest, which makes for a cheerful article and a disappointed rider three sessions later. The other is to put both columns side by side and let you decide. This is the second kind.

Everything below is specifically about riding Moveee Indoor with a wheel speed sensor and no power meter or smart trainer. If you have not set that up yet, start with riding indoors without a smart trainer; this article is the honest accounting that goes with it.

What you get

What you do not get

Why there is no "virtual power"

This is the one that needs explaining, because plenty of apps do show a wattage figure from a speed sensor and it is reasonable to ask why we do not.

Virtual power works by assuming a curve. If your trainer is a specific model, set to a specific resistance level, with a specific tyre at a specific pressure, pressed against the roller with a specific number of turns of the knob, after a specific warm-up — then a given wheel speed corresponds to a given wattage, and the app can look it up. That chain of assumptions is doing enormous work. Change the tyre pressure and the number moves. Tighten the roller half a turn and it moves. Ride the first ten minutes cold and it moves, because a fluid trainer's resistance changes as the fluid warms.

None of those movements are you getting fitter or less fit, and none of them are visible to the app. So the number goes up and down for reasons that have nothing to do with your legs, while looking exactly as authoritative as a real power meter's reading. Over a winter that is worse than useless — it is a training signal that lies.

So Moveee shows a dash. It is less satisfying than a number, and it is the truth. If you want power, the fix is a power source — a power meter on the bike, or a smart trainer — and both feed real numbers into everything else the app does.

What this means for training

You can still train. Cyclists got fit for a century without power meters, and the method is not a secret: steer by heart rate and by feel, structure the session by time, and use your gears for resistance. A speed-only setup does that job perfectly well.

You cannot measure progress precisely. Progress indoors is normally measured in watts — the same session at a lower heart rate, or more watts at the same heart rate. Without watts, you have half of that: you can see your heart rate drop over weeks at what feels like the same effort, which is real evidence, but it is noisier and slower to read. Heart rate wanders with sleep, heat, caffeine and stress.

Your plan will not adapt from these rides the way it does from power rides. An adaptive plan re-tunes around measured load. A ride with no power carries no load figure, so it cannot push the plan in either direction. It is a ride that happened, and it counts as one, but it is not evidence the engine can reason over.

Indoor speed is not outdoor speed. This one catches everybody at least once, and it deserves its own explanation — we gave it one in does indoor speed mean anything?

Who this genuinely suits

Someone riding through a wet fortnight who wants to keep the legs turning. Someone testing whether indoor riding suits them before spending six hundred pounds finding out. Someone whose training is built on heart rate anyway. Someone who wants company on a dark evening, on a real route, without a hardware project first.

Who it does not suit: someone chasing a measured FTP improvement over a winter, someone whose plan is written in watts, someone who wants ERG to hold the interval so they can stop negotiating with themselves. Those all need power, and the honest answer is to say so rather than sell a sensor as a substitute.

If you are in the first group, you need about thirty pounds and an evening. If you are in the second, we wrote about when the upgrade is worth making — and the short version is that you will know, because you will start wanting a number the sensor cannot give you.