Yesterday Zwift released the latest version of the Companion app (v3.53) which includes a much-anticipated feature: the “Keep Everyone Together” setting for Club events!
The toggle is on the event settings screen when creating/editing a Club event.
Important Note: you can’t enable “Keep Everyone Together” when “Event Results” is enabled. Because it doesn’t make sense to show event results if everyone is being forced to stay together!
Why Banded?
Zwift says the “Keep Everyone Together” option “makes it easier to spend time with friends and socialize while you pedal, even if your group has a wide span of fitness levels.” And they’re not wrong. If you want your group to stay together at whatever pace each rider desires, without a lot of messaging and hassle, this option makes it happen.
A Bit of History
Zwift has had “Keep Everyone Together” (aka “rubberbanding”) capabilities for years. (In a rubberbanded ride, all participants stay together, regardless of their power output, as long as they pedal.)
Rubberbanding was first used in group workouts, then expanded to Meetups and made available as a custom, by-request setting for group rides.
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Zwift’s code for keeping riders together hasn’t always worked optimally, though. First, group workouts were super slow for stronger riders. Secondly, and perhaps a bigger issue, a longtime bug led to Meetups sometimes getting stuck at unrealistically high speeds, which is why you see Strava climb segments topped by riders holding over 45kph doing very low power (see Box Hill, for example).
The great news is, Zwift put in a lot of work to improve their algorithm for keeping riders together, and rolled that out months ago. Feedback from Zwifters indicates that it has greatly improved the experience for group workouts, Meetups, and banded group rides.
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Sounds cool! Interested in the algorithm: My initial guess is “putting together all watts and divide it by the groups weight”. But how will draft etc. count then…?
Is it possible to turn on and off the rubber band when the group ride has started?
It is not.
This option is not my cup of tea.The output is not your exact output. Just ride and find a group within your level of fitness. There is no problem when every single cyclist respect the goal of the ride.
I’m with you on this. In our own group rides (which includes full range of sex, age and strength) we pod up as we go and, as we would IRL, the ride lead would pick a spot for a regroup. We have no trouble in chatting and generally keep in touch along the way. We have all the tools we need on the ZC app. Others may think and want to proceed differently but is not something that makes sense for me..
zwift – here’s a new optional feature that doesnt effect you at all unless you decide to use it
internet zwifters – no
It’s a great option for if you want to ride together and do different workouts/ meet regularly with club members. We do one at 630am and even if you are not feeling it you can pop on for a z2 ride and keep consistency up. It nice not to have to do a meetup and invite everyone manually.
Distance and elevation are highly flawed for tracking effort anyway. Should be looking at time in zones
Works great for rides with a friend who is at a very different level of fitness. I can do my wko and she can do hers and we stay together the whole time. I don’t use it 90% of the time but it’s a really nice option to have for those types of occasions.
@Bill In this case I do a Discord Date with the person. Some chatting there and riding our own pace (in a group or solo).
For me is the downside that the speed is even more off than a regular Zwiftride. I want my own real effort/speed. Not an average from all the riders.
@Tom do you mean that you pick a workout in your headunit like Wahoo or Garmin. Because in a club you cannot pick different workouts.
I’m a pretty low key cyclist working my way through all the route badges and once used banding in a Meetup with my (very not low-key) Dutch partner on Alpe du Zwift while I was just hopping to log a bit of climbing distance. Imagine my surprise when I found myself zooming up at 40km/hr! I wasn’t thrilled to get the un-earned badge…and haven’t used the feature much since then.
Glad they fixed that algorithm — and this will open up some social rides for me.
Perfect for our small group winter club rides. We’ll finally be able to stay together on screen while with chat on Discord.
Does it also allow the ability to load and do a workout like you can in a banded meetup ?
There’s a library of workouts available for Club rides. Just choose “Group Workout” as your ride type, then you can browse the workouts and pick one. A much smoother experience than trying to hack it with a Meetup, since everyone automagically gets the right workout!
I am not seeing the option to keep everyone together when creating a club workout. Is this a known bug? Note: I did confirm I’m on 3.53 and do see the option when creating just a ride.
I think that option is just auto-enabled for group workouts, with no way to turn it off.
Interesting. I’ve tried two different Android devices (both on Android 13 or 14) and neither shows the option when trying to create a workout. I do see it for a club ride though. I will reach out to Zwift support.
That’s what I’m saying – there is no option. It’s just auto-enabled for group workouts, and there’s no way to turn it off.
A group workout is what is it: it has to be banded, or else it will not be a “group” workout, since everyone will start drifting apart due to differences in power output.
This is perfect for our club rides – we have a variety of skill levels, which we deal with by having multiple skill groups on outdoor rides. We don’t have enough members on Zwift for that to be a good solution for us, but “Keep everyone together” is!
Eric can you confirm does this ensure riders who stop pedaling don’t get dropped , thanks
No, if you stop pedaling long enough you WILL get dropped. It’s not a free ride.
Riders who need to stop pedaling should use a coffee break to stay with the pack short term.
I think what would be real cool would be to have a gps type function added. Or maybe call it a route tracing option.
What I have in mind is let say you ride one of the recent rebel routes, wouldn’t it be nice to save that to a route list on your account, and be able to access it again via a drop down option on the companion?
You wouldn’t to have another device running to ride the route again. I don’t know about every head unit on the planet, but the ones I have used always allow me to save the route I just rode.
So….I updated and now Zwift Hub on Mac crashes? I get to the screen where it says that I am logged in and then the app freezes. Have never had problems before this latest update.
Zwift’s code base must be a lot of spaghetti, because it took them two years to implement this feature, that was readily available elsewhere in the software (private events).
Simple question: Will the option slow down stronger riders or does it speed up weaker riders to the speed of the fastest?
I think it does both. I plan to test it with a small pack of riders to see if we can better understand how it works…
My club was discussing whether or not it would be a good idea to do the PRL Full “banded”. I assumed it would make it even harder for the stronger half if the field. A test would be really interesting. Especially how much a 50 W rider would slow down a 250 W rider.
Thanks for you work!
I have been cycling mostly banded rides with both large and small groups. What I noticed before the recent updates at around the time of the TOW:
Generally, speeds are not a simple average of power output. They tend to skew faster, so stronger riders do not see a significant disadvantage, while slower riders will fly much faster than normal. This is true on all terrain types (some say it is even faster upslope) and group sizes.
However after the updates since Tow:
Generally, speeds has dropped significantly, resulting in a rather frustrating experience especially for stronger riders. Speed seems to be influenced much more by group sizes. In one of my small groups where there are typically less than 5, the speeds can drop to about 20kmh on flats. Even when all the riders leave and the stronger rider continues alone, he is still going at around that speed despite much higher output.
However, in a big group (over 100, for eg), the group was still flying…almost like before.
There were reports that the speed is supposedly faster on flats and slowed down uphill, but we could not really tell the difference. Group size still seems to have become the biggest factor now.
Hope you can do a more comprehensive test to see if this is really true.
I organised a club group ride today. 5 of us poodling along at 24-25 km/hr on the flats, when for the same power, we’d all be doing >=30 km/hr individually outside the event. It felt slow and frustrating, and we’re thinking of going back to meetups.
(rubber band was on)
@Eric Schlange It would be very interesting to see your results. From my anecdotal club results its seems to be slowing us down a fair bit. We have a mixed ability IRL club and we get about 8-10 riders join a zwift rubberband group ride or group workout. We seem to average 17-18mph whereas on those routes with the average power the group is putting out I’d expect 20+mph. Not a massive issue for me as the main thing is we can all ride together, however slightly frustrating if we’re missing out on some miles. Will await your super duper testing to be sure. Cheers Eric
I hope it works better than the prior version. Racermate1 had that nailed 12 years ago
Anyone else seen the screenshot of LVL 61?
Not a big fan of this having been in a group ride today. It removes the instant rider feedback that you get if you push a little, or ease off a bit and you all go along the same compared to everyone else anyway. Removes any incentive to ride a little harder and makes it feel much less real. If I’m having a good or bad ride I like to know and it left me bored. This was the reason I stopped group riding on Zwift before, so I hope our group don’t continue to use it.
Apparently rubberbanding is a controversial topic within the Zwift community. Some call it cheating because banded rides may help riders achieve results that they wouldn’t ordinarily attain on a free ride or workout. Small groups like Project Sloth benefit because we can attract a wide variety of riders on a single ride. We’ve got a small group (under 10 for now) who really enjoy riding together but due to recent changes in Zwift, I for one am losing 10 watts per pedal stroke when I participate in a group banded ride of 4 riders or fewer. This is killing our club. Help?
Banded rides are, for some people, cheating. I wouldn’t say it is.
Have in mind that riders who have health issues are much helped by just the banded ones. And we all know that a bit of encouragement can do wonders. Also for the longer ones (PRL full, Uber Pretzel and so on) the banding helps.
I am one of the ones that have given up banded rides unfortunately. It’s very frustrating when you put effort in and a ride takes forever.
So Zwift developers, you have destroyed the joy, and the social bit for me, when changing the banding.
Would be great to have an option for ride leader to turn it off and on for the sprints
Ambivalent about banding. Liked it as a beginner and very slow, but then realized it distorted my stats and mostly quit the banded rides.. Maybe eliminate badges for banded rides? Ive seen some use these rides almost exclusively for badges, xp and obtaining the tron bike, and am prone to feel it is cheating, or maybe tainted. But should I care? Its like a mulligan in golf. As a golf pro recently told me, most people think they are way better golfers than what they are.Same applies here. I like to feel like I earned something (weird that moaning and all but falling off the bike is rewarding? :)) Others can do as they wish.
Here’s a question: how does Zwift track the riders in a rubber band ride with respect to segment times?
“Keep together” means, for example, that the group will top Box Hill together, even though those at the front may be pushing 4w/kg vs those in back pushing 1w/kg. How does Zwift track this for individual riders? Will Zwift calculate your time on the segment based on YOUR wattage over the segment – so that I can grab my PR up the hill based on my avg 4w/kg even though I was “held back” by the rubber band effect? And will it calculate the slowest rider’s time on the segment based only on their wattage, rather than the aggregate wattage of the group??
The segment times recorded in game (and on Strava) are whatever the group gets. So strong riders will see weak segment times, while weaker riders may see unrealistically fast segment times.
Keeping a group together still seem buggy. It’s too common for group members to get left behind. It seems to happen if you join the event close to the start and Zwift finally lands you in the pen just as the countdown reaches zero.
Is there an issue with the banding option right now? We’ve been doing group rides and clicking on the option to keep everyone together and it hasn’t been working the last couple rides.
I haven’t heard anything, but you might reach out to Zwift support and let them know.
Reaching zwift support is useless. Their chat option doesn’t help at all. Is there a way to just email them with the issue???
If the RPM of some individual riders is low, does this effect the overal speed?
I had one ride where everyone was in high cadence and we went around 30kmh on flats, while in another ride we only got to 26 or 27kmh on flats and we had lower cadence.
Could this have anything to do with it?
Do they limit speed for a rubber band? We can’t go faster than 30 km/hour.