Relative Intensity (RI) is an advanced metric that shows you how hard a workout was in relation to your personal fitness level. It provides a standardized way to compare the difficulty of different cycling sessions, regardless of their duration or type.
Relative Intensity (RI) puts every workout on the same scale by comparing your effort to your maximum sustainable power. It's calculated by dividing your Weighted Average Power for a session by your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), which is the highest power you can sustain for about an hour.
The result is a single number that represents the intensity of your effort:
Not all workouts are created equal. A short, high-intensity interval session feels very different from a long, steady endurance ride. RI cuts through the noise of raw numbers and shows you, in a single value, how hard a session truly was relative to your capacity.
This makes RI a powerful tool for comparing different types of efforts and seeing whether your training load is balanced. It helps answer the question: are you pushing hard enough to grow fitness, or so hard that you're risking burnout?
By tracking RI over time, you can see how different workouts contribute to your overall training stress. The Outsiders automatically categorizes your RI score to help you interpret it at a glance:
Relative Intensity (RI) offers a clear and objective measure of how hard your cycling workout was compared to your personal limit. By calculating a single score based on your power output and FTP, it allows you to consistently compare efforts across different durations and terrains, helping you better manage your training balance and avoid burnout.