This drill is one way to determine appropriate gearing for calibrating your ergo to your current strength levels for structured ergo training.

We use a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine fluid ergo but this test will work well with most good quality fluid trainers with a heavy flywheel.

Warm up for 5-10 minutes or use your normal ergo session warmup. Do a couple of high cadence, low resistance short intervals to get your legs moving well.

in a low gear, say 60", from 80 rpm accelerate as hard as you can for 8 seconds.  Record your finishing cadence.  Rest for three minutes.  If you got to 160rpm or more, increase the gear by a few inches.  Repeat the effort until you can no longer hit 160rpm.  Usually this is around 145-150rpm.  Record the gear you used that you could not quite get to 160rpm on.  That's your "PG" or power gear that we will use for some ergo drills.

Here's a sample using a Kurt Kinetic road machine with a Powertap :