What trainer is right for me?

So, winter is rolling in and now you are hesitantly contemplating buying a trainer for your bike. Perhaps you are considering a spin bike. What to choose?

Lately I have been asked many times what I would recommend, like I would know anything about trainers 🙂

I have ridden quite a few and I keep coming back to one… (to be continued)

Spin bikes Vs Trainers

While I don’t have much information about the different spin bikes on the market, what I can tell you is this. The most ergonomic ride ever created is your own bike. You bought it and have loved it. You spent time test riding your new stallion, spent many sleepless nights contemplating which bike you wanted most, before saying, “I do!”  You oiled the chain, checked the treads for wear, went through several saddles before finding the perfect fit, went to the shop and had it fit, fine tuned the position of the bars, the saddle, the seat height and spent hours and hours and hundreds of miles riding and bonding with your bike. The road bike is the most ergonomic and customizable machine for your body there is, so, it makes sense that if you intend to ride it again in the summer, you should ride it through the winter and maintain it as you would any other time of the year. I am a cyclist and I love the outdoors and my bike is my buddy, nothing else will do.

Above: CycleOps 400Pro at the low low price of $2500

Bells and Whistles

Many trainers have been built to hook into your computer and vary resistance based on the training software you are using. Trainers like Real Axiom and Tacx have this feature and start at about $1500. These trainers also log your speed, distance, average speed, power, heart rate and calories burned. They have the ability to plot, track and record your workouts and generally have some pretty cool features about them. Additionally, build quality and power curves generated using motorized resistance units are very good and offer a very nice and quiet ride while preserving road feel. But, this is what I don’t like:

Price.

For $1500 you can buy a lot of stuff. $800 buys you a CycleOps Power Tap hub and wheel from Neuvation. $250 buys you a Garmin Edge 705 with heart rate monitor and cadence sensor (and has the capacity to record your power data). After that you have $250 to spend on a trainer, big screen TV or a collection of workout videos and some nice training software for your workout dungeon, and can bring all of that workout data with you during your outdoor rides.

Being Brain Dead

I don’t like being force fed resistance. I don’t want the trainer to automatically shift resistance for me. The one thing that makes working out indoors so damn boring is a lack of mental stimulation. You are inside pedaling a stationary bike, going absolutely nowhere and watching a TV. When things are done for you, your brain has nothing to stimulate itself. You need to be interactive with your bike and your training program. I much prefer having to think and make choices to my pedaling cadence, power, and resistance to achieve my target heart rate. Shifting up and shifting down while changing pedaling cadences and trying to balance these to dial in my heart rate is challenging and fun and makes the workout go by much faster than letting the bike do all that for me.

Road Feel

The best trainers to simulate road feel are without a doubt rollers. Rollers come in many shapes and sizes and are designed specifically to provide a realistic cycling sensation. Some have features to make it easier to stay on, or get out of the saddle without lurching off the rollers. Check out the E-Motion Rollers. The best benefit of rollers is that they provide training to really fine tune your bike handling skills. Some have resistance add ons that you can buy. None of them, you will notice, come with virtual ride videos.

But, the problem with rollers is that they are mentally exhausting. They require so much concentration and focus that by the time you are finished, your brain is more tired than your legs. It is difficult to workout for much more than 30 mins on rollers because of this. It is almost impossible to let your mind wander to any degree be it by thinking about your new cute next door neighbor or by watching TV. I have 100’s of hours on rollers and I am not able to stay on them for more than a few minutes when watching the CVO video collection. I find myself on the floor laughing as the first corner I lean into will take me off the rollers and flat on my back. Ha ha haaaa! &^*^&^%%$#!!!

The Kurt Kinetic Rock n Roll trainer is pretty cool. I have ridden several of the Kurt’s. This is a fluid trainer that is well built, smooth and quiet. The Rock n Roll has a feature that allows the bike to rock back and forth when you are up and out of the saddle giving it that nice sway feel during simulated climbs.

But, here’s what I don’t like. At about $700, it’s pretty pricey. Also, it has a very large footprint and takes up quite a bit of floor space. Additionally, because of the pivot point, the rear wheel sits high off the floor giving the bike kind of an unnatural feel. Additionally, you have to focus on sitting upright and repositioning your body every once in a while otherwise the bike begins to lean a little to the left or the right.

Many trainers boast that they have a realistic road feel simply because  of their resistance mechanism. Some offer larger barrels for the rear wheel and while this is a great feature to prevent tire wear, I haven’t noticed any substantial differences from one trainer to another.

resistance / power curve (resistance mechanism)

Wind Trainers

There are several ways to add resistance to pedaling. My first trainer was a CycleOps wind trainer. The wheel sat on a barrel connected to a little fan unit. As the fan speed increased due to wheel speed, so did the resistance. But, when I got cooking, boy was that fan loud! So, many trainers have adopted alternative methods to increase resistance and remove the noise. The benefit to these is that they are cheap, offer up a substantial power curve, in other words, the wheel speed generated by your gearing is probably adequate to out power even the strongest cyclists. The disadvantage is the noise, and, these suckers get loud!!! Also, the road feel is not so good as there is a lurching through each pedal stroke.

Magnetic resistance ($50-$250).

Magnetic trainers are quiet, offer a very nice feel through pedal strokes and are inexpensive. The power curve is good enough for me, but, for stronger cyclists, it may not be enough. What I like is that shifting from gear to gear and the wheel speed generated through each shift only incrementally changes the resistance. It is smooth, in other words, like on the road. For example, if you are on a flat road and you shift one gear up or down, the resistance varies by only as much as that gear change dictates.   The same principle applies with most magnetic trainers. Most magnetic trainers have a resistance unit that is adjustable via a dial that clamps to your bars and a cable that goes to the resistance device. You can incrementally change resistance by pedaling faster, shifting,  or using this dial.  There is no change in the power curve due to heat. These do not heat up.

The disadvantage to these might be the build quality as many of these are on the lower end of the price spectrum. But, I’ve had my Minoura for 5 years without any trouble with the exception of the clamp to the resistance dial clamp broke and I have to drape the cable over my bars. Many people don’t like the cable because they get tangled up in it and the clamp and dial can get in the way of hand placement. In my opinion a small price to pay.

Fluid trainers ($200-$700)

are probably the most popular because of their quite and reliable operation. CycleOps, Elite, Kurt Kinetic, to name a few, make great trainers that utilize fluid resistance. Fluid trainers are well known for having larger and steeper power curves that range from easy in the lowest gears to barely turning the cranks over in the highest gears. Since these have no cables and no dials, just jump on and go. They are very quiet and are smooth and offer a very nice road feel… as long as you don’t shift.

What I don’t like about these is actually the power curve. The power required to generate additional wheel speed goes up so fast that shifting doesn’t feel natural at first. With each click into a higher gear, the resistance jumps way up. This may be good for some, it’s just something I don’t like. Additionally, the resistance unit heats up considerably. At the end of a training session, you can literally cook an egg on it. While this may seem to be no big deal, the problem is that while it heats up, the resistance becomes lower and lower. So, in your big ring and a 5 in the back, pedaling at 80 RPM, you might be generating 300 watts to start, but, give it 15-20 minutes and the same ratio and cadence will dissolve to 210 watts. The other problem is, the heating and cooling of fluid causes expansion and contraction in the resistance unit and may cause leakage. My Elite trainer hasn’t had that problem yet.

Centrifugal.

The most popular centrifugal trainer on the market is the 1UP ($300). After reading so many positive reviews, I had to own one. These are quite, smooth, well built and have a very natural feel. Also, they sit so low to the floor that it feels like an authentic ride. These are really easy to put the bike on and fold up nice and compact. Unlike fluid trainers, they don’t heat up to the same extent and you don’t have issues with fluid leaks.   The power curve on these are incredible and you have to be an absolute beast to get the cranks over in your biggest gears.

However, much like the fluid trainers, the power curve is too steep for my tastes. Each shift into a bigger gear, feels like you just  hit a wall and it’s somewhat demotivating. While there is not as much of a reduction in the power curve with heat, there is still some. As the pad heats, the friction is lessened. Also, over time, the resistance of the unit will decrease. This may actually be an advantage 🙂 The disadvantage to sitting so low to the floor is that if you have carpet, the wheel will rub the carpet and turn it the same color as your tire. If you have carpet, you need to find a piece of board to set the trainer on and that kind of defeats the purpose of having a trainer sit so low.

Like I said, I keep coming back to one and it’s my good ol’ Minoura Mag-R500 trainer. I still have the others, but, this has been my favorite.

So, there you have it. Hope you found this helpful and have a great workout!

Paul