Bicycle trainers

wine9555

I am looking into getting a stationary bike trainer for use during the winter.Which would be better,rollers or the cyclops style trainer.

mike kluge

I've ridden both in my time.

Rollers are fun to learn and require a bit of skill to master, so they are slightly more of a challenge, but you can't beat a decent turbo trainer like cycleops. The advantages of a turbo are that they let you focus on the training without worrying about falling off the rollers!

For proper interval sessions and out of saddle riding, the turbo trainer wins hands down for me.

Monty Dog

Rollers are great for developing a smooth pedalling style, but don't really allow you to develop the same intensity of effort as a decent turbo. Something like a Tacx Flow enables you to train on both heartrate and power - providing far more structure to your training. Turbo training is very different from just sitting on the bike and pedalling because you're not having to overcome wind resistance etc - consequently, structure the training around technique, intervals and developing your aerobic threshhold.

bahzob

If money and space allow I would get both. Advantages of turbo as above. Main advantage of rollers is they help build a really smooth pedalling action and winter provides good opportunity to focus on this. Having both also adds variety which can help with motivation.

timestar

I have been using a turbo trainer regularly for the past 9 months (after a bad road smash). I have never used rollers so cannot really comment on those. Turbos are very useful I think to develop good cadence and try and keep a reasonable level of cardiac fitness. Just remember all the usual qualifiers, i.e. it brings a whole new meaning to the word boredom, you will sweat like never before (even with a fan, which is essential), and before someone else says it - it's no replacement for getting out on the roads.