Rollers or Turbo?

bilirubin

Hi,

I know it might sound a bit early but I am looking into buying myself a Turbo trainer or a set of rollers for the wet/icey nights, I have no experience on either, my winters are normally spent on a spin bike at the gym or on the one I have at home.

So the big question is what would you go for Turbo or Rollers or.................do I stick with the spin bike and save my money?

Sorry in advance if this question has been asked before.

hopper1

I have both..
Rollers are a little more interesting, as you have to pay attention, or you'll crash!
I prefer the turbo for hard interval sessions, but anything longer than an hour is mind numbing...
Whatever you purchase, you will also need a fcuk off BIG floor fan, to keep you from melting!

finchy

Rollers.

Massive improvement to your riding style.

dave35

I've had plenty of turbos over the years, gets so boring after 40 mins. and ended up hating the thing.
Bought my first set of rollers last week and although i've only been on them 4 or 5 times for 30 mins. i think they're superb and have already helped my bike handling on the road.
Get some rollers and persevere with them as they do take practice.

ravey1981

Just interested...how do rollers improve riding style and bike handling? Smoothness?

I have a turbo, I hate it...turbo = pain, still end up going back for more though....

unixnerd

I've had plenty of turbos over the years, gets so boring after 40 mins. and ended up hating the thing.

You can go that long before getting bored, I'm impressed! Wish I could.

If I were to do it again I'd get rollers. I think they'd help my style a lot. Hopefully it'll just snow a lot and I can go skiing instead.

bilirubin

johnfinch wrote:

Rollers.

Massive improvement to your riding style.

Hi John, Thanks for the reply however does the improved riding style help with fitness over the winter?

My plan is to keep riding over the winter to at least maintain my current level of fitness or, even improve it, so is this achieved on rollers with the addition of an improved riding style?

Alex_Simmons/RST

Rollers come in all various types and resistance levels. Drum diameter & material (plastic/metal) have a fair impact on this.

You may find with some models the need to add resistance via some means in order to do anything harder than endurance level riding.

Some models come with resistance controllers, e.g. the Kreitler killer headwind fan unit.

Can't say they make all that much difference to "riding style", whatever that means. You just get better at riding rollers.

Units that allow freedom of for/aft motion of bike (e.g. e-motion rollers) allow for much more aggressive type of efforts (e.g. out of saddle sprinting without an artificial sprint "style" required to do this on fixed rollers).

Bhima

I found that riding in a bunch smoothly and balancing when overgeared on steep climbs was greatly improved by riding rollers.

MikeWW

Worth having both. If I could only have 1 would go turbo-only because its better for interval work.rollers are more fun and better for pre race warm ups and recovery spins