Rollers

Teach

Looking at buying a set of rollers (the bike sort!) or a turbo trainer. Never used either. Do rollers have any resistance? Apart from the skill of balancing on them, what benefit do rollers have?

Suffolkwheels

They offer a quick, simple and stunning style

Pretre

YOu should post this in 'Training' or 'Road Buying Advice'.

Bronzie

Pretre wrote:

YOu should post this in 'Training' or 'Road Buying Advice'.

Or even better, just read one of the many similar threads that are already current as soon as the first sniff of autumn is in the air

MattC59

Teach wrote:

Looking at buying a set of rollers (the bike sort!) or a turbo trainer. Never used either. Do rollers have any resistance? Apart from the skill of balancing on them, what benefit do rollers have?

Don't worry about them, leave the post in here, Cake Stop gets more people viewing hte threads. I put a post in Buying Advice a while ago and got about 4 replies. I put the same post in here and got loads of replies.

You'll also note that those p*ssing and whining about it being in the wrong forum, dont' have any advice to offer...... and now I wait for the abuse to start :roll:

Anyway.............

I bought a Turbo last year and it's been great. As far as I can see, the more you spend, the better the 'feel' of the resistance.
I'm not sure about rollers, they always seem appealing to me, but I'm not sure whether they have variable resistance. The general concensus is that rollers improve your technique massively as you have to spin very smoothly.

Turbos can be boring, so I guess rollers can be to, but at least concentrating on technique will give you another dimension to aleviate the boredom.

There's a lot of guys on here who swear by rollers, hopefully they'll offer some input.

M

malcom x

i have used rollers a lot, back in the day turbo's did not exist. thats all we had. you can buy them with resistance. have a look at the e-motion by elite. elite-it.com . im'e thiking of getting some to use instead of my turbo.

de_sisti

malcom x wrote:

i have used rollers a lot, back in the day turbo's did not exist. thats all we had. you can buy them with resistance. have a look at the e-motion by elite. elite-it.com . im'e thiking of getting some to use instead of my turbo.

I've got a set of these. Expensive, but dead easy to ride on.

gmb

I've got a set of the Tacx rollers - about £100. They are very smooth but the resistance can only be varied by changing gear.

Rollers are much less boring than turbo trainers as if you don't concentrate the results can be quite interesting - especially when clipped in!

sloboy

The inside ride designl is now licenced by elite as their e-motion rollers. Pricey or what ?

I have the Elite parabolic rollers and after about 3 years the resistance has really built up - I'm thinking there's something up with the bearings bu it's not obvious which ones.

For me in fitness terms, I think the turbo did more, although I packed that in because the fixed position seemed to be affecting my lower back which the rollers don't.

de_sisti

sloboy wrote:

The inside ride designl is now licenced by elite as their e-motion rollers. Pricey or what ?

The ones made on licence by Elite are almost as expensive as the Insideride.com version.
When I bought the Insideride rollers the Elite version wasn't available in the UK.

I agree, they are expensive and I didn't hesitate to pay the price. However, some people
don't hesitiate to spend thousands of £ on a bike.

mroli

I've got the Tacx rollers and a tacx turbo trainer. For "focused" training - ie harder work, say along to the sufferfest etc, I'll use a turbo. For getting on it and just riding for an hour, I'll use the rollers. Of course, generally I'll get out if I can. Got both as for a period last year I couldn't leave the house. Struggled initially on the rollers (and my wife got me the cross bar bit that you can attach that hold the front fork! But ok now. Keeps the concentration going though...

mroli

I've got the Tacx rollers and a tacx turbo trainer. For "focused" training - ie harder work, say along to the sufferfest etc, I'll use a turbo. For getting on it and just riding for an hour, I'll use the rollers. Of course, generally I'll get out if I can. Got both as for a period last year I couldn't leave the house. Struggled initially on the rollers (and my wife got me the cross bar bit that you can attach that hold the front fork! But ok now. Keeps the concentration going though...