Most road like indoor trainer?

bigbangtheorysl2

I have recently begun training with a power meter and have found that my power readings are lower on the indoor trainer (tacx satori magnetic trainer) than out on the road.

Having read up on several different reasons for this: lack of air cooling, motivation etc... i have found the lack of inertia theory very interesting.

Anyway, my question is, from your own experiences, what indoor trainer on the market today gives the most road like feel and may therefore close the gap between my power output readings on the trainer vs the road?

Thanks!

dw300

Weird, I thought the trainer would give higher readings since it's like pedalling along a perfect road surface, so your legs don't lose power behaving like shock absorbers.

Alex_Simmons/RST

The bigger the flywheel the more representative of road like inertia. The Lemond Revolution is a good example of this in a portable trainer. Most units with a big flywheel are dedicated ergobikes (e.g. SRM, Velotron).

The question really though is how much inertial load do you need? I'd say for effective training, not necessarily as much as you'd have on the road, but just enough so that your training is effective, and you are able to train at the right level for inducing the desired adaptations.

e.g. many years ago I had a Minoura mag resistance trainer, but my power for perceived effort was at least one whole training level lower than I wanted, so it was not going to permit effective training for me. When I moved to my own high inertia trainer, my indoor power came up to match my outdoor power.

A bit also depends on what sort of training you need to do. If it's aerobic development (which is 95%+ of us) then full on inertial load is not necessary. But if you plan to do hard acceleration work on a trainer, then you'll not only need a very robust and stable unit, but also the high inertia to give you the resistance needed when accelerating.

This is what I used during my rehab phase.



I have a Computrainer nowadays.

Alex_Simmons/RST

dw300 wrote:

Weird, I thought the trainer would give higher readings since it's like pedalling along a perfect road surface, so your legs don't lose power behaving like shock absorbers.

http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/2009/01/ ... ining.html

bigbangtheorysl2

Great feedback Alex..Thanks!

The most testing efforts i would be putting in on the trainer are threshold and vo2 max intervals. I prefer to do sprint intervals and those hard acceleration efforts out on the road when i can.

I have looked at the lemond revolution and kurt kinetic road machine and have seen great reviews for both. However the lemond seems to have the edge on pure road feel which is what i am really after!

Have any of you used either or both of these trainers and what would you recommend? Would be very interested to hear of your experiences!

Thanks!

Alex_Simmons/RST

bigbangtheorysl2 wrote:

Great feedback Alex..Thanks!

The most testing efforts i would be putting in on the trainer are threshold and vo2 max intervals. I prefer to do sprint intervals and those hard acceleration efforts out on the road when i can.

I have looked at the lemond revolution and kurt kinetic road machine and have seen great reviews for both. However the lemond seems to have the edge on pure road feel which is what i am really after!

Have any of you used either or both of these trainers and what would you recommend? Would be very interested to hear of your experiences!

Thanks!

I have clients that have used both. The Lemond is very good, as is the KK. Both very solid units. It's a matter of budget and a few other considerations such as noise factor, and how much you prefer the direct drivetrain drive vs tyre on roller model. The latter is quicker to set up but will have some tyre wear and the former is a little fiddly (not too bad) but of course no rear wheel to worry about (but need to make sure cassette is compatible with your bike. I think if I didn't have the Computrainer, I'd have the Lemond.

cyco2

I would have thought that riding a bike with a power meter on a trainer with power metering is about the best you can do to get a comparison.

Alex_Simmons/RST

cyco2 wrote:

I would have thought that riding a bike with a power meter on a trainer with power metering is about the best you can do to get a comparison.

You are right in that with a power meter, you can at least know whether or not this is the case.

It's not quite so simple though, as there are several factors at play. Some trainers are awful to ride on and can be very difficult to maintain a decent power level, so bad that the quality of training is compromised.

Also (putting aside psychological differences), while the metabolic demands are pretty much the same, the neuromuscular demands are different to outdoors. This can bee seen for example when using quadrant analysis to compare threshold intervals on a trainer to outdoors, such as descibed in this item:

http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com.au/2009/ ... lysis.html

Eyorerox

I have moved from the Tacx Satori to the Lemond Revolution.
The Lemond is most like riding a bike of any wind trainer I have tried, not sure
how important that is. It is very noisy. Supposed to be able to upload your
power data to Training peaks, does not work for me, not sure why.
Llewellyn also makes a fan based ergo
http://www.llewellynbikes.com/HTML/Shop.html#Ergos