denvertrout

I spent $20 on a used trainer after mine broke. Power meter on the bike and I am set for year round power analysis.

bruce19

To your point. When I started cycling I was 34 yrs. old. I knew nothing about cycling and had no one to ride with who knew anything about cycling. But, I bought a book and in it was this advice: If you can't afford a coach, buy rollers. I had no idea what they were but I bought rollers and learned to ride them. That was 36 yrs. ago. Last year I had a fitting that measured (among other things) pedaling efficiency. The fitter said, "If a recreational rider can hit 70% efficiency (basically pedaling perfect circles) that's pretty good. You are doing 85% with no imbalance in your legs. How's that possible?" I thought about it and said, "Well, I've never had a trainer, just always trained on rollers." His response was, "Of course!"

Carbonfiberboy 

Biofeedback is a real thing.

GambadiLegno

Rollers, rollers and rollers...

I used to have a trainer and now I train when raining in an Elite Arion Mag. Yo can improve a lot your skills, as pedal efficiency, sprinting, etc.

And for me, and that's the most important point, they're more enjoyable than any trainer.

karlkras

If you haven't purchased one yet, I have a direct drive Lemond Revolution I can give up for a very fair price.

valygrl

If this is going to be your only trainer, you should pick something that will also work for warmup before your races, so something light enough that you can move it around and not requiring being plugged in.

Since you already have a power meter coming, if you really want to save $, i think the best bang for buck is a good quality non-smart trainer like the Kurt Kinetic Kinetic Road Machine T-2200 - Trainers - Excel Sports

The smart Kinetic is on sale at Excelsports too... full disclosure, that is my team's shop and i love them and am proud to shill for them.

The Zwift experience is better with smart trainer (I bought a Kickr Snap) but it's still pretty good with a regular trainer and a power meter.

absoludicrous

Just tested out a pal's Wahoo Kickr Snap for a month coupled with FulGaz. I thought it was a lot of fun—I rode a bunch of exclusive climbs that I would never have the means to actually ride. I thought the smart-resistance offered great workouts/rides.

I want a smart trainer of my own.

howellhandmade

For the past couple of winters I've gotten by with a dumb KK road machine and TrainerRoad. I recently tried Zwift, and find it intriguing. To use it I upgraded to a Road Machine Smart, which doesn't vary resistance, just reports power and cadence.

For training, I think TrainerRoad gives richer information and is better for structured training. Zwift has both the virtues and faults of a group ride, in that the temptation is always there to catch the rider in front, which might spur you to the harder ride with less boredom that you need, or might blow your planned recovery ride to bits.

This year I think I will use both. If the goal is to just hammer for an hour, Zwift is engrossing. Really fun. But at the end I don't have my 5 minute power, or 10 minute power, or a bunch of other metrics, or a graph with my heart rate, yada yada yada. I have time, av. speed, avg. power, and "pizza power." If the goal is to do specific intervals or 90 minutes of Z2, it's TrainerRoad and deal with the boredom.

For both, I think the Road Machine Smart is adequate, quiet, and, if the previous machine is any guide, bulletproof. I think list is $399; I got a modest good customer discount from my LBS which made it seem a pretty reasonable power meter. I considered one of the variable resistance trainers and decided to keep it simple.

BigPoser

Thanks everyone! I haven't checked this thread for a while and I did end up getting the Elite smart trainer. While it doesn't control the resistance, it gives a very good workout with a decent power meter. While it's not super accurate, it's pretty close I feel and it's getting the job done. I'm able to keep a dedicated bike for the trainer and my other bike that has the new power meter for the road. Works great so far. After a year or two I might go for a fully integrated trainer.

rubiksoval

Rollers with resistance. You won't believe how irritating it gets taking your bike on and off a trainer frequently (if that's going to be an issue). It's a two second thing to ride if I decide to ride outside versus on the rollers.

rubiksoval

Awesome!

SpeshulEd 

Just about all the metrics you list (5min power, 10min power, graph with heart rate, graph with power, etc) are shown on Zwift immediately after you finish, before you save the ride.

Or just connect Strava to Zwift and you can review your metrics with a fine tooth comb using the Stravistix Chrome Plugin.
Enhance your Strava experience with the Stravistix Chrome extension - Cycling Weekly

howellhandmade

My apologies and thanks for the correction. I'm obviously unfamiliar with Zwift yet and have never used Strava. I still don't think I'll be able to stop myself from chasing like a dog on Zwift.

SpeshulEd 

It's very strange that they don't show those stats after the fact on your dashboard, but if you like geeking out on numbers, I'd highly suggest strava and the stravistix plugin...VeloViewer will let you dig even farther into your riding stats as well.

ajcjr

Does the road machine smart work with Zwift?

howellhandmade

Yes, it seems to work as well as any non-variable trainer could. Initially I thought I was getting a "Smart Control" trainer but I just wound up buying what my LBS had in stock since the price was right. If I were to do it over I think I might spend more for variable resistance, but as far as communicating with Zwift goes, the Road Machine Smart is fine.

As an aside, my unit wouldn't pair out of the box, but the problem was just a dead battery. Evidently a shipment had a rough sea voyage and the jostling turned the computers on and drained the batteries.

rubiksoval

Except pedaling circles isn't a very efficient means of pedaling. That's the old school way of thinking, but it's gone by the wayside at this point. You want to put the power down when you can put the power down (downstroke). The upstroke is a mere unweighting.

bruce19

So, we're back to "pedaling squares?" FWIW, I don't think that pedaling circles and unweighting the upstroke are mutually exclusive.

rubiksoval

Never head of pedaling squares, but sure.

There's no need to focus on unweighting, though. The focus needs to be on the "stomp".

SpeshulEd 

Pedaling squares is what the announcer yells at every mountaintop finish of every bike race ever.

"Their pedaling squares out there, just look at 'em, just literally turning themselves inside out!!!"

bruce19

"Stomp?" No one I know, and this includes past and current racers, subscribes to "stomping" on pedals. For many years the mantra has been "spin to win." Most notable was Lance Armstrong in this regard. I'm willing to bet that one cannot stomp and get high rpm's. If you have some cites for the new way of thinking about pedaling I'd really like to see them. I'm open to possibilities but for now I have to say stomping doesn't make sense to me.

jsk

I agree with rubiksoval that focusing on pedaling a perfectly smooth circle, or even worse trying to "pull up" on the pedals, doesn't really work from a power/efficiency standpoint. Studies have shown that power is most efficiently applied to the drivetrain during the downstroke. I'm not so sure I would go so far as to advocate stomping though, as that sort of implies a jerky motion which could lead to excess body movement; hips rocking, unstable core, rocking shoulders, etc.

One thing that I think does help is to think about getting your knees up and getting your foot over the deadspot as quickly as possible; the goal isn't to pull up on the pedal though; it's about generating foot speed and beginning the next downstroke more quickly. This works well for me at higher cadences.

ajcjr

This trainer stuff is so confusing, thanks for the replies to my questions.

Carbonfiberboy 

Way too many people think that "pedaling circles" means putting a constant force on the pedal all the way around the circle. It does not. Pedaling circles actually means distributing a varying force on each pedal so that, added together, a constant torque on the BB is produced. On rollers, one strives to hear a constant whiirrr. Since there is so little mass to hold inertia, the constant sound means that one is at least coming very close to the ideal of that constant BB torque. Pedaling circles does not produce more power in a steady-state application. Rather it decreases muscular fatigue. There's a good study here:
https://www.radlabor.de/fileadmin/PDF...MSS_-_2011.pdf
An interesting thing to note in this study is that the subjects decreased fatigue with almost no training. That shows how effective smooth pedaling is.

For more discussion on how to achieve a circular pedal stroke, there was a good thread here: https://www.bikeforums.net/fifty-plus...ing-about.html

The upstroke pedal is usually unweighted though not usually pulled up. The unweight decreases the downstroke force necessary. During hill sprints, I think every decent sprinter pulls up hard to produce maximum watts at cadences under ~90. At higher cadences, coordination seems to fail.

I might also mention the phenomenon of bouncing at high cadence. Bouncing happens when the downstroke force is continued for too long, thus lifting the rider off the saddle. The downstroke has to be eased off early and converted into a rearward stroke. This is part of pedaling circles. It's possible to pedal without bouncing at cadences above 200. Nowadays I can only manage 150 for a few moments though I can easily pedal at 120 or so, all without bouncing of course.

SpeshulEd 

Awesome! Very informative.