dhender02

I received my first ever trainer this past Christmas as gift. Generally speaking, it works fine, however I NEVER feel comfortable/safe pedaling out of the saddle because I never have enough resistance to feel secure. I’ve put the bike in the highest gear possible, and still not enough resistance to feel secure. And I’ve adjusted the knob on the trainer to give it more resistance via the trainer, still not enough once I’m out of the saddle. Actually when I increase the resistance via the trainer it slips frequently versus pedaling smoothly if I backed off the resistance to an optimal point. BTW, I attend a spin class whereas I ALWAYS increase the resistance, unless it was heavy enough, prior to getting out of the saddle. However I have NO issues out of the saddle in the spin class.

Since this is my first time using a trainer, is this something I will have to get accustom to pedaling out of the saddle with less resistance? Or is it because I’m a Clyde I will never get enough resistance to support me out of the saddle? Or since I’m accustom to a spin bike comparably speaking I will never get that type of resistance from my trainer? Or I have a faulty and/or low-end trainer?

ill.clyde

The short answer is ... yes, it's something you'll have to get used to. It's an unnatural feeling, being out of the saddle on an indoor trainer.

You may want to look into "Trainer Rocker Plates" on Google. Lots of people are building (or in some cases buying) plates that rock side to side in order to give a more accurate feeling to being out of the saddle (or just riding in general)

sdmc530

I felt the same way on my trainer. BUT when I was Zwifting I knew to get the wattage badges I would have to get out of the saddle and just go for it. So I checked over all the bike set up and then one ride just got the nerve and did it. It was fine, bike didn't disintegrate, and the earth didn't stop spinning but seriously give it a try you will find it will be fine.


Yes even on the big ring in the hardest gear I do spin out too when "sprinting" on zwift so that is just something you need to adapt to. I only have a 48 tooth big ring on my trainer bike so I am seriously tempted to go to a 50 or 52. When I am giving it the kahunas and out of the saddle my Garmin speed sensor says I am doing 33 mph and zwift generally says I can get to 40 in perfect tarmac.

dhender02

THANKS for the quick responses.... Good to know...I will adapt!!!

Thanks again!!!

TrojanHorse

He's talking about not having enough resistance... once he sorts that out he'll start having problems with the unnatural rigidity of the trainer.

OP - what kind of trainer do you have? Some of them just don't provide much resistance. Mine gives me more than I can manage (allegedly up to 2,000 watts)

dhender02

Because I don't have enough resistance, my legs are somewhat just spinning when I stand, hence not a good feel out of the saddle.

I have just a basic Gavin Trainer, nothing fancy just a middle of the road trainer, I guess. Here's the link to it https://www.amazon.com/Indoor-Traine...+indoor+riding

Darth_Firebolt

enjoy your broken dropouts / chainstays.

sdmc530

It looks good. It will have limited resistance as a mag resistance system. But still is more than capable of giving you a good work out. Ride on!!


Please explain?

dhender02

Please explain. Thanks.

brawlo

Interesting comment. Australia's premier carbon repairer, Raoul Luescher, has never had to repair a bike damaged as a result of trainer use!

brawlo

There are ways to improve the grip on the roller. Rubbing alcohol on the tyre and ensuring a clean roller helps. A trainer specific tyre (made from compounds specifically for aiding roller grip) can also help.

From there there's the more extreme options of grip tape on the roller and having the roller knurled. I have been concentrating on track sprint cycling for a while now and both of these options allow for quality out of the saddle standing accelerations with minimal or even zero tyre slip. BUT the grip tape option makes a mess with rubber literally everywhere. The knurled roller option is clean, but will most definitely void any warranty.

FYI I was using a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine. I now use a direct drive Kickr

sdmc530

I just spent the last evening and this morning looking for bikes destroyed by a trainer. Lots of chatter but no pictures and no proof. Does anyone actually know of a bike breaking on a trainer? I couldn’t find any proof. However if i owned a carbon fiber bike I would not put on a trainer. I would use my metal bikes just because of the cost of fiber. But lots of folks use fiber bikes on trainers with no issues.

Darth_Firebolt

We had a 6'4" guy break an aluminum Felt on a trainer at the drive side chainstay / dropout joint region. Felt didn't have an aluminum 63cm frame on the continent for over 6 months so they upgraded him to a carbon model, which he proceeded to break on the trainer in the same spot after about 8 months. I believe the original frame was a Z85, but it's been 5 or 6 years at this point and I'm foggy on what it was replaced with. He was a very fit and powerful rider and might have broken both of those frames from just regular riding, but he said he was using the trainer a lot because it was over 100F a LOT that summer. After he broke that carbon frame he bought a Tarmac from us and I moved away about a month later. Not because he kept breaking frames on trainers. Lol

Edit to say this; most of the people that use trainers (and ride in general) are not clydes. They also don't do a lot of standing out of the saddle on trainers from what I've seen. They weigh less, are shorter, and put out less power. They could probably ride anything in a trainer and get away with it. Most dropouts are not made strong enough to resist the leverage put on them by trainers if taller, heavier, more powerful riders are standing and working on them. There's a LOT of leverage there. That part of the bike isn't usually held stationary and twisted like that. Set up a camera from the side of your front tire and take a clip in super high frames per second of you standing and dropping the hammer. Slow it down and watch how much your bike is twisting around the dropouts when it would normally not be doing that. Just getting a spin in to get your heart rate up is one thing and probably won't break your bike. Standing and hammering is totally different and could.

sdmc530

So did he break the spec too? Seems a bit odd really. Do you have any pictures? I sm still in the unbeliever category. I have no doubt its happened and will continue but I don’t believe that the trainer is the soul cause of the breaking of bikes.

You guy broke two? Crazy!! Had you had anyone else break a bike before this or after? I am assuming you work at a bike shop of some sort. Just leaving me with a million questions. Specialized put a warning out out about trainers and warrenties but during spec demo days I specifically asked the rep and he said don’t worry about it. It was a lawyer doing the writing and we would cover you anyways through your dealer. My dealer said the same thing as well. So i guess i am just not completely convinced that the trainer is the soul reason for issues.

Please don’t take my response as hostile either not intended to be that way just so much chatter out there with not a bunch of broken bikes laying around.

Darth_Firebolt

No hostility taken. I've worked for several shops. I had been in shops for about 3 years at that point and had never seen a failure like it before! I don't have pictures as I didn't have a camera phone at the time (late adopter) and I don't have access to the digital camera we used to file the warranty. I don't know if he broke the Tarmac frame. My biggest point in all of this is that you probably WON'T see a big pile of broken bikes because most people riding bikes on trainers are riding 52-56cm frames, are between 5'6" and 6', and weigh 140-200lbs. Seat stays and seat tubes get LONG when you get above 56cm frame size. Saddles are higher, the rider's center of mass is higher, the handlebars are higher. Everything is combining to put a lot more leverage through the dropouts. The trainer has to resist that leverage. Every pedal stroke out of the saddle tries to twist the frame in a way it normally doesn't twist. Bigger, stronger riders have a smaller safety factor to play with.

sdmc530

Yep, I absolutely understand what your driving at.

Being I am a Clyde I wanted to test this out. I had my wife lay on the floor and watch my bottom bracket when I rode a test ride. I rode at my normal pace, about 82-86rpms and my Garmin says I am doing about 17-18mph at a steady pace. I had her use my cell phone and video the bottom bracket from the front, even at 90rpm's sitting there was a little bit of "sway" in the frame but nothing I didn't think was excessive at all. Lets say 3-4mm

Now I did the same little test out of the saddle full power in the hardest gear set up and the "sway" was quite significant. I don't know what point that it would fail but I can see if you rode like that 80% of the time at high power it could cause issues, the sway was quite impressive actually. I would guess 10-12nn But in my very humble opinion if the average rider on a trainer rides even 20% out the saddle I hope doubt it would ever be an issue. After watching the very bad video my wife attempted to get I was actually be more worried about my bottom bracket area then my stays. BUT I will not stop riding on my trainer, or on Zwift. Its great to ride in the winter and if I ever have an issue I will post it on here(heaven forbid).

Here is the funny thing, I put my wife on my bike, got her comfortable. She is about a foot shorter than me so this took some doing but got her on it. Now I am 270 about 6'ish, so yes I have some power going through when hitting it. My wife is maybe 125, that would be a stretch. I had her at a regular pace and I got on the floor at watched. At a normal pace not even a wiggle in the BB. I had her find the hardest gear she could turn and had her stand and go as hard as she could, guess what.....very little wiggle at all. 2mm at most. She could not repeat the larger sway like I could. She doesn't have the weight or power I would to put through the pedal. Also she is not a cyclist either. So Sunday at the SB party I will have a friend of mine, a non-clyde do the same test just for the fun of it. I will see if I can't get a video too.

This is really interesting! Bottom line I think over a long time you could damage a bike with full power for long periods of time, but don't think any of us are going to be doing that kind of damage anytime soon even at Clyde weights! I just don't think we are as strong as we think we are

In short yeah, I can see if I person is "pushing it" a lot, it could cause fatigue over a time. I guess this is why carbon is king! The flex it allows would be perfect for this application. OR a heavy steel stead. Who would have thought, not I.

Darth_Firebolt

If you feel comfortable posting the videos to youtube, that would be awesome. I've seen it in person, but having a source for people to watch when they get curious would be even better than posting in a thread!



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit

Basically, if you can see the aluminum flexing; it's getting weaker. Every single time it flexes, even minimally. Steel doesn't really have the same limitations once you're below a certain amplitude of movement. The welds are the weakest part of a 6061 aluminum frame, so it makes sense that it cracks either where the chainstay meets the bottom bracket, or where the chainstay and dropout meet.

sdmc530

Yeah no problem. Give me till Monday after I recover from the Super Bowl festivities and I will put up a video. I think I will set up go pro and get some HD video this time. Stand by.....

dhender02

Thanks for the explanation. I hear you loud and clear. I have a lot similarities with your friend, I'm using a Felt Z85 and I'm 6'0" around 218 lbs.

I wouldn't call what I would like to do on my trainer as "hammering" but I would like to break up the monotony somewhat by getting out of the saddle. Ideally I would like to imitate the spinning class I attend twice a week. Again I hear you, so imitating my spin class on my trainer may be a bit too much. THANKS for the advice!!

maletero

When I started riding on a trainer, I occasionally did some out of the saddle efforts. I eased up a bit because the effort strained the framed so that the drive side crank arm would make contact with the chainstay. Then my wife saw me out of the saddle once and had some concerns about the flex in frame, even when I was "taking it easy" out of the saddle. This was on a 2002(?) Specialized Al frame.

Since then, I've only ridden the trainer with my behind on the saddle.

dhender02

In general, this appears to be the overall theme of the response... I rode it yesterday, and did not get out of the saddle, although I wanted too... Thanks!

sdmc530

I couln't get a video that was even close to decent that showed what I wanted to show BUT GCN did a video that shows energy through types of frames. It does show how a frame "flexes" under load. Not the answer to the question but it talks about the idea of flex in a bike......

brawlo

Interesting read and good to read of some actual experience. It's also extremely good to see that you can only give one example (even though it's 2 separate bikes).

To me that reads of it being rider related. From my track experience, I ride without/with minimal sway. Swaying the bike from side to side is a waste of energy that can be better transferred into forward motion. You learn to be much more upright with track efforts (and the narrow handlebars of today were partially geared towards that). I think that has serious implications for equipment longevity. The only things that I have broken in 11yrs of bike riding now are a rim and spoke (that would have been fatigued anyway due to age) and a chain on my trainer bike. I've been doing trainer track sprint workouts for many years on an old alloy road bike, and the last 2 years, on an old alloy TT bike. They both flex like crazy on the trainer. In my Kurt, the TT frame flexed the rear brake on to the wheel, even with it wide open. I do standing start efforts on my Kickr with it set to 100% resistance which is over 2000W.

I guess what I'm saying is have better form. It's better for power transfer and much easier on equipment, which, as pointed out ^^^ is important for us clydes