Can anyone shed some light on turbo trainers for me.

Is it simply just a matter of buying one strapping bike in and away you go or is there more to it. Like specific tyres etc?

What trainer would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

Buy a large FAN ….

Buy a raincoat instead

Buy rollers lot more entertaining as they require concentration to ride without crashing, on a more serious note, hate the fixed feeling with turbo’s so use rollers as the bike is loose on top. There is some debate as well to whether you can use carbon frames clamped into a turbo trainer.

I believe you need a slick tyre

Yep you need a big fan.
You will sweat a lot so you want to consider that when you choose a location.
You do not need a turbo tyre but I have one as the bike is always in the turbo and gets used most days. As far as I can see it will never wear out which is a bonus.
You will need something to raise the front of your bike. The phone book should do the job.

Most importantly they are hateful devices of torture, so unless you have a tactic to motivate yourself the turbo will soon be stored away in a dark corner of the garage.

Edit: I have tried a few trainers. The only one I think is ok is the kurt rock and roll. It is a bit of a beast. It is reduced on Planet X/ on one at the mo

Buy rollers lot more entertaining

If your bored you aren’t working hard enough.

Most importantly they are hateful devices of torture, so unless you have a tactic to motivate yourself the turbo will soon be stored away in a dark corner of the garage.

It’s real pain to do a proper turbo session, you will at least get off feeling weak and shaky, you may even puke. You will look at it with hate filled eyes, but you will go back for more.

Sufferfest and trainer road are your friends.

WOW. So many negative comments. Sure has put some doubt in my mind now that’s for sure.

It improves your fitness no end

It improves your fitness no end

There’s no coasting on a turbo, 45 – 60 mins is plenty enough. Recommend a fluid one for more realistic resistance and less noise ~ CycleOps.

Also a DVD boxset or two.

Get some sufferfest videos

trainerroad.com and some gamin stuff
and loud music
+1 for fluid
+100 for fan or outside

Love them.
Used mine during the day yesterday, don’t like the chill of a fan I prefer to ride topless with a towel over the bars.
Do what you set out to do, don’t cheat yourself.
Very intense.

So many negative comments.

Not really I think you misunderstand. They are bloody hard work when you use them properly, but if your the kind of person who enjoys to push yourself physically they are a great tool.

If on the other hand you are solely into riding to look at scenery and chat with mates, then you will just sit on the turbo spinning your legs and be bored brainless.

You don’t need special tyres, but bear in mind it’ll eat through tyres a lot quicker than road miles. Stick to cheap ones if it’s being used regularly imo.

Turbo’s are great they are hard work but that’s surly the point isn’t it? Plus one for a big fan I use mine in the front room with patio doors open and a fan on. I find sticking something good on TV works if your board. Watching the tour was great. If like me you have kids a turbo tyre will also tone down the noise.

Hmm, my turbo doesn’t wear my tyres even slightly unless its not wound up tight enough against the tyre and its slipping a bit. For a mountain bike though you do need a slick rear tyre or it gets very noisey along with lots of vibration.

They can get quite hot, if you are using sticky rubber it can wear quite noticeably, I have also hear that it can cause delamination of the layers, although no personal experience of that.

Check out trainerroad.com, makes turboing a bit more entertaining and you can watch some iplayer in the background. A good training plan of power based intervals will do wonders.

+1 on the biggest fan you can get. Have lots of fluids and towels to hand. Oh and get a trainer specific rear tyre.

Also make the turbo as accessible as possible. If it takes you half an hour to get it all set up each time you want to use it, you probably won’t bother. I have an old road bike set up permanently on the turbo.

Oh and also watch out for sweaty pads, bad for saddle sores.

Oh and on most turbo trainers you’ll need to change the rear skewer to the special one that comes with the turbo which you will put somwehere safe after your session then forget where. Rollers are looking more appealing all the time! There is a certain cycling status to be achieved by being able to ride on rollers as well.

Got an Elite Volare I think, its fine with some kind of session to follow such as a Sufferfest.

Got some Cyclops rollers with resistance unit and that is more entertaining and with the resistance unit its sufficient to be able to do Sufferfest sessions also. Plus you have to keep pedalling even after a hard effort, else it all gets a bit wobbly and you might end up on the floor.

Cover up your headset with a cloth or one of those stretchy y-shaped catcher things, as I’ve found I sweat right over the headset and stem and over time, this seeps into the headset and rusts anything possible.

Can anyone recommend a bigger fan than the 20quid ones in Argos that are about as big as they seem to do?

If the budget can stretch to it I’d get a spinning bike instead, but if you do decide to go with a turbo the advice above is excellent – only thing I’d add is to get a cheap second wheel with a cheap slick tyre, that way you can simply swap the wheel over when you stick the bike on the turbo.

this trainerroad.com business… what do i actually need? I have a supported trainer, but the website has loads of info, but too much for me to find what I need! I’ve got a cheap polar HR monitor, do i need to buy expensive GPS thingies or just an ANT stick and plug that into my lap top? What do i need to buy and what is the minimum investmenbt?

Cheers

jim

You need an ANT+ USB stick and a speed/cadence sensor at a minimum. If your turbo trainer is supported this will give you a virtual power reading. Not as good as a proper power meter but still ok. You’d need an ant+ hr monitor if you wanted hr displayed, not sure if the polar is compatible.

As for fans, I’ve got one of the fifty quid screwfix floor ones, it’s very good though still struggles in this heat, just ends up blowing hot air. If you can use the turbo outdoors that’s probably a better option.

Edit: as for trainers, I got one of the higher end Minoura ones to replace an old tacx. Mainly because it had a wide range of resistance so was good for me and the missus. Seems pretty good. If it was just for me I don’t think I’d have bothered with variable resistance and probably would have got one of the kurt kinetic ones.

Double edit: Also found a close ratio cassette to be useful for turbo work so you can dial in just the right combination of power and cadence.

I use a tack fortius. You can still pick them up in the odd place. Longest I went on for was 4.5 hours. Doing a full dvd. I like it because of the varying resistances. And with tacx trainer software I can do pre-set programs as well. Worth a look Imho.

I use a tacx fortuis as well ….very good piece of kit …for a turbo trainer ….picked it up dirt cheap too

Re TrainerRoad, think you can train by HR only in which case you’d just need yoyr HRM and an Ant+ stick.

Saying that you can add a Garmin speed/cadence sensor (30 odd quid) at a later date if you want virtual power.

Definitely recommend it, I’m actually missing using it at the moment which is not something I thought I’d ever say about my trainer.

Not sure you can go hard enough on rollers?

trainerroad.com
ant+ usb stick
garmin speed/cadence sensor
I like my minoura hypermag trainer, fluid trainers can offer more resistance but can be less consistent with as the fluid warms up. rollers can be good but cant match the resistance beyond about 300w as the rear wheel would climb over the rolller
slick tyre is a must
a big chainring too, as a minimum I’d get a 48t otherwise it’ll just be too easy
big 18″ fan from screwfix for about £30 otherwise you will just sweat even with an open window and it being sub zero outside
sleeping mat to protect the floor from sweat

it looks like a cheap way of keeping fit, but IME it’s as much as a cheep bike! and without the kit it was either dull, unstructured, unproductive or unappealing.

For an effective fan you need a 20″+ industrial drum fan.
Best turbos range from basic cycleops fluid 2 to more advanced (with videos to ride to, and some degree of power estimation) such as the Bkool trainer, to proper ergos where you can set the power you want to ride to and the tainer adjusts the resistance accordingly – eg computrainer, powerbeam pro or wahoo kickr.
Take a look at dc rainmaker blog for his usual very detailed review of trainers:
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/10/my-2012-trainer-recommendations-early.html

A proper turbo session will have you thinking up excuses by the second interval of why you cannot continue. The low point is just before half way when you have more than the same again to come. If you don’t want to die at this point you are not working hard enough. I can’t understand how I ever get back on the *^$&ing thing.

Take care to warm up, warm down and stretch – it’s very easy to injure yourself if you don’t.

Cheap Tacx from Decathlon and Sufferfest videos on the tablet. Repeat weekly. Or Weakly. Fans? Pah!

Angels… 😈