Zwift, whoosh, wahoo etc confusion

Personally I wouldn’t bother with Zwift unless you have a smart trainer that can automatically alter the resistance

on a manual trainer with Zwift you are going to be having to watch the gradient changes all the time and altering the gearing to give some sort of resistance, it won’t be fun

you can use some other systems that give more interval type training programs where you basically follow a graph on the screen.

yes you will need a speed sensor on the rear wheel , cadence isn’t essential as it’s more of a curiosity thing to aid proper training

Cheers. The zwift thing was more about motivation than anything else.
Sounds like a speed sensor is enough to give me speed and distance then. Cadence/smooth performance isn't something I'm really interested in.
Just riding along in a 'bunch' would be nice.

I had a go for a while with a dumb trainer and trainer road. Wasn’t too bad and got me going. Used a garmin speed sensor that had come with a bike computer, a Bluetooth hr strap and a cheapie Halfords own brand cadence sensor. Just used my iPhone for TrainerRoad and everything connected via Bluetooth.

The TR app hasn’t got rolling scenery or anything - it’s graphs and bar charts abs sarcastic commentary across the screen for the most part. It’ll tell you what power to hit and it’ll have a rough idea on the resistance of your trainer (if it’s in their database) - and you have to shift gears / alter speed to hit the power.

After a while I got the itch and bought a smart trainer though!

Did Zwift for a bit at the start of the pandemic with a borrowed dumb trainer and Bluetooth speed/cadence sensors.

Sort of worked but it’s easy to sit there at a constant estimated power output/speed while the virtual speed varies.

I think you can do up to 25km on Zwift to try it without subscribing

Thanks all. It's really just to get the legs going again, so sounds like plenty of options to keep it simple.

I think pretty much all of the various apps give you an initial free period of like 30 days or something usually, so you could try each one with your setup to find one that works best.

Personally if I had a non-smart trainer I would go with Traineroad as its widely considered to be the most effective anyway and I think would be easiest to use with a non-smart trainer. But I'm quite happy just looking at the static graphs on the screen which I know isn't for everyone.

Slightly off topic but the fittest I ever got for cycling was back in my early thirties when I ripped a training plan out the back of a magazine and followed the intervals from that on a dumb trainer in my kitchen without a fan.

I've somehow never really ever scaled back to those dizzy heights despite my setup being loads better now. Was some years ago though.

Personally if I had a non-smart trainer I would go with Traineroad as its widely considered to be the most effective anyway and I think would be easiest to use with a non-smart trainer.

I reckon Systm would be OK - but then it's the same sort of training where you're following blocks on the screen. The live racing bits of Zwift and RGT would (IMO) be the worst.

OP have you had a look at the second hand market for smart trainers? They definitely do make it a lot more fun.

Personally I wouldn’t bother with Zwift unless you have a smart trainer that can automatically alter the resistance

on a manual trainer with Zwift you are going to be having to watch the gradient changes all the time and altering the gearing to give some sort of resistance, it won’t be fun

you can use some other systems that give more interval type training programs where you basically follow a graph on the screen.

yes you will need a speed sensor on the rear wheel , cadence isn’t essential as it’s more of a curiosity thing to aid proper training

All this + Wahoo (nee. Sufferfest) is pretty motivational. The videos are mostly of bunch riding, Team TT's etc so its as motivational as a group ride on Zwift would probably be without a smart trainer.

The only difference between Wahoo Systm on a smart Vs dumb trainer is you have to hit the power targets rather than the trainer adjusting to them. Which TBH is more like the real world anyway, you have to launch yourself at the pedals, whereas in ERG mode it just feels like riding into a brick wall when the interval hits.

Cadence is sometimes useful as some workouts will be a constant power output (which the speed sensor ill give you via whatever algorithm the software you use has as long as it has your trainer in it's database) whilst varying the cadence, you could guess it, but for the sake of a cheap £5 sensor off amazon it's a nice metric to have, just like heart rate.

All the services offer free trial periods, I didn't know what I wanted until I tried a few.

Zwift or Wahoo RGT were a non-starters for me because there's no wifi in the garage where my turbo is setup so I could only ride on my own and the whole point of those platforms is the social aspect/racing real people.

Trainerroad you are paying a load of money to stare at graph, whereas Wahoo SYSTM still offers structured training plans and workouts but also gives you a library of 138 workouts with accompanying race footage and 68 cycling themed documentaries.

The Wahoo Fitness app is free and will connect to BT speed,cadence and HR sensors ( I'd say HR is a more important metric than cadence) If all you want is to record your activity and then you can watch TV to distract you from the bordeom of being on the turbo.

the whole point of these platforms is to get fit TBH. I use wahoo (paid for the year) but there is a lot you can do for free including the fitness tests. Get a smart trainer and use wahoo. It is better than zwift.

bite the bullet and get a smart trainer. with wahoo you can do magic roads which lets you ride places based on GPX data.

I've got a wahoo kickr, okay setup in my shed though screen could be better - cheap TV with chromecast is too laggy for zwift which only works with mirroring. Apparently appleTV is what I want, but seen enough of zwift to kind of know that I don't. I'd rather just do a workout...

Annnnyway for the OP my advice would be just search youtube for GCN training videos. These worked for me just with a dumb trainer and heartrate monitor better than my current smart setup does, though I was motivated then to get fit for events. It might sound naff, but watching people riding bikes on screen shouting motivational stuff at you, music for peddling cadence, telling you to make 8/10 or whatever efforts to take you through a workout does get your head, mine anyway, in a place for making decent efforts.

Thanks all. Think I'll try trainerroad, dumb trainer and speed sensor to start with and then see how that goes.
Ideally I'd just be out real cycling, but this will do to get some fitness back.
Thanks for all the pointers.