Talk to me about Rollers

We have just moved house and our new garage doesn’t have power yet so looking to change to rollers from using a turbo due to noise/proximity to baby daughters bedroom. How quiet are rollers compared to a cheap turbo? How easy are they to ride? I’m looking at some locally that have the front wheel stand so guessing these are a lot more stable?

Would love to be riding outside but not an option at the moment and going crazy not getting and riding done

Pretty quiet. I’d not bother with the from wheel stand, you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Very low inertia / KE so may not be ideal depending on what you are training for (better for MTB than road.) Because of this I much prefer the turbo.

Louder than a decent Tacx magnetic turbo when going hard in my experience.

As above, useless for actually training for road riding. Rode them all winter once and was useless when I got back riding!

Rollers can be great as a training tool if you make them so – letting your tyres down a bit increases the resistance no end. I can do everything up to and including VO2 max efforts on mine no bother.
Not quiet at that effort though! A good fluid trainer like a Kurt is far less noisy.

I’m a keen roller fan. Great for making riding in the shed actually interesting. If you’re looking to do intervals or bigger efforts, you might find there’s not enough resistance, so you’ll need to get a set with built-in resistance (Elite, PlanetX etc do them)
As JB says, magnetic trainers are probably as quiet (rollers can rumble if you’re on a wooden floor) but for indoor cycling made interesting, give them a try.

Oh, and do try to follow the peloton sprint that you’re watching on the laptop or you’ll end up in the empty paint cans in the corner of the garage… 😉

don’t bother with front wheel stand, it only took me about 3 minutes to “master” them and I’m a crap rider… reaching down to get my water out of the cage however takes a bit longer !

The ‘learn in a doorway’ is a good tip – as is having a high chair or stool handy for emergency stabilisation…
The parabolic ones, with the lip to stop you riding off, is a good idea, though I think if you’re heading that way anyway you’re already doomed 🙂

I’ve got roller with resistance and turbo. I like both, can hit vo2 max watts with the resistance on the rollers though I prefer the turbo for those kind of efforts because of how grim I feel after it. Think my rollers are noiser than the fluid turbo though on a wooden floor. Didn’t take me long to learn how to ride rollers, as above, starting in doorway is good option, look ahead not at your front wheel and decent RPM.

If you’re looking to do intervals or bigger efforts, you might find there’s not enough resistance, so you’ll need to get a set with built-in resistance (Elite, PlanetX etc do them)

Didn’t like the PX resistance ones, horrid feel to them. If you do go down the roller route then get some resistance ones that you can switch between resistance and non-resistance (some you can turn the drum around to switch between modes.)

A good fluid trainer like a Kurt is far less noisy.

If I had a sensible budget that’s what I’d spend my money on. Kurt Kinetic Road Machine are excellent turbos with great feel and very consistent. With the InRide module you have pretty accurate power estimation too. 300 quid over at wiggle. If training for the road I’d get the pro flywheel[/url] for it too.

Thanks all, not looking to do too many “training” sessions on them. I just want to get some riding whilst using zwift as getting out at all is a bit of a problem at the moment with family/wife working and rollers would allow me to ride whilst daughter is asleep.

Not too worried low resistance, I just want to get riding! Can’t afford a new turbo really as anything quiet will be more than a set of used rollers

How old is your daughter? The noise won’t wake her up, unless you are on an MTB with knobbly tyres. Get a trainer tyre.

Rollers are nicer to ride on than a turbo, but resistance can be a problem – can’t do 10s sprint intervals on them.

Don’t worry too much about a lack of resistance unless you’re really after some interval training. There’s plenty enough resistance to raise a good sweat and an hour on the rollers is a great workout.

She is 10 months and we are going through teething at the moment so she is only sleeping lightly. I have a trainer tyre and will will try turbo out for noise but thought rollers may be a lot quieter and a better option

Most babies don’t mind white noise like that, I’d have thought.

I know nothing of rollers but I do have this fluid trainer from PX and it is very quiet indeed. I use it whilst my wife watches TV in the same room. Wooden floors too, though I have purchased a yoga matt from TK Maxx for £5 to deaden the noise even more.

I mostly use my rollers for warming-up at races and doing active recovery rides when I can’t get outside.

I find the turbo is much better for doing intervals on, as I struggle to ride much above threshold on the rollers. (ie. riding in 50×11 at high rpm I can’t do much over threshold).

It’ll take you a few minutes to get going on rollers, but I feel it will take a good few hours to master them. I got some last year and was up and running almost immediately. I use them on 40 minute stints a couple of times a week (ish) but I still have to concentrate quite hard and still have a wobble if I take one hand off the bars to scratch my nose or something. I definitely don’t feel confident enough on them to give it a full on balls out sprint. They do wonders for your peddling technique though.

they’re not that quiet – well mine aren’t anyway. Mine are in the garage so don’t bother anyone due to thick breeze block walls, but anything less than that and i’m sure it would become an annoyance for people in adjacent rooms.

I will add that the rollers I have are the medium drum Kreitlers. Smaller drums will give more resistance, and larger drums give less resistance.

If you get bored you could try this…

Any Tacx roller users…. Galaxia vs Antares, worth the extra £ for the rocking bit ?

No, not imo.

I’ve got some almost new Tacx Antares Rollers for sale in the classifieds

Don’t forget to adjust the rollers so that the contact point on your front wheel is in the right place, I’ve seen a few friends struggle with rollers after they jump straight on them, riding with an effective negative trail, and proceed to struggle quite a lot…

For some reason my Galaxia rollers hae loads more rollin resistance than the ones I tried previously. Everything spins freely enough, but when the bike’s on them they are quite stiff. No idea why.

I have tacx antares rollers and tacx satori turbo. Similar noise levels on the concrete floor in my garage but I suspect that might be partly the bearings in my rollers.

Also agree with those that prefer turbo for hard efforts – largely because I don’t want to have to pay attention during the recovery phases if it’s a tough session. There’s certainly a safer route from bike to foetal position if you go too deep 🙂

Rollers are much quieter than a turbo. It’s hard to make noise sat in a box waiting to be sold.

Have medium Kreitler rollers. They are silen and provide level 3/4 resistance ok pared to my Tacx Sartori. I like them very much, but they are always an exercise in concentration? Worth the extra cost in my opinion, especially as they now have a compact frame.

Mine are a lot quieter than a turbo. Just concentrate on not enjoying it then the little in won’t wake up. If you’d enjoying something or just about to go to sleep. They wake up. So make it hurt.
He he. I remember warming up at a race on XC bike on rollers. Wound it up on the big ring and it was soooo loud. Static electricity shock’s from them are hilarious also. Was once halfway through a sweaty session on the rollers and popped my mp3 player on a shelf beside me. The static shocks it my earholes were nasty. I can laugh about now though eh.