Turbo Trainer Advice

Yeah, that's a good point. There are some types with 5 sides already, they usually come in multiple sizes and the open side allow them to be nested

Ok, so I need to venture into the whole turbo thing. Having kids means that I don’t often have time to actually take the bike outside, but have enough pockets of time that I can easily do a quick spin and help burn some calories.

I’m not a serious cyclist, so don’t really care about power output and blah. Can’t see myself getting into zwift or similar. Just need to be able to measure my heart rate and estimate calories burnt. I’m assuming all I need is a simple turbo paired with some kind of app. Can anyone recommend either a decent turbo or the app that might do the trick?

Buy a smart turbo as it does all the clever shit and makes TrainerRoad or similar more purposeful.

Where are you and you can buy my old tacx vortex smart …

I went for a similar low-tech setup. I got the lifeline tt-02 fluid, use a garmin hr strap with my watch or bike computer to record.
It seems fine, slightly lower resistance than I'd have expected maybe.

If you want to burn fat in a few spare hours a week get a smart trainer and do some nasty intervals. HIIT and the like

I went for a totally different option. Elite Arion Mag rollers (£100 from ebay). Although I now also have a Saris H3 (which I love), the rollers would always be my choice for a quick spin to burn some calories.

HIIT does not fat burn.

It burns calories, and therefore fat?
Also boosts metabolism for longer post workout to burn more calories than the calories burned during the exercise?

Or is that all bollocks?

Probably not as good at burning fat as 2 hours at zone 2, but I would have thought it is slightly more time efficient.

The workouts I’m doing just now: 1hr of vo2max intervals is 763kcal, 1.5hr of z2 is 930kcal, so there’s not much in it. I’d choose the z2 for fat burning.

Vo2max is fuelled by sugar and stuff in the muscles. I’d imagine fasted z2 or less would be much more effective at encouraging fat metabolism.

@Acliff is right. Is not the fat you burn doing it, it's after. You get a lot more in an hour, and eventually a faster metabolism. 3 hours a week of sprints is pretty hard, 3 hours of zone 2 most commuters do more than this.

I have found that weight loss jumped when I stopped concentrating on endurance and sweet spot rides on trainer road and began doing more threshold and vo2max workouts. Doing the lower intensity stuff helped get me fitter but there was a long plateau and it took doing sessions with greater intensity spikes though burning similar calories to the endurance and sweet spot ones for a change to occur.

I’m in Sheffield, I suspect this is a major obstacle.

Rollers, I dunno. I’m a dumb bastard at the best of times, not sure I can handle the humiliation of crashing my bike whilst effectively static in my garage.

Tacx Flow smart is probably the one to recommend. Not a bad time to be buying one second hand due to people unloading them on ebay/facebook for summer/post lockdown.

The biggest difference with a 'smart' trainer is that it can control the resistance.
So if you wanted an interval session, you just load one up, and it will make you hit those intervals, rather than you increasing the resistance, or pedalling harder, or trying to hit a higher heart rate.
Also if you want to be cycling at a 'fat burning zone' while watching youtube or something, then set the resistance at certain watts, and you'll hit your workout even if your cadence fluctuates.

And compliance to a plan becomes easier when you have something more engaging than just a timer and heart rate number.

I see a lot of people here are holding stocks and shares in the smart trainer sector ;)

Anyone thinking of getting rid of their vacmaster?

Why would anyone do that? Best purchase I've made for a long time

I know, long shot, but still worth asking.. Is the discount code still running @spinnnout ?

TRAINERROAD10 is still running for 10%

I'd be interested in this, for precisely the same reasons at @Eejit, so if he doesn't bite then I'm Bristol/Stroud based and am keen.

Make me an offer. Am in upleadon near Newent so not far from you.

Is there a decent website / YouTube channel that has a bank of race footage in one place to pop on whilst turboing? Found bits and bobs here and there but (for example) I fancied watching the 2019 Amstel Gold again and came up short.

I just ask @leggy_blonde which cx race to watch and he tells me, the service costs £19.99 a month 24 month contract minimum.

Not all races will be as spicy as Amstel 2019 but the nuances are quite entertaining on turbo IME. I enjoyed the Antwerp Port Epic 2021 today on the turbo.

GCN/Eurosport subscription is great for this.