IOWA CITYBIKE TRAINER ASSEMBLY AND SETUP

Bike Trainer assembly And Setup At Mobile Auto Truck Repair Iowa City

Bike Trainer Assembly And Setup Service near Iowa City IA: Don’t let winter put a damper on your training routine. The following tips will make you a fitter and stronger rider, and get you ready for your first event come springtime winter is here and, as we found out with the finale of Game of Thrones, it’s often a pretty grim outlook. Not least when it comes to keeping on top of your fitness and training regime.Mobile Auto Truck Repair Iowa City, luckily, indoor training has helped provide a platform to get you through the cold, dark winter months ensuring you come out the other side well prepared for the next event.

With the advancement in technology and the introduction of smart indoor trainers, Watt Bikes and online training platforms such as Zwift, training indoors has become one of the most effective ways of preparing for an event.

Mobile Auto Truck Repair Iowa City,one of the biggest misconceptions associated with indoor training is that each session has to be hard or fast. In fact, indoor training should follow the same structure and recipe as an outdoor session.

Choose the Right Trainer

A bike trainer is a device that clamps onto your rear axle and presses a resistance roller against the rear tire so that you can ride in place. They come in three basic categories:

• Wind trainer: Less popular today and thank goodness, as the resistance generated from its small fan isn’t as loud as a 747 at takeoff, but it’s far from silent.
• Mag trainer: A bit more expensive and quieter.
• Fluid trainer: More expensive and quieter than its Mag brethren.

Most trainers are durable. It’s a worthwhile investment and a device that will serve you well for years to come. Buy a steel skewer for your rear wheel so that the bike sits more securely in the trainer’s clamp, but most new trainers come with this. Also buy a wheel block that raises the front wheel, leveling off the bicycle, but this can be faked with something like a phone book.

The great thing about indoor trainers is that…

There are no interruptions on a trainer like there are on the road no stop lights, no delays. Just get on and go! This adds value to the ride, so a 50-minute ride on the trainer is equal to an hour outside.

The same basics apply here as in any workout. Start with a warm-up of 10-12 minutes. Put in some technical focus for three to five minutes. Perform the main body of your workout, and then follow with seven to 10 minutes of cool-down. Three rides a week in the winter will keep you in shape and improve your bike ability.

Drill ride. The main body consists of four sets of 30-second one-footers, with two minutes of recovery. To perform a one-footer, remove one cleat from the pedal and rest that foot safely on the frame of the trainer. Concentrate on 30 seconds of smooth, fluid circles using just one foot. Switch feet and take two minutes of easy spin with both feet as recovery. The next drill is four 30-second spin-ups with two minutes’ recovery. To perform a spin-up, start at 90 rpm in a moderate gear. Gradually increase your cadence to 95, 100, 105 rpm and so on while still in that same gear. After 15 seconds of increasing cadence, get to your fastest spin which is still very smooth (no hopping around in the saddle) and hold that for 15 seconds. Take a full two minutes of easy circles between each for recovery.

Interval ride. After a solid warm-up, shift into a higher gear and commit to going very strong for two minutes. You can determine how intense that effort should be with a heart rate monitor, by rate of perceived effort or by breath rate. Then, spin easy for three minutes. Start with three rounds, and as fitness develops, go to four or five rounds. After that, increase the duration of the effort. Eventually, reduce the recovery time.

Steady state. After a solid warm-up, settle into a pace that will last 15-30 minutes. Make this a challenge, but not nearly as intense as the effort in the interval ride. Again, use either heart rate, perceived effort or breath rate to decide on the intensity. Hold this effort steady and strong for the full duration, and concentrate on good pedaling mechanics. Be sure to leave plenty of time for a quality cool-down.

Why Train with a Bike Trainer: 4 Golden Rules of Indoor Riding

Bike Trainer Assembly And Setup Service near Iowa City IA: Let’s investigate its role in performance preparation, including some positive aspects of indoor trainer riding, and aspects of riding you simply cannot effectively work on by being inside.

What You Cannot Achieve on a Trainer

Rather than simply mounting a case for all the benefits of indoor riding, let’s first acknowledge some aspects you won’t get to effectively work on while bolted to the floor:

• Handling Skills: All basic, yet important, interactions with the bicycle are not replicated when on a trainer. You cannot develop a sense of balance, braking, cornering, descending etc. These are interactions that are so often lacking among triathletes, so we must realize that plenty of outside riding, with focus on these fundamental skills, will be beneficial for you.
• Terrain Management: Using gears and pedal stroke to effectively manage rolling terrain, descents and climbs cannot truly be developed on a trainer. With some of the software improvements, it is getting closer, but the true intuition and developing of feeling is only achieved outside.
• Standing Out of the Saddle: An important skill to develop to effectively manage terrain, short postural load, but also nail the counter-steering effect that is utilized in cornering, riding in the wind and other interactions, yet impossible to develop when riding on a trainer that holds the bike in place laterally.

These three main categories require outside riding to truly develop, and should not be ignored. With this said, getting inside and onto the trainer does offer some valuable opportunity.

The Benefits of the Bicycle Trainer

Bike Trainer Assembly And Setup Service near Iowa City IA:So you cannot work on standing or cornering, your terrain management won’t improve, and you won’t effectively stand out of the saddle. It doesn’t mean the trainer is a limited tool. In fact, far from it. Your trainer is a wonderful tool in your training arsenal. Here are some of the opportunities with riding the trainer:

• Effective Training in a Controlled Environment: Specific interval training becomes highly effective without the natural variability of the terrain of outside. There is no coasting on a trainer, hence why many like to make the claim that 60 minutes of trainer time is worth more than 60 minutes outside. You have a controlled environment, to nail specific intervals, without any coasting effect. I promise you will never run out of a hill when doing low rpm hill reps’ on a trainer.
• Pedal Stroke and Posture: Without the requirement to manage your bike around traffic, terrain and other riders, the trainer provides the optimal environment to work on your pedal stroke and retaining proper posture. Including a mirror in your set up, for self-guided feedback, can begin the habit that, from minute one until the end of the session, you do things well.

This means form over force, and every interval can be achieved while retaining proper posture. This is so critical, as performance in triathlon cycling is as much about retaining form under fatigue, and establishing a great habit of riding well, despite fatigue, will carry across to race day.

• Specificity of Intervals: We tend to prescribe training as a combination of effort (power, RPE or heart rate) with a wide range of specific RPM play. A backbone of our training is what we label as end of range’. Many intervals are either very low cadence, or strength-endurance as we call it, as well as some very high RPM work at the top end.

It can be a challenge to ride to suitable terrain outside, but the trainer offers immediate and controllable intervals in which you can mimic sustained efforts to train physiology, without the limiter of your terrain.

The Golden Rules

When adopting the use of a cycling trainer, we have a few golden rules for all riders to follow.

• Always ride with great posture. There is no excuse for riding with locked elbows, tense shoulders, and hips rotated back on your seat. Ride like the rider you want to be. If you ingrain positive postural habits, they will be there on the race course.
• Make your pedal stroke fluid. We always coach the cue tension on the chain. When riding inside, you have the chance to understand, appreciate and apply fluid and smooth pedaling. If you are a quad-focused rider, you can feel and “see” the chain bouncing. An opportunity for refinement and becoming a more fluid rider.
• Execute the intent. You have a controlled environment, execute your training as intended. For me, this is the intended output, but also at the cadence (RPM) that is the goal of an interval.
• Take it outside. Whenever you are riding inside, always keep a lens on how this applies to my outside riding. Your races and events are outside, so join the dots on how your effort applies to becoming a better outside rider.

In short, embrace the trainer. It is a wonderful tool in your performance arsenal, but remember that your ultimate mission is to become a better bike rider outside. Utilizing the benefits of the trainer, then applying those habits, lessons and intervals to the outside world is your optimal performance lens to frame its role in your overall development and race readiness.

Do you have a smart bike trainer? What kind? If not, which one is on your wish list? Call us Today Mobile Auto Truck Repair Iowa City.