Slowman wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
Slowman wrote:
thatzone wrote:
Useful tool? Thinking about opting for one, but seems, unless a paid athlete is doing a commercial for Climb no one is using the climb? Recommend?
without reservation. KICKR CLIMB or KICKR Bike. Incline is a major ride enhancer if you ride to a game that features changes in topography. the biggest (but not only) benefit is the ability to ride balanced out of the saddle on a "climb." it makes the game more analogous to outdoor riding and it prepares me better for riding outdoors. to me, side-to-side movement is a smaller thing. KICKR axis action feet or something similar is fine. up/down is a much more impactful feature.
I had a kickr bike and for a number of reasons I sold it. The incline feature was doing uphill, but downhill it sucked. The reason is when you ride downhill, you have 200W of wind power pushing you back into your downhill pointed saddle (assuming you are riding say at 220W subtracting rolling resistance)...the rest is air pushing you backwards into the saddle. Riding extended downhill legs on the Kickr bike and I would feel extensive weight on shoulders/aeropads as there is no air holding one back on saddle.
It's probably also why when we ride level outdoors the position feels better than riding level indoors on the trainer (assume same bike same position)....no wind retarding force on the body on trainer.
i don't care about decline on the kickr bike (or climb). it didn't bother me. you don't spend that much time riding more than a 2% downhill in zwift. the climb has a flatter max descent (bike is 15%, climb is 10%). i can do without either. the uphill waaaay more than makes up for the annoyance of the descent (for me). and, truth be told, i just don't notice the descent much on the climb.
I have a hilly 42km local course that I do in real life that has 600m of climbing and descending (it is a loop). I also do that course online A lot of the climbing is 4-8% and so are the descents. With half the ride on downhills, at one point, I would just stop pedaling and sit up (in real life, I get into a tuck on all the 8% descents) . One of the descents is long enough that I would just get off the Kickr bike and watch it ride downhill by itself while I stood around and got a drink and then would get back on !!!!
I would prefer the option that on downhills that it just went down to level, not negative. Ideally it would be an easy option from whatever app (Zwift, Fulgaz, Rouvy etc) to set on your bike configuration from your profile.
In any case, I sold my Kickr bike because the fixed nature of the saddle vs handlebars system and with no wiggle room it was creating problems for my back injury given my body assymmetries. Putting a real bike on a Kickr with a headset and a front wheel and front tire at low pressure and some flex in the support pads for side to side, there is a bit more of wiggle room of the upper body vs pelvis and my psoas and lumbar area are thankful. I did not realize that the Kickr bike was causing me so much back pain, but it all cleared up once I got off it (actually I think I came to that realization when I had a two week period the summer after I got it that I did zero Kickr bike riding and only outdoors and my back niggles kinds of cleared up)