Finally bit the bullet an added my office gym to the roster of all the other gyms I belong to. Hoping to use it for effective lunch-time workouts; mainly treadmill running and short recovery or moderate intervals on the bike. I went downstairs today to check it out and notice that they had a Precor bike (not a spin bike, but the kind of clunkier bike, no clip-in pedals, etc., envision what you see at a hotel gym) that gave a watt readings. I hopped on it for 45 minutes and it seems somewhat accurate based on where my HR was (using my Garmin, so I know that is legit) today versus where it is when I am on the trainer with my Quarq. That said, it’s hard to believe this is accurate. Does anyone have any experience here? Just trying to gauge if I can get specific on this bike, or keep it limited to mainly aerobic work that can be guided by HR.
I don’t do spin classes a lot and I don’t have a power meter on my bike so I have no real wattage to compare to. But at least one of the bikes in the spin room reads significantly higher than most of the others there for the same effort. It is right in front of the one I have used a few times and I was always looking over the persons shoulder wondering why they where kicking my ass so much in power output :-p
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
Thanks all for the responses. Like I mentioned initially, the bike I was on was not a “spin bike” so the actual quality of a workout could never get that high anyways, given the constraints of strap-in pedals, not being able to get RPMs up past 105, etc. But, in terms of the wattage numbers, they seemed somewhat accurate and moved with gearing and RPM. I think more than anything I was just curious here. Main take-away is that it certainly won’t be the place to do my 2x20 or 8x3 workouts, but is directionally correct enough to ensure I stay in check on recovery spins (which HR ought to do anyways) and maybe for some strength specific SFR type work.
as said earlier, some have mentioned, some are good, some are bad.
my group of friends and I regularly do paid trials ( basically you’re lab rats for a day) for a defense research company that researches biomechanics and effects of rehydration fluids and whatnot on the human body. they actually use some of these bikes (admittedly the more expensive ones) as part of their scientific trials. These are research that goes into scientific publication, so I’m guessing that they can’t be that horrible.
My gym has the Schwinn MPower bikes DCRainmaker blogged about a while ago. When you start the bike it does an auto-calibration process but it still reads consistently about 15-25% higher. It seems close when I am on it, but when I look at the numbers recorded later it seems quite a bit higher when I compare it to outside power tests. That might have something to do with the sampling, since it seems to only broadcast the watts in 6 second intervals.
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
Hit the button that says “Race On/Off” and the watts will no longer be tied to a gear, it will be tied to your gear and pedal speed. Although the one at my gym goes up to 372 and will not go higher. You can pedal faster and it gets harder, but the reading does not go higher. I am unsure as to the accuracy of the numbers either.
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
Clearly you don’t use a power based system with “Erg Mode”, as many people on here swear by it
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
Clearly you don’t use a power based system with “Erg Mode”, as many people on here swear by it
i think you miss read my post. the erg-mode systems, they change the gearing to faciliate the watts. so if i drop my cadence, the computer raises the resistance (gearing) in order to keep my power output consistent. i’m telling you that the “watts” field displays a number, such as 100, when you are in first gear and that changing cadence doesn’t change the value.
perhaps there is some tweak to the Lifecycle system that we are both missing. another poster mentioned a “race” mode. i will look for that.
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
I use the Lifecycle at my Fitness Center, and the total mileage is always the same regardless of cadence. 24 minutes = 8.64 miles.
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
I use the Lifecycle at my Fitness Center, and the total mileage is always the same regardless of cadence. 24 minutes = 8.64 miles.
My gym at work has a LifeCycle (or similar name). It has a field for Watts but the value is tied to gear; in 1st gear the Watts are 100, in 2nd they are 120, in 3rd they are 140. changing cadence doesn’t change the value. that’s pretty silly.
My YMCA has the Expresso Bikes too. Wattage seems reasonably accurate (ie my time for one of the 1hr courses a couple years ago was around 270 watts avg, which is about the shape I was in at the time and would get a similar result for using my Quarq). One thing that blew my mind with the Expresso bikes were the course records. For some of the courses the course records were so ridiculously low I had no idea how someone could do that. I have a guess and I found this out when I ‘raced’ a guy over a 40 minute course and lost by 2-3 minutes, despite my avg watts being 20-30 higher than his and I found out he had listed his weight in his profile as ~130lbs when he was about 210, so I have always wondered if the Expresso software takes into account your weight when calculating the speed of the bike vs your power. In other words in the real world a guy at 210 lbs averaging 200 watts would not have beat me (150 lbs, avg 230 watts) but someone 130/200 watts would win. So some of the course records online that are 20 minutes better than I can even come close to (on a 1hr course) could be some 200+ powerhouse that has their weight listed as 100 lbs or something.
Our Y also just got Keiser (sp??) spinning bikes and I was farting around on one the other day and the wattage seemed to be reading a bit low, if anything.
I can’t attest to the accuracy of the wattages on these kinds of bikes. I can attest to the quality of workout that you will get on them, though – and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the gains you can reap from one. I work at a small junior college and we have a fairly well equipped weight room on campus. The weight room includes a couple of upright bikes and a few recumbent bikes. I stay off the recumbents but, admittedly a bit begrudgingly, I started riding the upright bikes last spring. I was unsure of what I could get out of them but I figured spinning on them was better than not doing anything at all. (Given my work schedule and kids’ ages, it is all but impossible for me to ride outdoors Monday through Thursday.) I had a some fairly aggressive cycling goals for the summer so I figured I would give the bikes in the gym a try. Using those bikes, I was able to get as fit as I had been in seven years. I did two or three rides per week on those bikes and then rode outdoors Friday through Sunday. And while I don’t think the power numbers were accurate, the readings did increase as I built more fitness. After about three months of minimal riding, I am back on those bikes and the power numbers aren’t as high as they were when I was riding regularly. I firmly believe that you can build fitness on those bikes instead of using them as maintenance tools.
I used to work at Precor several years ago and can tell you that when we designed the bike, we measured the resistance at multiple rpm’s and resistance settings on a prototype unit. The display software uses this data to calculate the user’s power output and show it on the display. But it was measured on only one bike and the variation from one bike to the next is not trivial. I would guess that the accuracy could easily be off by 10 percent. Since 99% of club users have no idea how what the power display means, there is no reason for a manufacturer to try and make it more accurate.
Our Y also just got Keiser (sp??) spinning bikes and I was farting around on one the other day and the wattage seemed to be reading a bit low, if anything
I’ve ridden a couple of these at different gyms (and in different countries) and one seemed low, one high but both within 10% of each other over a time when my riding power varied probably by about that much - but in opposite directions.