Does anyone have/use the Wahoo Kickr Climb?
Is it worth it? Does it help your training?
I have been offered one for $300…. Wanna know if it is worth the money!
For context:
I am a triathlete and til now, have only ridden Zwift via my coach’s training plan, with ERG.
But this year, I am planning on concentrating on the Road bike, and traveling to do several mountain rides, like the GFNY, Triple Bypass, and later this year, the Dolomites.
I heard about “tilt training” and how it benefits riding uphill… so thats why I was looking at the Climb!
I have a Wahoo Kickr bike which also features the climb functionality. It’s funny, and it adds to the feel of riding a bike in real-life, but for me mainly training for triathlons I don’t think it really adds any training value. That’s obiously just my opinion, I was underwhelmed. In hindsight, if I could have gotten a USD 300 discount on the bike in return for the climb function I would have done so.
It really depends on what course you ride in Zwift or Rouvy and also what your trainer difficulty is set to.
If you ride mostly flat easy courses, forget it.
If you ride at 50% difficulty, forget it. It scales the Climb commands to the same slope as the smart trainer. So at 50% difficulty a 6% grade falls to just 3%.
If you ride at 100% difficulty and ride hilly routes it can be more fun. At which it also would train your riding posture when climbing more like a real climb.
I like mine as I free ride hillier Zwift routes and use full difficulty.
Having been knocked off my bike by a white van I’m very selective when I go out on the road in the UK and find it very good especially on the longer rides.
As a coach, I also set hill reps sets to my athletes that have one too on both Zwift and Wahoo/RGT.
I’ve had one for about a year, and I would recommend it if you ride indoors a fair amount. We have been told since power meters came into vouge that uphill, downhill, flat doesn’t matter…power is power…well…I have a difficult time buying into that idea because the contact points from you to your bike and diagram of the forces involved between you and your bike would beg to differ. It is good training to change up the forces that those contact points see.
I have had one for a couple weeks now, and so far loving it. I use it with Zwift and it makes the experience more engaging. I don’t know that it actually it impacts training, but has made my longer Zwift sessions more enjoyable. Even a short ride in Bologna, made me eager to climb the hill.
I got it through the deal Wahoo has for a Kickr Core and Climb together.
I think it really depends on your use case, and the app you’re riding with.
The Climb really does work well with an app like Fulgaz, where the idea is to simulate riding outside. The orientation of the bike does matter, and the way you interact with the bike is just different when the bike is flat, tilting up, or pointing down.
Ironically, given the name of the product, I think this becomes most apparent on rides with long “downhill” sections; I never really feel spun out and wanting to coast on any of the simulated descents I have done without the Kickr, but as soon as that thing kicks in and the nose of the saddle drops like I’m going down a 10% + grade, something changes and I have to work much harder to keep putting force through the pedals.
This is great for me. I’m not much interested in competitive indoor riding, and the more things feel like riding outside, the happier I am, and the more it translates to the riding I do outside. As many of the goal events I have had over the last couple of years have centered on long climbs that aren’t readily accessible to me in my local outdoor training, being able to reproduce some analog of this indoors has been really helpful.
I think it’s almost certainly contraindicated for someone who wants to compete, or do fast group rides on something like Zwift, though. From what I have seen both in my own indoor riding and via the feedback/data from training clients, the more you can minimize the type of variability that the Climb introduces and focus on just cranking out the power, the better in this context. Again, especially when things head downhill.
As long as that $300 isn’t going to break you, it’s totally worth it IMO. I’m a biomechanical engineer and have been doing triathlons for a decade and I absolutely love the titling feature for two reasons:
It exercises the muscles differently which is always a positive thing. How much it does is up for debate but it can only help even if your race is flat.
It makes indoor cycling more immersive and if that motivates you to bike more that is the only reason required.
I’ve been using said feature for a few years now and I cannot go back.