In this video we cover off: An introduction to indoor home training, the three most important things to look for when buying an indoor home trainer, the three different types of indoor trainer resistance units explained, the key features of the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine indoor home trainer, how to get the most out of your indoor home trainer and our killer indoor home trainer package that can have you riding better in less than 4 weeks

In this video we cover:
00:00 – Introduction to indoor home training
01:53 – The three most important things to look for when buying an indoor home trainer
03:12 – The three different types of indoor trainer resistance units explained
05:45 – The key features of the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine indoor home trainer
08:20 – How to get the most out of your indoor home trainer
12:14 – Our killer indoor home trainer package that will have you riding better in less than 4 weeks

Video Transcript:

Introduction to indoor home training
Just like your heart rate monitor and your power meter, your indoor home trainer is one of your greatest tools, to helping you improve your cycling fitness. Now, the humble home trainer, becomes the most important piece of your equipment: to help you work on your cycling technique, train safely during poor weather, and perform high-intensity and super-efficient training efforts that’ll have you riding better in less than four weeks. Now sadly skipped by many cyclists, the indoor trainer is critical in helping you lose weight, ride faster and get yourself ready to be your absolute best for events and competitions.

It’s such a powerful tool, that’s it’s one of the key cornerstones, that underpins all our extremely successful, remote coaching programs. Now these programs have had our clients win a medal at club, state, national and world championship cycling events.

Hi, my name’s David Heatley, and I started racing bikes in 1980. I’m a full-time cycling coach, based here in Melbourne, Australia, and I’ve been coaching cyclists professionally since 2007. Now in the next few minutes, I’ll be covering off the critical things to look for when buying a home trainer. I’ll also be covering off, how to get the most out of it, and I’ll be letting you know in, on a special offer, that’ll help you train properly, so that you’ll be riding better in less than four weeks.

This presentation’s only for people that are really serious about getting fitter on a bike. If you truly want to improve your ability to climb hills better, ride faster, and trim down? Then I invite you to continue listening.

The three most important things to look for when buying an indoor home trainer
The three most important things to look for in a home trainer, are ridability, durability and repeatability. Now the first thing is ridability, and how the most important thing about getting a home trainer, is getting one that you can actually ride. There are a lot of trainers out on the market, but a lot of them don’t feel very good, when you ride on them.  So when you’re riding on the road, there’s a really good road sort of feel, and what you want to do, is find a trainer that replicates that very well. The next key important aspect to think about when you’re buying a trainer, is durability. If you’re serious about your training, you want a trainer that’s going to last a while; something that’s not going to break down, and something that’s reliable, so that every time you jump on it, you’re going to able to just ride it, and without any dramas or stress.

Tthe final thing that’s important about a trainer, is what I call repeatability. And that is that when you jump on a trainer and do an effort, are you able to repeat that effort later on? There’s a lot of trainers out on the market, where the resistance curve doesn’t allow you to do that. So that when you jump on it, there’s variations and resistance, so you can’t replicate that effort, again and again and again. The reason why that’s so important, is so that you can measure your improvement.

The three different types of indoor trainer resistance units explained
There’s three types of resistance units on trainers. They are wind, magnetic and fluid, and I’ll discuss them very briefly now. Wind trainers use wind resistance to create the resistance that you use to train against. Usually, they are trainers thatll have either fans on a blade on a wheel or theyll have a resistance unit thats got blades on it, that create resistance by moving through the air. The next type of trainer, is the magnetic trainer, and they use magnetic force to create resistance.  These trainers historically have a very flat curve, so the resistance curve kind of goes up like this [a linear curve]. Youll usually find that magnetic trainers will have a resistance setting on the trainer. Therell be a cable attached to the resistance unit, and that goes up to your handlebars and you use that to adjust the resistance on our trainer, because the trainers curves very limited because its quite flat.

Finally, the other type of resistance unit, is the fluid resistance, and they use fluid, like wind to produce resistance on a trainer. They have a curve that goes up like this [exceptional curve]. So what happens is, that they dont have a resistance setting on your handlebar or anything. Their curve actually manages to take into account, a whole level of resistance all the way from really easy to really hard.  And how you change resistance on the bike is by changing gears, and its very similar to wind trainers. Wind trainers have a very similar curve as well. So obviously, as you ride and pedal harder, the resistance gets harder, and the fantastic thing about that, is that it replicates the same sort of effect that youre getting out on the road.

So if youre riding in say a, small gear like a 39/17 gear, and youre riding at 100 rpm, and youre doing about 20 kilometers an hour? When you ride on a fluid trainer or a wind trainer, and you ride in that gear, youll get a resistance thats fairly similar to that. And when you change into the big chainring, and ride in a harder gear, the resistance will feel quite hard, like you were riding on the road.
Now at the beginning of this, I talked about one of the key factors being ridability in trainers. Fluid and wind trainers produce the best quality resistance, so it feels like your actually riding out on the road. Magnetic trainers do an okay sort of job, but they actually feel quite lumpy.

The key features of the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine indoor home trainer
I wanted to cover off a few features that we have for the Kurt Kinetic trainers. The Kurt Kinetic trainers have a resistance unit thats fluid-based, so you get that fantastic road feel. They also have a huge flywheel on them, and that again, aids to that road feel-ability. The other great things about these trainers, is that they have a really wide footprint, so theyre a very, very stable trainer. Theyre also really super robust. Theyre a very industrial trainer, and they last a long time. We have these trainers in our studios, and we just have riders coming and going all the time, riding them very hard, and they [the trainers] manage to keep up with that load and cope with it very well.

The other great thing about the fluid trainers is that theyre power calibrated, which means, that when you ride on them at a particular speed, that equates to a power setting. So when we talked a little bit about being able to measure your performance, the Kurt Kinetic trainers are fantastic at doing it.

Another great thing about these trainers, is that the roller size on these trainers, is by far the largest in all the trainers on the market today. What that means is, is that it doesnt chew up your tire. Now there are a lot of trainers on the market that have skinny resistance rollers here. What that does is, that those rollers chew up your tires, and if youve got a trainer thats chewing up your tires? If you look at the roller that your tires sitting on, youll find it to be quite narrow. Now with these Kurt Kinetic trainers, that doesnt happen. So what that means is, that you ride with normal tires on these trainers, and not have your tires wear out.

Theres three other great things about these Kurt Kinetic trainers. One is that, because theyre fluid, theyre really low noise. Now if you get a wind trainer.  Theyre really, really, really, noisy. If you happen to train with other people in the house, the fluid trainers are really quite quiet, so you can train when people are sleeping. But if youve got a wind trainer, you cant train on that, when people are in the house sleeping, because theyre [the wind trainers] too noisy. The great thing about these Kurt Kinetic trainers also, is they are covered by a lifetime warranty, and the Australian distributors here, are just fantastic at looking after us when were selling these trainers. So theres absolutely no issues, if theres anything that goes wrong [with the Kurt Kinetic trainers].

The Kurt Kinetic trainer for me, ticks all of the really big boxes for what a trainer should be. The Kurt Kinetic trainer is durable. Its got a fantastic ride quality, and you can do repeatable efforts on it. Its really going to be the last trainer that youll ever need to buy.

How to get the most out of your indoor home trainer
In this next section, Im going to be talking about how to get the most out of your indoor trainer. The first most important thing about training on indoor trainers, is to have a plan. This is critical. You need to have a weekly plan, a plan for your session and to have a purpose for why youre training on the indoor trainer. You also want to have an end goal, and the reason why these things are really important, is that if you dont have any of that. If you just randomly jump on a trainer and just start riding, the first thing thats going happen it that your heads going to start tiring. Youre going to get bored, bored, bored. So, by having a plan, and having a good breakdown of your session and what youre going to be doing, and a purpose behind it, youll be a lot more motivated to complete that session, and youll also get a lot out of it. The other thing about that, is that as you progress through those sessions, and you do more and more of them, you can start seeing your improvement against them.     So by replicating the sessions every single time, youll see that improvement, and that helps with your motivation as well.

The second most important thing, is ensuring that you have a good quality training environment. Theres nothing worse than trying to set up your trainer and having distractions going on around you. So its important to set up your trainer in an area where you wont be distracted. In your training environment, you want to set your trainer up on a mat, or something, so when you start sweating, that the sweats dripping onto the mat, rather than your floor. You also want to stack your trainer up using a Riser Ring. The Kurt Kientics have a special Riser Ring for this, that has three separate levels on it, and that just lifts the front wheel off the ground, so that its at the same level as your rear wheel. That means, that you dont get this riding downhill sort of feeling. So a Riser Rings important as well.

The other things that are important are fans. You need a well, ventilated room, and a good quality fan cooling you down, especially when its really hot. Sometimes when it is really, really hot youll need to train in a room thats air-conditioned as well as your fans, especially here in Australia. Now, some of the great things that help with your motivation when doing indoor training sessions, is to have them entertaining. And how we do that, is either listening to music or watch a video. Weve got some fantastic indoor training videos, and Ill get to that a little bit later. Those sort of things really help with the motivation too. Ideally, you want to have this training environment set up permanently. Sometimes thats not the case. Sometimes we dont have enough room to be able to do that. If that is the case, then its important to make sure that you can breakdown and reassemble your training environment very, very quickly.

The final thing thats really important about working on an indoor trainer, is to really work on your technique. Its one of the things that I really, really press with the people that are doing indoor training sessions. The reason why its so important to work on your technique, is that you really want to develop good technique. And its much better and I prefer it, to people just smashing out their sessions and looking really messy on a bike. Because the problem is, that when you go out on the road and you start riding, thatll translate across, and youll just look really messy on the bike, and all your energy will be dissipating out of the bike, rather than driving it forward. So by using these indoor training sessions to work on your technique all the time, while youll working on developing good power. You can smooth it out, and when you get out onto the road. You can really feel a big, huge difference on the quality of your riding, when youve worked on that technique on these indoor trainers.

So just a little recap on that. The most important thing is to make sure youve got a plan before you start your indoor training sessions. Make sure you set up a good quality indoor training session environment, and always, always work on your technique when youre training on indoor trainers.

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Our killer indoor home trainer package that will have you riding better in less than 4 weeks
Weve put together this awesome indoor training package. It includes [as showen here]:

  • The Kurt Kinetic Road Machine,
  • A FREE Riser Ring and
  • A choice of one of these four FREE eight-week trainer program packages.

So weve got  the: eight-week aerobic base build, the eight-week time trial, the eight-week road racer and the eight-week hill climber. And the two most popular programs that weve been selling, is this package with the hill climber and with the aerobic base builder.

In the eight-week program package, weve got  a resource disc. Weve got two indoor training DVDs depending on the type of package that you bought. Weve also got a Matt Brindle disc with a series of mobilizers on it, plus functional strength training.

In the resource disc, youll get your eight-week program. This is a document that has eight-weeks, with every single exercise, that youre going to be doing every single day of the week. Some of those exercises maybe recovery. Some of them maybe indoor training workouts, and some of them will be and, generally during the weekend will be, training done out on the road. So its not just indoor training, its training plus everything else. So thats an eight-week program, with everything that you need for every single day [including rest days], and it details it right down: to the amount of efforts that you need to do, the time that you need to be on the bike, how many vertical meters you need to climb, what your heart rate zone should be, what your power zone should be and what your cadence is. So its complete.

Also included in the resource disc are four documents: the fundamentals to developing cycling fitness, home training introduction workout guide. Now this details how to get the best out of your home trainer. And this document covers off more than weve covered off in this presentation. An introduction to base training for cyclists and also an introduction to heart rate and power training. This documents really important, because youll use this document to work out your heart rate or power zones, depending on which method youre using for the eight-week program.

Also included in the resource disc, is an electronic version of each of the DVD. So these DVDs are playable on your DVD player; these three discs. Now the resource disc has those exact same files as electronic downloads. So you can download onto your computer and play on your computer, or you can download them onto your computer and then upload them to your mobile device like your Android, your iPhone or your iPad. That means that you can play them anywhere.

So just recapping on these these are free; these eight-week programs, and theyre based on our very successful remote coaching programs that weve been rolling out since 2007. Theres one that covers off hill climbing. One that covers-off road racing for the road racing cyclist. One that covers off time trialing, if youre a time trialist and want to improve your time trialing. The other one is the aerobic base builder, and thats for people that are doing recreational events.

Each of these eight-week programs are upgradable to our 12-week program [package]. These are exactly the same. Weve got one for the aerobic base build,  road racer, time trialist and hill climber, and these are six-disc packs as opposed to the four-disc packs.

They include the resourcing disc, which has a 12-week program on it, instead of an eight-week program. Theyve got three indoor training workouts on it, depending on the pack that youve bought. Then theyve got two Matt Brindle DVDs, the one that comes with the standard eight-week pack, which has the Matt Brindle Beginner Program One, and the mobilizers exercises. So thats strength training off the bike, and then its got an additional disc, Matt Brindle Beginner Program Two.

These 12-week programs [packages] are also available separately on our store. So if youve already got a trainer that youre happy with, and you want to get yourself stuck into a 12-week program that can help you get results within four weeks, then you can buy these directly off our website, without having to buy the trainer.

My names David Heatley, from Cycling-Inform, and I hope youve enjoyed this video.