Many are aware that I bought a set of indoor rollers a few months ago. Often when I ride on them people look and wonder what the big deal is. I have to say that they're very beneficial to one's riding and fitness.
They get your balance and pedaling efficiency tuned to a level that you could never achieve on a regular road bike (a track bike maybe, but I can't really say as I've never ridden a fixed gear bike). Any sort of unevenness in one's pedaling is instantly exposed on the rollers. Until you get yourself to a point where your legs can work evenly together and you pedal in full cirles, you simply can't balance on the rollers.
The other really nice thing about the rollers is they eliminate the factors that make it really difficult to control your power output on the road. No more stop signs, traffic lights, hills, bad weather, darkness, etc. With the rollers if your workout calls for doing a bunch of intervals at 300 watts there's no excuse other than the inability of the rider for not getting them done right.
In an effort to give folks some idea of what it's like to both get going on rollers and be very good at them I thought I'd post some links to great videos I found on youtube:
Here's a guy learning to ride his rollers for the first time. This is exactly what it's like the first time out.
Here's the same guy nearly crashing.
Finally he's up and running but by now his wife has clearly lost interest.
Here's a guy who has now inspired me to kick it up a notch.
Lastly, here are some races where these guys are measuring who can put in the most revolutions.
More racing, this time crashes.
No comments:
Post a Comment