Hello, my name is Cruise.
Today I'm going to talk about using ZWIFT with a spin bike.
I also want to talk about the advantages and disadvantages.
I've been using a spin bike on ZWIFT for about 1 month now.
regular riding, training, and racing.
I was looking for a good solution to cycle indoors in the winter.
it's important that the solution is quiet since I live in a Japanese apartment.
solution that was super quiet and I didn't have all the money to invest in
all these new awesome smart trainers that are out there on the market and
that's why I sort of came up with the idea of using a spin bike because spin
bikes are super quiet and they don't use any power so those are two great points
right there but when I first searched on this subject there wasn't much
information about spin bikes and Swift so I was kind of swimming in uncharted
territories but I'm happy to report that this solution has been working perfectly
for me and it can work for you too so let's go into what's required what do we
need to get this set up to work so of course the first thing you need is a
spin bike and it doesn't really matter what spin bike you have most of them are
pretty similar and have a lot of the same parts you can have a low-end one
you can have a middle end one or you can have a high end one it doesn't really
matter the one I have doesn't have any electronics on it it just has a simple
flywheel but one advantage of my spin bike is that it has a unique style
handlebar so you have regular drop bars you have the triathlon bars and I chose
this one intentionally because I didn't want any of those extra gadgets on there
I don't need a speedometer because the way that we connect this to Swift is
with a power meter so when you connect the Swift you need one of two things a
power meter or a speed sensor the speed sensor of course being the fallback
option if you don't have a power meter everything on Swift is done based on
power so really you don't want to be doing Swift with a speed sensor you're
not going to be able to get an accurate gauge of how you're doing in the races
and so you're better off using some sort of power meter and to my knowledge right
now there's two different types of power meters that you can connect on a spin
bike the one that I'm using is a pedal based power meter so I've got the five
Aero osteoma power
pedals I made a review video for those earlier so if you're interested you can
go check those out these are great you just spin them on and the charge on
these is awesome you can use these for pretty much a full month with the decent
amount of riding and I don't really have to charge them I just calibrate them
every once in a while and you can just twist them off put them on the other
bike so if I want to ride my road bike outside all right now it's winter so I'm
not writing my road bike much outside it's mostly mountain bike so there's no
problems there but switching these over to other bikes super easy no hassle so I
love love love the pedal based power meter solutions the other one that
theoretically can work but I don't know anyone who's done it is you switch over
the crank set and you use a crank based power solution so this of course depends
on the spin bike that you have and if it's compatible with regular cycling
crank options like that but most of them should be compatible with some of the
crank arm solutions out there but just save yourself the trouble and go with
the pedal based solution I recommend the Fabri osteoma pedals anyway that's all
you need to get going ons whips so yeah it's it's really that simple all you
need is the power meter in the bike you just hook up your computer like normal
and for me I just made another big purchase I was looking for some sort of
stand or some sort of table that I could use to cut down my computer in front of
me while I ride I ended up dropping the 300 it's actually three hundred and
fifty dollars here in Japan on the wahoo standing desk and it was pretty pricey
but I'm so glad I made this purchase I use this thing for everything I use it
for standing and working when I'm not cycling and I can quickly move it over
to the bike when I need to use it there so love-love-love this desk
I wish there are some more slightly cheaper alternatives out there but there
doesn't really seem to be much on the market right now so yeah going into the
advantages of this set up one of the main advantages of using a spin bike
with Swift is just you have a dedicated bike for your indoor riding for anyone
who's experienced some sort of mechanical which pretty much every
cyclist out there has experienced no it's not fun to deal with and if
something happens in your bike you break a chain even if just some part
malfunctions in your shifter doesn't work and you might not be able to use
that until your bike shop gets it repaired for you so the advantage of a
spin bike is these things never break down it doesn't matter if your main bike
breaks down you always have this bike to fall back in rely on so to me that's
just huge points right there one of the big things I'm trying to
this year is stay more motivated ride more consistently and just have less
excuses and if I don't have to worry about mechanical troubles then that's
just one less excuse right there and I can be more consistent with my training
the other advantage I mentioned earlier is of course the silence these things
are super quiet if you don't know the spin bike setup is just a rotating
flywheel and you apply a sort of soft feather cushion to it so there's pretty
much no sound at all there's no sound from the drive chain or internal parts
it's just from the contact of the feather to the flywheel so super quiet
another advantage of the spin bike is there is pretty much no maximum
resistance level so some of these smart traders some of these other trainers out
there have a maximum resistance level that you can put out this doesn't really
matter for most people because most people can't put out more than a
thousand or 1500 watts but if you can then a spin bike is pretty great because
you're gonna give up before the spin bike gives up if that makes sense
another big advantage of the spin bike is the adjustability so I live with my
wife my wife also enjoys cycling and if she wants to use the bike we can easily
just adjust the position we just need to untwist it move the saddle up or down to
her position you can't quite get a hundred percent exact the same position
as your main bike but you can get it pretty close and to me it's comfortable
enough but if you're really specific about this stuff that might be a
disadvantage for you because the adjustment points do have specific
spaces between them so you might not be able to get exactly the position that
you're looking for this is a good point to go into the disadvantages since we're
already sort of starting talking about those so a disadvantage of having a
dedicated bike inside your house or home is it takes up space I live in a tiny
apartment in Japan and space is pretty limited and I have no idea how I managed
to convince my wife to give me this dedicated space in our living room for
the spin bike but fortunately she ended up liking it herself and she saw the
value in it so but not everyone will be able to get their wife or partner to
follow along with having a dedicated bike in your living room so this might
not work for everyone and the appeal of having a trainer and putting it in the
closet and just pulling out when you need it and pulling out your bike when
you need it that might be better for you the other disadvantage of the spin bike
is it's really heavy so it's hard to move hopefully you're
not gonna have to move that thing I don't plan on moving this thing really
ever until we move here maybe because I have no other place I can put it so
that's not a problem once you get it set up speaking of the setup the setup
wasn't too bad it took us maybe about 30 minutes we made a fun video about
getting the package installing it so if you want to check that out with me and
my wife installing the spin bike you can check it out
another advantage I mentioned slightly earlier was that this thing doesn't use
any power so if you're worried about that you have all these outlets that you
need to worry about plugging in your laptop plugging in some other tech
devices that you're using plugging your fan you might be running out of plugs so
the great thing about this thing is it doesn't require any power so it doesn't
generate any extra Heat one thing about cycling and Swift in the summer and in
the winter is you overheat like crazy when you're cycling indoors so we don't
really want to be generating any more heat around our surroundings where we're
cycling so the good thing about the spin bike is these things don't really
generate any Heat it's just the flywheel and the cushion so there's no problems
there another disadvantage of the spin bike is going to the style of resistance
so because this is a flywheel when there's low resistance your legs keep
moving and they don't really stop so if you've written track before or velodrome
before it's a pretty similar feeling to that where your pedals are more
connected to the wheel itself it's not 100% the same but it's pretty similar
feeling to that so when you're spinning at a low resistance it feels great
you can feel like it's forcing you to get a good pedal stroke it's forcing you
to move quickly the disadvantage of this comes when you start putting in high
resistance so when I start cranking this thing down near the end of a sprint in a
race and Swift I feel like if I sort of ease up on the pedal in just a little
bit it's instantly gonna stop the flywheel and it just really hurts so
it's it doesn't quite seem like the exact same feeling that you have when
you're cycling on the road when you stop cycling on the road if you ease up for a
second you can just start pedaling again and there's no problem but once you have
this brake style resistance if you stop pedaling for a second it's gonna stop
and you're gonna have to start over from scratch on a fully resistant brake pad
on that flywheel and let me tell you you're not getting back after that so
in terms of sprinting workouts like that it's really hard you just kind of you're
just kind of one and done once you're done with your sprint there's no coming
back from that you got to be a bit responsive and this is the other
disadvantage changing the gears with the road bike you can change your gears with
your shifter with the smart trainers they have the automatic changing
resistance for the terrain that you're on and unfortunately with the spin bike
you have to do this manually this is really easy to do though it's usually
just a little spin knob so you just twist it left or right depending on
where you're going so usually when I'm riding on Swift if I see I'm climbing a
hill I'll just add more resistance it just takes a second and you're done if
I'm going downhill I'll just reduce the resistance a little
bit there of course again this has advantages and disadvantages if you're
training for more of like time-trial stuff for flats and you want to get
consistent power profile you don't really need that mode in these smart
trainers and just being able to do a consistent power not sort of worrying
about these virtual climbs and just focusing more on getting your specific
workout if you have a target workout of trying to maintain 300 watts for 5 10
minutes or whatever it's much easier to do with this kind of setup you can get
exactly the power that you need block it in and don't really worry about those
hills of course based on different positions you use different muscles so
when you're climbing your position changes the stress on your muscles
changes a little bit that's why there's so much popularity with these new like
the wahoo what's it called the kicker stand up front where you can change your
angle on your bike and you can use those different muscles which trains you
better for hill climbing if that's your target unfortunately you're limited I'm
doing that with the spin bike unless you just sort of put blocks in the front of
your bike and just ride like an uphill position for the entire ride but you
can't change it mid ride so yeah this is pretty new technology though so we don't
really you don't really need to consider that too much you'll see with my spin
bike I've swapped out some of the parts so I put on my own rode physique saddle
on here so most of these parts are pretty compatible you can change out
your pedals to what you like you can change out the saddle to what you like
and on some setups you can even also change out the handlebars but that
depends on what spin bike that you're going into overall I'm very very
satisfied with this setup I couldn't ask for more it was super cheap the bike
itself was about $400 I already had the power meter pedal so I didn't really
need to spend anything extra for that and then my regular Swift account so way
cheaper than spending over one of those new smart power meter
trainers I am still really excited about that technology but I want to wait till
I have a little bit more money and I want to wait a little bit until that
technology advances a little bit further
so here we are spinning without any resistance you can see if I try and stop
pedaling my legs still are moving that's because of the heavy flywheel on here so
let's try adding some resistance right now we're at about 100 watts 90 rpms the
other great thing about these pedal based power meters is they include a
cadence reader so you don't need anything extra there let's move up to
hundred watts not really much difference in sounds
300 watts whoo I didn't warm up yet
here we have 400 watts and even if I stand up and sprint no real difference
in sound but you can see once you've stopped pedaling once this brake is
activated it's really hard to get this moving again so you got to drop this
down to a low resistance and bring your speed back up so one of the
disadvantages if you're going for a sprint effort but it's perfectly fine if
you're just trying to maintain certain target walks on it or work on improving
your FTP all right guys that's gonna be it for today's video I got to get
continuing on with today's ride today's workout be sure to follow me over on
Swift give me a nice thumbs up or on strop as well looking forward to some
kudos hope you guys found this video useful we'll be making more videos about
Swift more videos about cycling and of course life in Japan and of course a big
thank you to all of our supporters over on patreon who helped make this channel
possible if you're interested in helping support this channel don't check out the
link down below towards our patreon page and we'll see you guys in the next video
later guys