Episode 1774 - Front or rear mount trainer: which one is right for me?

Dr. Matt Koester // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Endurance Athlete faculty member Matt Koester discusses the differences between front and rear mount bike trainers, which is preferred for different bike types, as well as budget options.

Take a listen to the episode or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

MATT KOESTERWhat's up everybody? Good morning and welcome to another episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show. Today I'm going to be your host. I'm Dr. Matthew Koester. I'm one of the lead faculty in the endurance athlete division with a specialty in bike fitting. I am super stoked to hop on here today and talk about probably the most popular question that we get in every live course and one of the most important things when you're getting into fitting for the first time as far as equipment goes. But before we dive into those topics, I want to talk about the opportunities that y'all are going to have to come and find us on the road. with number one being in Denver next weekend. We've only got four seats available for that course, so if you're interested in popping in, it's gonna be in South Denver in the Denver Tech Center area. We are really, really stoked to be heading out there soon, but if that's not gonna work out for you, we have another option, which is gonna be in Bellingham, Washington again, because the last time we were out there, it was completely sold out, the wait list was filling up, and we decided we'd run it back and set up a second course in Bellingham, Washington later this fall. There's gonna be another opportunity as well to see Jason London, who's the original content creator for this course, which is an absolute opportunity in Park City. That's a really cool location. We're gonna be out there in October as well for that course. So if you're looking to get a jump on some of this education and use this stuff in the clinic, the live course is the best way to get through it. So by all means, come find us on the road and check out one of those course options. Now, I said I was gonna talk about probably the biggest question in the course. The biggest one is really the thing that gets you into this. And it's what type of trainer do I need? We have two options in most cases. So to my left and behind me here, we have a front mount trainer, which offers a whole lot of options as far as what bikes can go on. And then we have the tried and true rear mount trainer. And what I want to do today is talk about probably like the biggest pros and cons of each. I want to talk about which one is probably the most appropriate for you and your clinic, depending on what type of bikes you're typically seeing. And then the ones that kind of have, I'd say, more budgetary constraints and or are just limited in availability sometimes. So, to start off first, I want to talk about the rear mount trainer because that is the one that is tried and true. That is going to be, in most cases for us, this green guy here. This is the Curt Kinetic trainer. Now, if I slide that thing forward, You'll see we've got the rear roller, which is basically what compresses the tire and allows you to kind of go through resistance while you're pedaling. You've got this rear cup that basically compresses the back axle of the bike and allows you to keep the bike nice and steady. And then we typically put something underneath the front wheel. Sometimes it's a custom wheel block. Sometimes it's an adjustable wheel block that allows you to lift that thing up and down and change the positions. But with this trainer, one of the things that people really, really love about it is that it's been around forever. They're used to it. When somebody comes into your clinic for a bike fit and they see something like this, they're like, ah, I know what this is. This makes perfect sense to me. I even brought my training skewer, which is typically the axle that they have to replace in the back of the bike if they're going to get on this bike. Because these metal cups here that compress the rear axle when they're tightened up are gonna basically act to lock the bike in place only on the contact points they get to touch. So if those contact points are plastic, which is pretty common as a way to save weight, save money on a bike, you have to replace that either with a training skewer, which just has metal cups on the sides, or in many cases nowadays with how bikes have gotten, these new through axle skewers. So the through axle skewer is typically a lot thicker, it's a lot more robust. It's common on bikes that allows them to put disc brakes on the bikes, which is really more and more ubiquitous these days. So having these options for different through axle skewers allows you to put metal on metal and compress it in the rear end of the trainer. Now depending on what types of bikes or what brands of bikes you're seeing more in the clinic, the skewers that you're going to need are going to change. So they all have various thread types that go on them. Some are very fine, some are medium, some are coarse. Now the Other kicker to this is that even though you might have the thread type dialed in, the distance, so the width of the actual screw itself might change. Last time I checked on the Kirk Kinetic website, which is the name brand for these guys, they had somewhere between, I think, five different options. I think it was like five different ones, three that were the different thread types, and then two more that were XLs for different distances. And each one was running about 50 bucks. So there's a bit of a financial investment to have all the options so that folks can come to see you and have all the options available to them. If you don't have one of these available to you and their bike doesn't have that, you're going to be kind of stuck in a place where you don't have an option with this style of rear mount trainer to throw them on and do the fit appropriately. That could be a bummer. got to have all the pieces. I'll say there's one other option out there, or not one, but two other like styles of these that are completely adjustable. CycleOps makes one, and I'm forgetting the other brand right now, but they basically have plugs and things that you can change in and out to put on. In my experience, they can be a little challenging to work with. They don't always match up exactly the way that I want them to distance wise. I like the tried and true nature of these ones from Kure Kinetic, but if you're in a bind, and you can only afford to grab like one adjustable through axle, I think you can figure it out. You just have to spend more time with it and go through the trials and tribulations of working through it. So, to recap real quick. This guy, tried and true, everybody knows it, everybody's used to it. It's a trainer they spend their entire winter on. The adjustability in terms of having different through axles is definitely a key. You gotta have them, especially nowadays as bikes have gotten more and more modern, going to disc brakes. These through axles are just like almost a non-negotiable So you gotta have all the different types so you can match the different brands and the different bikes that they come in. So, tried and true. Now, we step into one thing that Jason and I have been seeing over probably the last few years that's really become more popular is this front mount trainer. It really started to make its way in probably like a couple years ago in staging areas or like warm up areas for cross country cycling and downhill cycling. Specifically in downhill cycling, you'll see these guys everywhere when it comes to just getting through warmups. What this guy has to offer is two pieces that basically slide together. These two pieces include the front end triangle here, which allows me to remove and add the front fork of the bike. So we take the front wheel off, slide the forks over top of this guy, and snug it up nice and tight. The next piece from there is the rear rollers, where we have to get the tires centered in the rollers so they can smoothly pass back and forth as it's rolling. Cool part about this, they only have one adjustable piece as far as the actual front axle goes. So, and they send it with them. So when you buy this piece, you have everything that you need in order to do the fit. You can put any bike on here, because the front mount options will work for a standard fork, so they'll work for through axles. You can often put their own through axle back into the same bike. When you're talking about the distances here, there's a little track here that allows you to work with different size bikes so that when you overcome that issue, you can even separate them or buy the ex