Home trainer self-test: “I rode my bike every day for a month – and that’s my frightening conclusion!”
Cycle? I love! More so in the summer, though, when I ride my mountain bike up and down the mountains. In the winter? I miss cycling, but switch to sports that are suitable for snow. Until now. Because this winter I want to keep fit on an indoor bike and see what it brings if you swing on the home trainer every day.
That’s what I expect from training on the home trainer
What I expect most of all from the home trainer test is increased fitness and a better feeling in my body. In addition, I would like to find out whether this type of training is a way to integrate sport more easily into everyday life in the long term – and thus somehow circumvent my constant time problem as a working mom. In general, I just imagine it, because the home trainer is actually in front of my nose. But does it look like this in reality?
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The preparation: First set everything correctly
When my rental bike is delivered, I am totally surprised. Where should this vehicle be in our apartment? But when I remove the packaging material, a super slim, stylish racing bike emerges that I can push into a suitable place even with small wheels. Another plus of the “Hoi Frame+” from Kettler: It can be connected to a socket, so that I can make countless settings on the integrated screen. So I first adjust the bike to my height and weight and feel my way through the different settings from intervals to hills. The only catch: My heart rate monitor cannot be connected to the device, you would need a compatible chest strap for that. So I track activity and my heart rate using the cardio function on my watch and also save all the other settings on the bike. So I can still see how, for example, my pulse or my oxygen saturation change during the training period.
This is what the practice with the home trainer looks like
For the first time on a bike, I quickly realize: I have borrowed a device here that is similar to a high-performance spinning bike in the gym. I choose a program that initially sounds very gentle with “Rolling Hills” – but I start to sweat quite a bit on the first climb. As with spinning, I have to get out of the saddle when the intensity increases – I can feel my oxygen starving when I’m pedaling intensively, but at the same time I can see the number of calories increasing rapidly. Wow! After just 20 minutes I am much more balanced and have a satisfying “I did something today” feeling.
For the next few days, I’ll be diligently going on the home trainer. The great thing is that I can design the training completely as I want. Sometimes I cycle with a meditative view of the landscape in front of my window, sometimes I hardly notice the training because I’m streaming a Netflix series. The most ingenious thing for me, however, is that I can also train with the Kettler bike in the morning when my child is out of the house. If I train during a work meeting, I can combine two time wasters. Riding my bike, I communicate with my colleagues via zoom – after all, they don’t care whether I get involved from the couch or from my bike.