You may not have noticed it, but great swaths of your modern life are tied up in technological ecosystems. My google phone connects seamlessly to my earbuds. My watch is connected to endless apps, my TV seamlessly talks to my laptop, and every photo I've ever taken is viewable on more or less any device anywhere. My partner can find her headphones from across the house when she loses them and her maps pop up in the car when she eases into the driver’s seat.
Your sports trackers link up with your sports apps and your smart speaker connects to your home shopping account so it knows when you might need more milk.
You don’t notice these things because that’s the point; it’s meant to be easy. For some reason, however, so much of indoor training is endlessly, pull-your-hair-out frustrating. You need to update the firmware on your laptop before you try and connect that to your smart trainer, which itself seems smart in name only. Your session doesn’t upload for some reason. Connectivity issues perhaps; lost in the ether between two nominally compatible devices but it’s fair to say every rider, whether a committed indoor campaigner to the ‘only when absolutely necessary’ brigade have had similar experiences where technology has felt like more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to getting a session in.
There are a great many things that can scupper a good indoor session, but let it be good fatigue rather than technological frustration. There’s got to be a better way, right? Well, there is if you take the same ecosystem approach that has spread its tendrils far and wide beneath the soil of your life and apply it to your indoor training, too.
Start with the basics and build from there
You might think an ecosystem has to be hugely multifaceted to become seamless, but that’s not the case. Wahoo is in an enviable position where it produces a full choose your own adventure set of options, all of which carry the reputation for ease of use that has made them so popular in recent years.
If you’re just starting on your indoor journey – maybe you’ve had a productive summer on the bike and want to keep your form, or maybe you just like the idea of a good home workout without heading to the gym to ride a static bike – then don’t overcomplicate things. Start with a KICKR CORE 2 indoor trainer and the Wahoo app. Both are powerful enough to give you years of service as you grow in your journey, but are simple enough to make your first forays smooth and free from the irritation that sees so many fall by the wayside. They were designed together to work together, and so they work seamlessly.
Got your feet in the door and learning to really enjoy the sessions? Maybe you want to try Zwift with the Cog and Click option, or you want to monitor your rides indoors the same as you do outdoors with a Wahoo head unit. Start with the Bolt; the racers choice but it’s also blissfully intuitive, and you can take your winter form out with you when spring rolls around, or go for the Roam if exploration is more your thing. In either case it’s as easy as simply selecting your indoor cycling profile on the head unit and then any efforts will automatically sync on completion just as an outdoor one would.
Graduate to your own commitment level
If a simple setup works for you then you’ve made it. Clock in, enjoy the churn and the sweat and the results, and don’t feel the need to submerge yourself any further. If you do want to wade in further than the shallow end however, then Wahoo has an abundance of hardware and peripherals that will have some of you diving head first.
Perhaps you’re not just a cyclist, but sometimes dabble in running (shocker, but it can happen to even the most guarded of us); try a heart rate monitor that’ll connect directly to the Wahoo app, so your training data all stays centralised in one place to give you a better handle on your fatigue and your form, and integrate your COROS systems directly in to get your outside and indoor running data alongside your cycling stats.
Perhaps you’re sick of that shabby desk fan that you drag out from the corner of the garage; try a KICKR HEADWIND that connects directly to your Wahoo heart rate monitor to automatically change the wind speed based on your exertion levels. When you work harder, so does the fan to keep you cool.
And maybe one day you think to yourself “wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to mount my bike to an indoor trainer”, and you can swap your beloved KICKR CORE for a dedicated KICKR BIKE, set up precisely to your measurements and there whenever you need it, year round, for a full 24/7 365 sports ecosystem that seamlessly connects your indoor and outdoor sessions.
