New to Smart Trainer riding and Virtual Rides with SBRA?

Below are two things you can do to help ensure your smart trainer is setup correctly for you.

First, each smart trainer has a recommended time period in which the trainer should be recalibrated. In most cases, calibrating your smart trainer is very easy to do. Your smart trainer will usually have an app you can download to perform the calibration. Depending on the level of smart trainer, some can be calibrated through Zwift (one of the more common virtual ride programs SBRA Members use for trainer riding), or other virtual riding app you may be using. Be sure to read your smart trainer manual to find out how often and how to calibrate your smart trainer. If you do not calibrate your trainer, over time it can become too hard to ride or too easy to ride. To get the most accurate riding experience, calibrate your smart trainer on the schedule recommended by the manufacturer. For those who have at higher level smart trainer, click here to view a pictorial step by step on how to calibrate your smart trainer on Zwift.

Second, for most virtual ride software applications there are usually some setting options you can adjust for your preference of riding experience. For this information, we will provide a "how to" for Zwift app riders to check what level of gradient difficulty is set on their Zwift account. The Zwift application should default to 50% but we have seen in some cases the application is found to actually be set at 100%. 50% should be the normal setting. You can set it anywhere between 25 and 50% and still be within the recommended difficulty level. Note, this is NOT a form of "cheating," as some may be concerned about. It is actually a calculation within the application to give you more lower gearing "virtually" to make climbing those hills a bit easier. The lower gearing is offset by an actual slower speed while climbing, effectively providing a very similar experience to real life riding. Click here to view a pictorial step by step on how to check and/or adjust your Zwift application gradient difficulty level.