Winter is upon us and with that, a lot of cyclists will be likely moving indoors for their training. Whether it’s the darker evenings, icy roads or lack of good winter kit, many cyclists turn to the pain cave for the “off-season” and whether you are a rollers person, direct drive or wheel on person the industry has began to stagnate in the past year with only minor revisions hitting the market.

Over the course of the covid-19 pandemic turbo trainers were reaching 250% of retail value and budget options seemingly disappeared. There currently appears to be two types of training manufacturer. The first, companies pumping out standard products that haven’t changed design much in the past 5 years. Secondly, you have companies like Elite and Wahoo who are testing more immersive technologies to go alongside turbo trainers such as risers and steering tools. Overall though, the changes to Direct Drive turbos themselves is minor. Likewise at the budget end, we see casing or branding changes for the devices but nothing innovative.

There appears to have been a move towards having a more rocking motion on the bike, unlike the rock solid Wattbike that you find in gyms and for a select few, at home, there appears to be a trend to get a more road like response out of current devices. Wahoo recently added KICKR AXIS feet to give a little more roll on the top end Kickr. Saris also offer the plate that elevates the H3 turbo and allows the bike to rock more naturally than a trainer alone.

DC Rainmaker has suggested that Zwift have been looking at developing their own hardware. The device is likely to compete against the spin bike Peloton in offering a purchase + subscription model fitness package for a device. What we don’t know yet is price point, how many features it will have and what it will bring to the table? Stages, Wahoo, Wattbike (Atom) and Tacx all have bikes out there, with varying levels of features including ramp adjustment, steering and cobble stone simulation.

Innovation has to come from one of two places, features or price point. It’s unlikely this will be in flywheel improvements and sprint capacity, the average cyclist who is using this equipment can’t come close to the 2000-3000w some of the existing devices can handle. Now restrictions are easing up on cycling outdoors, these devices need to be more compelling to keep people training indoors. I hope to see a high quality sub £300 direct drive trainer hit the market as the barrier to entry is currently quite high, which in the long term is not a good thing for the sport.

Historically, with the Ant+ and Bluetooth standards, we’ve been fortunate in the cycling world that we can swap and choose bits of equipment as we see fit. With Zwift building their own solution, what does that mean for the future of racing on the platform? With Wahoo integrating more and more accessories are we likely to see it launch it’s own platform training fully featured training platform? One thing is for sure, the current crop of trainers are “good enough” and if the big guns in the industry are going to convince people to part with more cash for upgrades, they are going to have to come up with something very compelling at the right price point.