I often see a benefit of riding rollers is increasing your "balance".

If you can already ride a bike on the road without falling over.... what is the theory that you can "increase" your ability to balance? You either fall over, or you don't.


I've fallen a few times in 40+ years of riding. None of the falls were related to balance. They usually were related to coming in contact with things that were not moving.


I ride rollers and a resistance trainer in the winter. Rollers only seem useful as a distraction from riding the trainer. It seems to me, the trainer is good for anything rollers can do, but the opposite is definitely not true.


Do you feel there is any truth/value to the "balance" thing, or is it just something that keeps getting repeated?

There actually is a definite subset of riders, mostly newer, but some not, that wobble all over the road when they're riding, even when the road is dead flat and clear. I've seen a fair number of these folks on the noncompetitive group rides I used to do in the area years ago, and always wondered why they couldn't hold a straight line.

However, having used rollers a fair extent in the past, I found it really helped my smoothness. Smoothness of pedalstroke in particular. That's useful for accelerating safely with a group.

The balance thing though does become noticeable when you start practicing the useful move of 'looking back to check for cars' on the rollers. You might think you hold a dead straight line when you do this outdoors, but if you actually try it on the rollers, you will likely be horrified at how not a straight line you hold once you look back.

If you're good at that move, you will be able to ride the rollers continuously even looking straight backwards, like over a minute.

Thanks, hhnngg1.

The wobblers are unlikely to ride rollers (or even to have heard of them). I'm pretty confident that anyone who owns (or considers owning) rollers is a "cyclist" (as opposed to "a person who rides a bike").


Your suggestion about the "looking back" drill seems very sound to me. I'll admit, I've never tried that. I will try tonight, and I suspect it will go very poorly for me.

Being smooth in a group ride helps a ton. Being smooth in a race, I don't think this helps all that much other than to avoid crashes. I usually steer clear of anyone who wobbles or rides sketchy in races. But that is kind of advantageous for them because now it's harder for me to draft them,etc.

EDIT: But once I notice them, under no circumstance are they getting a wheel in front of me, I'll close the gap and move over if I have to in order for them not to get in. The last thing I want to be doing is being single file behind a dude who whobbles all over the road.

I can look back on rollers, but for a very short time. One time, I closed my eyes (forgot I was on rollers) and fell off. Not good.

I honestly found that the only technique I felt I gained in terms of specific things on rollers, was that one move - looking backwards. Yes, I got slightly smoother, but not even for me to consider it a really useful tool.

Others feel differently, some feel a LOT differently and swear that roller technique really is all that, and that's fine, just for me it clearly wasn't worth the time I put into gaining roller technique. (I exclusively use a trainer now.)

I had one episode where I did a lot of roller work only for 3-4 wks in the winter, and found myself becoming a terrible descender on a curvey descent that I was normally very comfortable with - turns out I was so used to riding stock upright on the rollers that any tilting immediately freaked me out! (It only took 1-2 rides to get my feel back on descents though, no real loss.)

If I were dodgy with riding a straight line though, or other riders commented on my dodginess, I'd absolutely work on rollers.

Oh, one other thing rollers will help your confidence in - close quarter riding - if you can ride rollers, you should have no fear riding even elbow against elbow full contact with riders left and right. (I was ok with that even before rollers from riding with roadies for awhile; I don't even comment if someone accidentally bumps into me if we're side to side.)

It's pretty hard to win a race that you've crashed out of though, isn't it?

-Jeremy

I'm in the camp that feels that rollers can help a lot, even if you're an experienced cyclist, but just not any rollers. I've spent an entire winter (indoor training) season doing 1 hr. long sessions on resistance rollers and felt that it made a significant improvement on my pedal stroke/utilization of additional leg muscles etc. as compared to the previous year that I spent the winter (same workouts) on a trainer. With a set of quality resistance rollers, you get the intensity and strength training of 'real world efforts' in combination with the pedal stroke technique. Since that experience, I've felt that although regular rollers can be helpful, when you're really flailing (like trying not to get dropped in a race or group ride) all technique goes out the window if you've never trained that technique AT EFFORT. For me the resistance rollers are the perfect combination of brutally hard efforts while maintaining technique. The one place that they really fall short is on all-out sprint efforts. Although some of my training was out of the saddle, high cadence and effort out of the saddle isn't practical on the rollers. Full gas sprint training isn't much of my overall, so it wasn't much of an issue. By the time in the season that you want to be doing race effort sprinting, it's usually light outside again and you have time to do that on the road instead of indoors anyway.

Also, an argument for rollers...is that whatever eternity that 1 hr. feels like when using a trainer get's cut in half if you're doing the same session on rollers. The added distraction of 'actually riding your bike' makes time go by SO much faster when using rollers. If you let your focus drift you just may find yourself off one side or the other.

-Jeremy

Smoothness, not balance.

Got my first rollers in 1975. Sold them when the RacerMate trainers came out a few years later. A couple of people have made some strong arguments in favor of rollers in this thread, but I still suspect that rollers are mostly good for learning to ride rollers and that roller technique is as likely to transfer over to road riding as unicycle technique.

I believe that, if a quality, reasonably-price resistance trainer had been invented before the roller, rollers wouldn't exist. Or at best, they'd be a novelty used by very few.

Some traditions are slow to die, even when their time has come. Like tubular tires. And terrestrial radio.

I tried "looking back" tonight. The drill, look back long enough to identify something on a shelf in the garage.

Quick glances was all I could muster.

"balancing" a bike is a matter of keeping the bike under your center of gravity. On rollers, you have a narrow lane to maneuver in and must learn to recognize that loss of center quickly and without over correction. Learning to ride no handed requires even more skill.

These are subtle skills, but help to make you one with the bike, to get you into a zen level that will help when you have to be absolutely reflexive in your riding.

I agree. I used rollers in the past over the winter to smooth out my motion for a muscular imbalance. But then I discovered I get smooth faster and easier with one leg drills on a trainer.

The funny thing about cycling is all the traditions that just don't go away easily.

I've never tried rollers. But I've taken a mountain bike out through the city parks with 2 inches of snow on the paths. The tires begin sliding out as soon as I'm leaning into a slight steering correction, like I would do on dry pavement. In the snow, at slower speeds, I see how the front tire continually weaves from side to side, compared to the back tire.

Like you said, it's a different way of riding to keep right on top of the center of gravity. I can get that same feeling on my road bike if I concentrate on it. I think it's helpful for riding in a smooth, straight line. On a dry road, the large amount of tire traction makes it easy to drift off a straight line and just steer back quickly, instead of keeping better control of balance.

Lots of folks on here are talking about center of gravity and balance..staying in a lane etc.. It doesn't bother me at all if many here don't agree with the potential benefits of rollers, but I think the conversation should at least be on the right topic. I'll explain. Riding rollers has only a little bit to do with 'staying in the lane.' Sure, if you go out of the lane you fall off the rollers, but that's only a tiny piece of the puzzle. A few folks here have mentioned 'smoothness,' which is partly true, but not in a directional sense. What regular training on the rollers will do is allow you to go really hard without your pedal stroke effecting your direction of travel. This has little to do with 'steering' inputs, and far more to do with keeping your pedals working in the ways they should, and not working in the ways they shouldn't. If you can ride really hard without a flailing pulsation in your steering or acceleration, you'll be able to ride with a relaxed upper body. We've all seen guys who seem to motor along as if they're barely working. Guess what, they could probably let go of the bars, put their arms behind them and keep that same cadence/smoothness without getting sketchy, simply because they're turning the pedals along their intended path, not controlling the entire bike as a side-effect. This is especially apparent when comparing folks from your local group rides with the big dogs in the tour. Many people don't realize how fast a cadence some of the pro's ride during time trials. Even Cancellara turns a pretty fast gear, and yet he looks like a smooth running machine. With the kind of watt's that guy puts down, you'd expect his bike to be straining left and right, and yet, it doesn't.

Riding and training on rollers (specifically resistance rollers, because yes, we want to get a muscular work out also) helps to train you to ride efficiently. After my winter season spending lots of time on rollers, doing intervals, one leg drills, pyramid sets etc.... I found that in the same group rides of the previous season, I was perhaps no 'stronger,' but because I was using my hamstrings, calves and glutes more when the pace was steady, I was able kick harder and dig deeper when I needed to mash away with quads alone. I've heard the studies that show that 'during all the critical times of races, pro's basically mash, with no force being exerted on the upstroke.' I actually believe that, and think it can teach us something...but what it doesn't disprove is the value of resting your 'mashing' muscles outside of the critical points and allowing them to be as fresh as possible specifically for WHEN the real work begins.

Just food for thought. I'll a await the inevitable rebuttal, proving that rollers are a useless thing of the past, with nothing more to offer in today's day and age.

-Jeremy

rollers kick ass for my recovery rides, much more enjoyable than the trainer. I don't know about any of this smoothness transferring to any other benefits tho.

Rollers do not help my power one bit. They don't make me more efficient, and if I use them exclusively, they make me SLOWER because it's so much harder to maintain high-power efforts (like threshold+) for significant periods compared to a fixed trainer so that I don't develop the power anywhere near as well.

I also think the smoothness=efficiency or more power is a placebo (mental) effect. If you're not riding in the higher power zones regularly, and more often, you're not going to get as fast. Even a choppy pedalstroke will smooth itself out when you do a lot of time on the bike, fixed trainer or not. Someone who puts out 250watts with a powermeter on a trainer will bust his same self at 225watts on a nondraft TT every time, and it won't even be close, even if the 225watt guy is a buttery smooth as silk pedalstroke. Unlike swimming, it's hard to discard lots of extra watts on a bike, even if you're intentionally trying to pedal 'in squares'.

As well, the smoothness factor isn't gained because of lateral motion on the rollers - it's the fore/aft motions (on nonfloat rollers- floating rollers remove a lot of the challenge of this part.) Seriously, once you even get mildly comfortable about not going off the side on rollers, which doesn't take too long at all, the biggest challenge is not going off the front when you accelerate hard or stand up and crank. If you get really comfy on rollers, you'll find it has almost nothing to do with lateral motion - I spend almost all my mental energy on rollers avoiding going off the front and virtually zero time worrying about going off the side.

You have resistance rollers and find it hard to put out sustained threshold efforts? Btw, the difference once you add resistance is significant. You'll notice that my points above apply specifically to resistance rollers, where the high power output is very much part of training. No problem at all riding VO2 Max efforts and higher. Threshold efforts at 'road typical' cadences is no problem.

It's true that sudden accelerations (if you're not practiced on smooth delivery) can lurch you off the front of rollers. This is the challenge with sprinting intervals on rollers (which I clarified above)...But for everything sitting, it is more than possible to put out any wattage and stay on the rollers one you're practiced and proficient.

I've done LOTS of intervals where you spin down to ~30 rpm and then ramp up to a (seated) full sprint, rince/repeat. Those intervals are tough because you HAVE to be smooth on the acceleration while pedaling very hard. There-in lies the value of the rollers. If this was something you weren't able to do, or weren't comfortable doing...well I think you were either not riding resistance rollers and/or you wrote them off before any improvement was realized.

-Jeremy

I don't have resistance rollers, no.

But even if I did, I would definitely still be able to hit higher overall power on the trainer, as you don't have to worry about falling off of them, especially on the high-power stuff, or as well, long intervals where you can zone out.

...and to bring it full circle, if your form degrades that badly under hard.efforts you are a menace to yourself and others if you are ever in a race/ spirited group ride. Which is why you need the rollers.

Strong + can't stay smooth & controlled = danger

PS. I am rather pleased to find that I can hit 200% of FTP for 20 s intervals/ bursts on the rollers. Was worried I would have to go to the trainer for those efforts.

I can do 450W sustained at 88 RPM in 52/15 on my rollers with the 2nd to last resistance rating(Cycleops Resistance Rollers).

I assure you that your threshhold is not 450W brah.

if you're OTF, it doesn't matter if you're smooth in a race. In fact, it's better if you can sustain the effort and be sketchy so that no one tries to bridge up and wheelsuck.

Timely post. Did an hour on the rollers last night because all of my computrainers were sold out.

Rollers are great. Fun. Useful. Definitely good for newer pack riders. Older ones with experience - if you haven't ridden rollers you'd pick it up in a few minutes with ease.

I do agree that all serious power style loading/TSS work is better served on a trainer.

That said I know a lot of top performers who exclusively ride rollers... Turns out genetics, training ethic, diet, and determination trump the equipment used every time.

Ever been on that first outdoor ride after a long winter (up here in the crappy winter states)? Everyone tends to have moments of what I like to call "trainer handling". Riding rollers at least a little during the winter can help fix that.

Unsure? Ride a trainer a ton and then do a roller ride and feel how sore your core is afterwards....


I caught the ....but still.... Tubulars are not a "tradition". They are a superior tire/wheel platform in general and purely dominate in specific applications such as cyclocross.

I advocate the use of clincher in every instance where I think they are needed, but some applications - tubulars are just best at. The demand is still there as well. I sell far more tubular tires than clinchers. I have glued thousands in the last few years (gluing 4 today in fact and had another dropped off this morning). I agree that having to glue a tire on to a rim seems like a quaint notion that harkens back to an era where people used the word "harkens" while sipping espresso around the cobbler's shop, but...it ain't broke and there isn't a better technology or solution out there.

And how exactly do you get OTF? Just like not crashing is critical to doing well in a race, getting OTF requires being able to accelerate sharply, and being in sufficient control of your bike to move through, and past, the peloton. Being smoother means being able to squeeze through smaller spaces, which is a huge advantage.

And beyond that, I dunno, I would rather be someone who has a reputation for being a good partner in a breakaway than someone who has a reputation for being squirrelly. Have a feeling I will get better results that way.