Celebrating my first year on ZWIFT, I update my HUB Setup Guide video by showing how easy it is to convert the ZWIFT HUB trainer to the new single cog cassette HUB ONE configuration, and add in the new PLAY Controllers.
Then I show some of my favorite things about using ZWIFT as a training tool, how it combats the boredom that often comes with indoor cycling training, and most importantly, how it improved my cycling fitness.
• See my ZWIFT UB Setup Guide: https://youtu.be/T4miKSv9P9s?si=QBtNV3NZYr-1b5Qu
• Read the PEZ Hands On The Zwift Hub One Trainer & Play Controllers
– https://pezcyclingnews.com/technspec/hands-on-the-zwift-hub-one-trainer-and-play-controllers/
Pez here and this is the zift Hub trainer soon to become the zift Hub one trainer when I do the conversion a little bit later in this video taking the existing 12 Cog cassette off of it that came with the unit and replacing it with this new one Cog cassette that is
Part of the zift Hub one setup I’m going to complete that setup by adding these the zift play controllers onto my bike testing the system and seeing how it works finding out what’s new and exciting about it and also talking to you about my first year into
Zwift as a one-year swifter that’s why I’m calling this video Pez and zwift one year in I know it’s hard to believe I have been riding my road bike for somewhere around four decades now in fact I once had a turbo trainer my very first turbo
Trainer that I bought for about 30 bucks off a guy it was one of those little wind turbine things at the back back this thing made such a racket that I was living in a a house at the time and below us was in the in the suite below
Was another set of tenants and when I set this up in my living room and would watch a show and do a training session they used to knock on the door very concerned wondering what all the racket was so thankfully technology has evolved considerably to the point where trainers
Are super quiet and also super smart I had a couple of big events coming up in June that I needed to go to um I was riding the maratona de doam miti in Italy in fact I made a video about that I’ll put a link to it up there or up
There somewhere in this video so you can check it out but that was my big event the peak of my summer and I needed to get into some good shape so I was motivated to get back on the bike I remember I hadn’t done any riding in November December last year the weather
Was really bad I was my exercise was shoveling my driveway actually uh thankfully zift hooked me up with this zift Hub trainer and it was actually the first time that I ever had been using the zift training platform so I came at this as an experienced cyclist but as a
Complete Noob to riding zift so what I want to do in this video is tell you about my last year training with zift and some of the features that I like the most about it what I use on on the platform and how I use
It being part of a being a smart trainer the resistance uh of your pedaling adjusts according to whether you’re climbing or descending going fast going hard racing uh and uh on offer in the platform are all kinds of different workouts from structured workouts to places where you can just hop on your
Bike and go and ride courses and ride Roots uh group rides where you can meet up with a bunch of people and join them for a ride online they even have racing and have become uh quite famous for the zift Academy which actually launches somebody into a pro tour contract with a
Pro Racing Team all based on how well they perform at the zift Academy in a series of races and events so that’s actually pretty cool but it’s certainly added a lot of credibility to the training platform um and how much it can do to improve your cycling when the zift
Hub trainer was introduced a year ago up until that point anybody who was wanting to get onto the platform and use it online would be using a competitor’s trainer from Brands like Wahoo or Elite or tax what zwift was Finding was that there were a lot of people complaining
About the difficulty of getting the different trainers connected to the platform and they decided that to expand their Market of overall users they need to start removing barriers to entry make it as easy as possible for people to get onto the platform so zift came out with their own trainer but the real
Interesting thing about this is that zwift launched this trainer at a price point of $499 which was basically less than half of what existing trainers were selling for in the market so yeah complete Market disruption holy smokes there was a law suit there was all kinds of stuff
Going on but basically consumers liked it but we are here one year later as Swift has actually made it even easier now for people to get onto the platform by introducing this one Cog cassette so this is designed to work with most models of bikes and doesn’t matter if
Your bike’s a fairly standard road bike from the modern era it will likely work with this you can check out my zift Hub setup guide there’ll put a link to it right here maybe down there as well to see how easy it is to get this thing put
Together and connected that was another one of the things that zift wanted to do to eliminate another barrier to entry was make the trainer super easy to set up all right now I’m going to do go through the conversion show you what this is like and let’s see how easy this
Is to do one of the things I like about how easy the zift Hub trainer setup is is how easy it is to set it up I showed you in my setup video um how we switched out the axle from a quick release setup to this through axle it was pretty easy
To do with just a minor adjustment which took me almost no time well now I’m going to take the cassette off and I’m going to replace it The Hub one single speed cassette and here’s how fast that goes you simply take the spanner wrench that comes with the unit we undo this
Bolt it comes right off like that the cassette just pulls off the new one goes on one thing you got to be careful of is there are three Paws inside here uh this is going to require a little bit of jiggling to get it to seat in properly
Mine actually just went straight in there so I didn’t have uh any kind of an issue and I just thread the spacer back on use the spanner to tighten it into place and I’m not torquing this to any specific amount I’m not overtightening it I’m not um I don’t need to want it
Loose but I don’t need it super tight and we are done there it is that is how fast that was so now we’re going to hook this back up put the bike back onto it get connected to uh the zift platform I’m going to show you some of my favorite features of using
Whift all right the play controllers there we go just strap onto the underside of your handlebar it goes like this we bring this in fit it up snug it up underneath the brake lever I find that when I do this I’m going to skip this a nice stretch give
This rubber band nice stretch and it just pumps right over top of that clicker or that just fits right over top of the clip I can position it into place like this move it up a little bit And pretty much ready to go put the other one on now the controllers are in place one thing I should say is that they do require charging via a USBC Port before you put them on they’ve got little batteries in there rechargeable that power them up so
That they can actually connect to the game and control things so I’m going to go ahead and do that then we’re going to get this baby connected and start checking out the new play controllers on zift all right Pez fans so here I am a year into being an actual zwift lifter
And a number of things have stood out for me that I really like the things that kind of uh are my favorite features is whift the first one that I want to show you is how easy it is to actually get connected so they talked about removing some barriers to entry for
Users and uh making it just easier for people to get onto the platform is and I’ve showed you that in my setup video but one thing I like dayto day is how easy and quickly it turns on I’m going to actually take you through this in
Real time so you can see how fast it is all right here’s what we do here’s my computer I’m going to turn it on and pull P up my zift app there it is right there we’re starting that up and preparing to update we got a little bit of unupdate coming
I’m going to do that later and let’s go let’s just all I do is click this let’s go button it starts opening the app here we go get ready gives you that cool little message just they tend to change these messages from time to time which is
Pretty cool nice to have things current somebody’s paying attention all right here we go there it automatically logs me in I’m already logged in so let’s start riding so I like to run this at there we go bring it up to full screen so the next thing I got to do I
Need to connect my controllers my zift playay controllers that are on my bike they’re not turned on right now so I’m going to go to the bike I’m going to turn them on just behind the camera holding down the power button that’s coming on and that one is coming on
There we go check this out it tells me right here it’s connecting ah we’re connected okay great so those are all set to go my controllers are connected the bike’s connected power source is connected my resistance is connected my Cadence is connected the only thing I’m not running
Right now is a heart rate monitor if I had it on it would show up and just be connected as well which is great so let’s get rolling here we go there and now I am into the interface I’m ready to choose my workout choose my
Ride and get going that took what less than a minute another thing that I really like about the interface is and zift in general is how it has basically managed to make indoor training a lot less boring than it used to be one of the biggest barriers to entry for me to
Uh training indoors would just be the sheer boredom of the whole thing sitting on my trainer making my legs go around and around in circles for an hour little truth here uh little reveal for me an hour ride on my trainer actually is only 45 minutes and that’s cuz I can’t seem
To make myself go longer than 45 minutes one thing that I do really like about zft is it actually takes the boredom out of it it makes this whole process so much more palatable not just because they’ve got so many different rides and so many different types of workout
Activities for me to choose from but actually because there are other people doing this at the exact same time as I am so there is this sense of shared suffering There’s an actual community of people and that is kind of cool now as I’ve been riding I’ll start to see the
Names of the same Riders showing up on rides I do people from different different countries doing the same schedule as I am and hey there’s that guy another one of my favorite things here is that there are so many different options and rides to choose from so I
Tend to like the group workouts this one started a minute ago let’s just take a quick look at that here we go if I choose to get into this thing it’s called bum buun it’s got um uh available to anybody who’s pushing from basically beginners up to uh expert
Riders is at 1 to 5 watts per kilogram it’s a 40-minute ride that sounds perfect for me little description here great workout to do on a consistent basis works on muscular strength and endurance here’s another group ride okay starts in 7 minutes you know I might
Just make that one let’s see jet base we’ve got uh the different groups so this one shows you really the different groups that are available in here you’ve got your A’s the very fast guys who are pushing four to four and a half watts per kilo the B’s the C’s I would say
This year when I start riding I’m going to be probably more in the the the and C group when I’m kind of fit I’m usually running around 3 watts per kilo is kind of my zone of Happiness on this thing if you want to do a race the racing in here
Is actually pretty intense I have done a couple of races found myself attacking straight out the back at times they’re pretty fast I do find that the races tend to be faster than the group or the training rides and they do tend to be pretty intense just like an actual race
Would be they give you of course a bunch of information lots of options up here we’ve got zift events happening the tour to zift is on right now in January flat is fast Zed racing is a program that’s happening right now as well and then the
Tour down under you can do some rides around that which is on um through the month actually so these change up throughout the season they have lots of these going on there’s always something interesting and new to try which is pretty fun again killing the board and
Making this a lot more interesting at the end of each ride you have the opportunity to save it but I do like to have a record of what I’ve done in the old days and actually still I write it down on an actual C on my wall in red
Ink all my rides so I can look back at the end of the month and kind of see how many rides I did gives me some kind of satisfaction some feeling of accomplishment I think it’s nice to have this data uh available if I want to to
Come along and see how far I’ve gone in the year and track my progression makes me feel like I’ve actually done something let’s see who’s riding today so if I wanted to I could actually join up with some other zwifters and see what they’re doing this is just a list of
People who are on right now there’s quite a few of them actually some people from some homies from Canada people from all over the world the UK uh France Belgium the United States Germany Lucas connley let’s see what’s he doing how do I start ride join him
Start the ride let’s pop in and see what that looks like loading New York oh there you go assist and so I can join there I’m joining and look at everybody riding here riding around Central Park in New York ah what a great way to spend the afternoon in addition
To the structured workouts there are a number of free rides you can just choose what’s available today here we’ve got the chain Chomper on murri Islands Countryside Tour on mcui Islands that’s actually pretty fun both of these are are good group rides we have down here races workouts structured workouts this
App is loaded with all different kinds of structured workouts that can be as easy or as hard as you want 50 minutes 40 minutes 30 minutes there’s something in here for everybody also group rides tons of them happening right now I’m just scrolling across the screen here
There are all kinds of group rides happening right now H we can ride the C Des SP available for 2 days o I’d like to do this never actually done this one in real life so look at that I can do a simulated version of riding the C desan
It is a 13 km climb probably going to take me that’s at least an hour worth of sitting on my bike might be a little long for me right now if you’re looking for a longer ride there’s definitely something in here for you check out the Four Horseman ride I’ve just pulled up
Here 90 km long 2,111 M of climbing profile looks like this with a big ass climb in there they’re saying it’s more than 90 minutes for most Riders well yeah 90 km okay for sure this is great so oh and at least they warn you this is going to hurt mhm
Yeah so there you have it one of my favorite things killing the boredom of riding but I would say results wise how good does it work well obviously it’s going to work a little bit different for everybody but my own experience has been sitting on this trainer for a month
Working with zift for a month of riding maybe two months at the beginning of January through February before I actually start getting out on the road I I really have noticed actual benefits to my riding for me particularly what it does is it helps with my spin it helps
My Cadence I tend to ride at a high Cadence and sitting on the trainer I’m able to focus on my technique on my form on just riding at that higher Cadence and spinning faster than I am on the road and then of course I actually did
Have more power because of the fact that I’d been training and putting my legs under load and actually building up my muscles and a bit of my endurance is here as well so getting out onto the road was actually a lot more enjoyable than it has been in years when I didn’t
Use zift and I wasn’t on sitting on the trainer getting better that’s how it’s played out in my own experience so it’s been a good year on zift I’m looking forward to 2024 spending more time on this the weather here is going to be pretty bad for the next at least few
Weeks or so which means I’ll be spending lots more time on the platform so that’s how it’s shaped up for me after my first year on zift and as the YouTube Mantra goes don’t forget to like And subscribe it really helps the channel yeah best fans thanks for watching keep the rubber
Side down enjoy your training let me know how it goes and uh maybe I’ll see you out there on the zift
2 Comments
Nice video. Watching while I’m zwifting. 😅
That’s how you do it!