Wahoo KICKR Climb: making a mountain out of a molehill

It's all uphill from here with the most advanced indoor bicycle training kit to date

Wahoo KICKR Climb
Duncan Bell
By Duncan Bell
published

Wahoo already makes the KICKRs, which are among our favourite turbo trainers. 

If you don't know what a turbo trainer is, you're clearly no MAMIL: it's a device that you attach to the back wheel of your bicycle to turn it into an exercise bike, for training purposes. A turbo trainer like Wahoo's KICKR Snap holds the bike upright and acts as a brake, with resistance either dialled in by you, or changing dynamically to simulate a ride, using apps such as Zwift. 

UPDATE: Hey, now we have an actual Wahoo KICKR review, with Wahoo's Climb and Headwind (don't ask) accessories thrown in for good measure.

Wahoo KICKR Climb: it will introduce you to our friend, pain

Now, the brand, which is a supplier to the all-conquering Team Sky, is quite literally taking it to the next level with the KICKR Climb. 

Used in conjunction with a KICKR turbo trainer, the Climb doesn't just apply resistance to the back wheel, it actually raises your front wheel to more fully simulate climbs. At this moment, anyone reading this who's not interested in cycling will be yawning and moving onto something else, but cyclists will be yelling, "Oh my god, this is the most outrageous idea ever! Where can I buy one?"

That's because hill riding is not simply a matter of overcoming gravity; to train properly for it involves using muscles and riding positions that you simply wouldn't be able to use with a bike that's level.

“The world we ride in isn’t flat, which is why we believed the indoor riding experience on the KICKR should follow suit,” says Wahoo's excellently-named Fitness CEO Chip Hawkins. “We’re proud to quite literally take structured climbing workouts and virtual course rides to the next level." Yeah, I already did that joke thanks, Chip.

Existing KICKR and KICKR Snap owners will have to upgrade to a new model of the turbo trainer that can cope with pivoting your back wheel as the Climb raises the front wheel. It can be set to a specific gradient, or respond to workout and virtual course data from apps in real-time.

The full range of the Climb allows for ascents of up to 20% gradient, and it can also dip the front of your steed to mimic descents down to -10%. Before you know it, you're Eddie Merckx.

Apps supported include Zwift and TrainerRoad, or you can use routes ridden and stored on Wahoo’s ELEMNT bike computers. Alternatively, you can use this handlebar-mounted control to manually adjust the gradient.

The new KICKR and KICKR Snap trainers cost £999.99 and £499.99 respectively. The Climb 'supports a wide range of modern hub configurations, including quick-release, 12x100, 15x100, and 15x110 thru axle hubs' and will cost £449.99 when it launches this autumn.

TOPICS
Fitness Tech
Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."


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