Keiser M3 feedback

[elsaltamontes]

Hi, new to the forum. here is some feedback I sent to Keiser regarding their bikes:
We currently have half of our bikes as M3's. member response has been very positive(fighting to get new bikes!) However as a instuctor with ex phys., biomechanics, and racing as a background I have some issues which I feel could be improved. First the positives. Super quiet and smooth, micro adjust saddle height/fore aft, and I absolutely love the quick throw shift lever for big transitions in less than a second(seated flat to standing climb). This is huge for really letting the music create the terrain without having to spin a knob 6 times while you bash your knuckles against the head tube! Honestly you have almost built the perfect bike. I just listened to the podcast w/ Dennis Keiser, very informative and interesting. Training with power is a great tool under the right circumstances(instructor/student knowledge). At this point the accuracy of the power is not too important but repeatability is. Dennis's tips will be helpful. My biggest issue which I understand Keiser is working on is fit as related to handlebars. I realize the engineering nightmare, but you must find a way to move the bars fore and aft and lower. Yes, in general a taller rider will need the bars further away but only if their arm/torso length grows in proportion to their legs. As stated, riders with poor low back/ham flexibility will need a higher bar position. But riders with long legs and a short torso/arms will need the bars closer to them. Add in poor back and ham flex. and they need a higher position and bars closer to them not farther away! This profile fits many avg. height females who typically have long legs and short torso/arms. Their position on the m3 is awful with absolutely no fix. I see this a lot in our club. they ride with extremely rounded backs, and protracted shoulders just to reach the bars. This creates springlike tension in the spine which then causes them to bounce even with appropriate resistance. We used to have to old star trac bikes with bar fore aft adjustment. i would take these riders and set them up correctly. The difference in rider position and their much improved comfort was amazing. As far as height adjustment you are excluding riders who do have core stability and flexibility. I am 6'- 4" and the m3 fits me perfect with the bars full down. This sets my bars even with my saddle which is very conservative by racing standards. What about everyone shorter than me who also have that flexibility? They have no choice but to run the bars higher than their saddle height, in some case up to 6-8 inches! Aerodynamics aside, A lower position will allow the qualified rider to achieve greater hip flexion and more glute complex involvement. Maximum glute activation starts at 90 degrees of hip flexion. With a bar position well above seat height this can not be achieved without holding a static down push up position. This means less ability to produce force, but more importantly more force will be produced through knee extension rather than sharing the load with the much stronger hip complex. cycling is low impact but it is not impervious to overuse of the knee. Please, please, please design full adjustment of the bars. The best indoor bike is one that will fit everyone at all levels of fitness. Other minor quibbles. Backlight for computer despite your safety concerns addressed in the podcast. Relative darkness motivates and comforts students, if you slip a pedal it will happen whether the lights are on or not. The resistance(if being used!) will slow the flywheel down quickly enough. Better yet, stick to your guns and loose the fixed gear, go to freewheel. Also over time the resistance lever looses its holding power and drifts back. There is a screw to tighten but when doing so it does not appear remotely loose. You really have to crank on it, and it barely moves, but it does set the lever again so it will hold a gear. Lots of striped screws in your future. Overall a huge step forward in indoor bike design. Give us full microadjust of bar height and fore aft (e.g. cycleops) and you will dominate the market!

[Funhog]

Elsa,
I just started teaching a new class with the Keisers and I love everything you love about them (so smooth, great resistance lever and adjustment, magnetic braking, power, great computer, etc) and hate everything you mentioned. The bikes look like praying mantises...and I just scratch my head in wonder at WHY the steering tube (or what would be the equivalent of the steering tube on a road bike) angles AWAY from the bike. ???? Why oh why? Is it a desire to look so different than the other bikes on the market? (Star Trac, Schwinn, etc) How can that possibly improve on a real bike-like feel?

I am so frustrated with the handlebars and not being able to adjust to my shorter women with short arms. Most of the participants at this facility are older, some with neck and/or shoulder issues. The only way to bring the bars closer to avoid the neck pain from over-reaching is to lower them, which only aggravates that neck/ shoulder issue. So how do you compensate? Bring the saddle closer to the handlebars? Certainly not - then you have knee issues. I guess you gotta toss a coin (or ask the rider to choose) to decide which which body part gets to be comfortable and which one risks further pain or worse, injury.

Makes me wonder if their engineers are all 6'5" males and they don't know how to test their product on a wide range of users before manufacturing it. Sigh...there's probably not much they'll do about it. This is what will happen - they could have cornered the market because they were one of the first with power (except for CycleOps, which is a far better bike than anyone has with far more reliable power measurements....but it's priced way out of the market for most facilities) but because of the design issues, once the others come out with good bikes with power (Schwinn recently did, Star Trac is surely working on it, Lemond as well I'm sure) then they will quickly overtake that power market due to the set-up issues alone.

Keiser....are you listening???


(Hmmm, I wonder if they do watch these forums....they would be silly not to).

[elsaltamontes]

Forgot one more area of improvement, the water bottle holder or lack thereof. A very shallow shelf on the down tube is where your bottle sits. These are constantly hitting the deck during a ride when people stand and when they get off and on the bike. Also in terms of the not having a backlight for the computer, wouldn't it be "green" if they could somehow convert the eddy current of the resistance system to power up the computer display and a back light if needed? lifecycles work this way. if you don't pedal they shut down!

[Pulverizer]

Elsa & Jennifer: I commented in a previous thread about the extent to which the Keiser M3 'measurement' of power appears to be the combination of a given gear selection and given cadence = the level of watts of power. Whereas the Cycle Ops 300 PT utlizes a power tap strain gauge to measure power exerted by the rider. With that said, I am struggling with whether the bikes (or Schwinn's) are an apple to apple comparisons (simply around the issue of the measurement of power).

Regarding the issue of handlebars, I too find the M3 challending to say the least. Cycle Ops recently addded a true road bike handlebar which might be a first on the indoor bike products out there.

Here is part of my previous post:

Thanks for those quick informative replies, in particular John's interview with Dennis Keiser. The three of you helped clarify a basic point for me and I am just beginning to truly understand power based training (thank you for following my Mary/John example) and admittedly have a ways to go. Having said that, and also accepting that the quiteness and smoothness of a belt driven, magnetic resistance, well built bike will have a level of appeal to some indoor bike enthusiasts, if the M3 (at $1300) is basically guestimating power and the PT300 (chain driven though not noisey by any extent and also a well built bike) is providing a strain guage driven indication of power output for a few hundred dollars more, and also assuming that the future of indoor cycling is headed toward providing the enthusiast with accurate measurement of one's workout, I find it a bit of a challenge to advocate for the M3 (the facilities where I instruct classes ultimately will ask me for input as they upgrade their bike flleet). Notwithstanding having a bike on a trainer with a power measurement setup, the comparison of the only two 'power based' indoor training bikes on the market so far (are there any others?), seems to be a markedly different approach.

I realize that Cycle Ops is limited in terms of facilities that have them and the extent to which their power based training has reached the market. I know that the club that I work at purchased the M3 in the $1200 price range. I purchased a slightly used 300PT that was on display for about $1600. I realize that the price has since increased for the 300 PT.

My sense is that there is going to be a split population in indoor cycling. The first 70-80% of the population are the riders that would feel antimidated by all the data of either the M3, Cycle Ops, Schwinn or any other bike that provides cadence, wattage output, time accrued of the ride, time of day, etc. The basic stripped down bike out there on the market in the $800 range will work fine by them. The other 20% or so of the population are those riders who do want the data of what their workout consisted of and what the bike will tell them. And that person's needs warrant the bike that runs in the range of $1200 to $1800. This leads me back to the earlier point of whether the latter rider will want a bike that captures wattage output through a strain guage driven power tap or a bike that through a simple formula of your gear selection and your cadence provides you with an estimated wattage figure?

I would suggest to Jennifer and John to invite Cycle Ops (and other companies that produce a power measured bike) to discuss their product
on a future web conference call and allow for many of the ICP folks (that are smarter than me on all of this) to ask their questions about this very intruiging topic.

[elsaltamontes]

I would say the two bikes or more like oranges to clementines. Kind of the same but taste slightly different. Without a doubt for power feedback, cycleops is the way to go. A strain gauge system will be within 5% accurate and repeatable(if calibrated each time) which is most important when looking for improvements. Understand that a quality strain gauge system is close to laboratory grade, very expensive and potentially finicky, like a fine tuned race car. When cycleops powertaps first came out for bikes they had lots of issues and needed frequent factory repair. They have since improved, but keep in mind the excessive use indoor bikes may get everyday. A mechanic can not fix these, they would have to be shipped back to Cyclops.

The Cycleops bike is one of the few offering full micro-adjustability for perfect bike fit. However I do not know how big the range is, i.e how far the bars move up/down or front to back. To sum up, the downsides are expense, noise, longevity, and availability.

The keiser M3 on the other hand is basing power on changes in current based on magnet position, flywheel speed, and some freaky equations. Will it be as accurate as cyclops? Not likely due to many variables like magnet strength over time, cable stretch and calibration procedure. The real question is even with proper calibration will a students power results be repeatable on different M3's over say a 6 week period. This is critical for long term use of power based training.

After listening to Keisers podcast about the M3 they have worked hard to Keep the bike simple, high quality, low maintenance, and as accurate and repeatable as possible. But at this point we just don't know how close that is.

Where the keisers(and cycleops) will shine for power based training is on a per class, per bike, per interval prescription basis. As far as how our students may respond to power based training look at my post in news and announcement section under power based training.