For those not subscribed to the FIT File (it’s free!) via your regular podcast app or on YouTube, here’s a quick post with the highlights from the most recent episode.
In this episode, we chat all things indoor training 2025, from a pile of new trainers and smart bike frames, to both approved and unapproved integrations between Zwift, TrainerRoad, Rouvy, and more. Plus, the future of smart bikes.
0:00 The Game Plan & Catchup
3:07 Elite Avanti Smart Trainers
12:25 Decathlon Van Rysel D100 Smart Trainer
29:19 Caveworks Rivet is Now Shipping
33:50 Elite Square Catchup
39:02 Tacx NEO Bike 2?
42:01 Rouvy gets Zwift Cog/Click/Ride Support
51:50 TrainerRoad x Zwift
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Decathlon is selling the D100 for CAD 375, but as of today it’s unavailable in every store and unavailable online.
But Decathlon USA has always been a weird one. You’d think it would work, it works in Canada, but the Bay Area stores closed, they’ve got/had some kind of agreement with Walmart selling there, but the online selling is lacking even compared to Canada.
Intersting.
I would suspect, knowing Decathlon, that they probably shipped a few containers back in the fall, and then were basically just letting it ride for the winter until stock was depleted. In Europe, we’ve seen them pull the trainers from store shelves in the last few weeks, and centralize them into the online platform.
That’s common for Decathlon for season things. We see them do that with skis, skates, coats, camping gear, etc… Makes sense with limited store space.
Ray, your website home page seems to be showing a clip from a different fit file podcast (next month’s wearables one maybe) rather than the trainer focussed one.
Hmm, that’s odd. Is that the small box down in the corner, or?
Image on link to dcrainmaker.com is about instinct 3 from January 12th
Thanks!!!
Great topic to investigate for the next podcast might be Garmin seeming to artificially limit certain Garmin Coach plans to Fenix 8 and other Forerunner watches for no good reason. There was a YouTube review about the Garmin Strength plan where he added the strength program using his Fenix 8 but then was able to see all the same workouts on his Epix Pro.
It really just feels like Garmin is choosing to artificially screw their users here and I’m sure it would be an easy thing to investigate and discuss for a future podcast.
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of that. Do you have the video/post/etc by chance for it? I’ll take a look.
link to youtu.be
I tried to even share from the spot where he begins discussing that the Garmin Coach Strength Plan showed up on his Epix.
If the link gets parsed out the video is called “TESTING The FENIX 8 NEW STRENGTH WORKOUTS And COACHING PROGRAM” by Dave Does Fitness.
Interesting. Let me do some more digging. I’m wondering if it’s because the enumeration of those programs is a bit more complete on the Fenix 8 or such.
I thought that was pretty well established/common knowledge – Garmin has a history of restricting software/cloud features to newer/more premium models for product differentiation purposes only (i.e., not because of any hardware limitation) – at least initially. Adding the newer/premium device to the Garmin Connect account ‘unlocks’ this (these) feature(s) and they (often, not always) become available on other devices as well.
The key difference though is that in all past cases that I can think of, the GCM/web feature is triggered not just because a watch model was bought, but because that watch model had the specific software feature on the watch itself (e.g. Training Load or Acute Load, etc…, which then unlocked those pages in GCM).
I can’t remember a time that Garmin has locked a GCM training plan to a specific device, unless that device factually wasn’t capable of doing said plan (e.g. didn’t support the sport mode, or workout features).
That might be more of a result of the old school approach by Garmin that has almost everying on-device and the clould is mostly just the data repository (and exchange layer with other services like TR, Strava, etc.).
Arguably some of the (especially more advanced) analytics _should_ be done online/in the cloud in order to benefit from the largest and most up-to-date data set and to continually refine the algorithms (like TR, Intervals ICU etc are doing).
I kind of expected something like that would happen when Garmin fully acquired FirstBeats. But alas almost everything still seems to be on-device – obvious exceptions are daily suggested workouts and Garmin Coach adaptive training plans. Is there anything else?
On whether there have been previous instances of ‘locking’ GCM functionality, I seem to recall limitations for bike coach plans with my Epix Gen 2 (removed when I added an Edge unit).
I don’t have much knowledge about economics, but with 25% import taxes on EU products, does that mean that products like Suunto will become more expensive in the future, in the US? Is that for EU products that go into the US or both ways? Like in, Garmin, Coros, Zwift, TrainerRoad (don’t know if that applies for online stuff) would become 25% more in the EU?
Garmin products are made in Taiwan. COROS is China, Zwift hardware I think offhand is Taiwan (+ Wahoo trainers in other non-China countries). Suunto is mostly China now. And I think everything Polar is also China.
Zwift & TrainerRoad are both US companies, so if within the US, no impact there. And digital products don’t tend to have tariffs in that same way.
But yeah, in short, if you’re in the US, as new tariffs come into effect, your prices will go up. Potentially by the full amount, or a portion of the company decides to eat a portion of that price increase on your behalf. But I don’t expect that this time around. Companies are likely to simply pass the full allotment along.
As a related item, saw this today in terms of what Peloton says their impact would be: link to pelobuddy.com
Hey Ray! I also see the wrong image (only on the front page) not on the actual post page.
Doh. I see. Easy fix. Had wrong image set as ‘featured image’ for the post. Thanks!!!
Des mentioned the “why are you so weak?” question when you end a TR workout early – is there a way to turn that off? I still wanna tell it my perceived effort, but just don’t want to be shamed :)