Indoor Trainer Compatibility
We get a lot of questions about if/how OPEN bikes can be used on an indoor trainer. And our answer was always as simple as it was unsatisfying:
"We have no idea, we never ride indoors, we ride outside regardless of the weather."
But I understand that for some of you, this is important, so I asked our good friend Jeff Frehner, an OPEN rider and president of Powertap/Cyclops, for his expert opinion on the matter.
His top recommendation would be the Cyclops Hammer. This is a trainer where you remove the rear wheel, and it is compatible with thru-axles both 142 and 148mm wide (so for the U.P. and ONE+ respectively). This is how it looks, you can see the cassette body where you would install your cassette of choice, and then you install the bike with this trainer as the "rear wheel" (the setup shown is for QR frames but it works for thru-axle too):
Of course this is the top of the range, if you own or want to buy a less expensive Cyclops, then you can use the thru-axle adapter on it. This converter is also suitable for 142 and 148mm thru axles and looks like this:
And in combination with a trainer and an OPEN U.P. it goes together very easily and looks like this (thanks to Jeff for taking this photo in the Cyclops warehouse):
As you can see, the frame easily clears the trainer and the thru-axle fits in the trainer rock solid.
But wait, there's more. For some reason OPEN has become the bike of choice for industry insiders, and so we have not one but two executives at Wahoo Fitness who are great friends of the company. Mike Stashak and Ingo Urban recommend the KICKR, also a direct-drive trainer where you take off your rear wheel. Here is what it would look like all set up:
It's got nice features like Zwift integration (they recommend a 2.1" tire for any Zwift workouts). You just need to get the thru-axle adapter (142mm only, so for the U.P. but not the ONE+ at this point though I would assume 148mm can't be far off - my unverified thought completely).
I hope this is helpful to you, if you have any more questions I can try to answer them but remember, this is a topic Andy and I know little about!