You’re starting to get serious about your cycling, and you’re in the market for a power meter. But, which type should you buy. The advantage to using a hub-based power meter is that it’s a proven technology, and the results can be verified.
Hub-based power meters power meters have been available since around 1989, and have grown in popularity as the cycling world collided with the gadget-loving world.
Power meters are not meant for casual cyclists. If you’re the type of cyclist that laughs at the serious riders in their spandex shorts and their colorful jerseys, a power meter is not for you.
Power meters are tools to enable you to measure and record the progression of your fitness in cycling, and thus to enable you to calculate the level of races and events that you might be relatively competitive in.
Hub-based Power meters work as strain gauges. They measure the torque that’s applied to the bicycles hub when cycling. And, as your fitness increases, the readings of your power meter will reflect this increase in fitness.
Charting the reading of your power meter over time will help you reveal training methods that increase or decrease the speed at which your fitness level rises, and may help you to design a training regimen that utilizes these findings and offers you an optimum training program.
The idea behind the philosophy of power meters is to purchase a brand and design that can be replaced in case of an accident. In other words, you want a brand with enough quality, that it becomes popular, and can be relied on to stay in production over time. One that will show you data based on the same parameters as your last power meter.
In this manner, you can be sure that your hub-based power meter is showing you the same data, based on the same measurement of torque that your previous power meter was. And, this consistency is what is going to show you definite progress that you can be sure of, and win you races.