Testing – The importance of Accurate Scales on Cycling

Weighing Review (Portugal) – The importance of Accurate Scales on Cycling by Nuno Matos, founder of BikeToday.news and WeighingReview.com.

If you are either an amateur or a pro cyclist, if you are a climber, a time trial specialist or even a downhill rider, you know the importance of the weight on cycling.

If you are a commuter riding your bike to and from work, the weight will be also a factor on your daily rides. Especially if you live on a zone with a lot of climbs, you will see the difference between a heavier and a lighter bike.

Even if you are a virtual rider using your indoor bike and a cycling simulator like ZWIFT or BKOOL, you will need to configure your body weight on your user profile and that weight value will affect the performance of your avatar during your virtual rides.

Plus, if you are on a diet to reduce or control your body weight you will also need to have a personal or bathroom scale and probably also a portion/kitchen scale to analyze what you are eating.

The more you ride your bike, the more you will feel the effect of all the extra and unnecessary weight… If you ride your bike every day of the week during 3 or 4 hours per day carrying one extra kg or pound with you your legs will feel it.

It is then important to watch your body weight, the weight of your bike and even the weight of your gear, because all these weights combined will affect your performance on the bike.

Besides your performance on the bike, the weight will affect also your wallet! When you want to change some component to reduce the weight of your bike or to buy a lighter bike, you will also see the importance of weight on the price… usually, the lighter the components and bikes, the higher the price tags will be.

Can we now agree that the scale is an important tool on Cycling? Yes? Good.

But you don’t want a scale that is showing wrong weight readings, right? You need to rely on the weight the scale is showing when you are at home and also when you are buying a new bike or component. Is the retail scale used on your local bike store accurate? Is the scale used by the bike brands accurate? Are you buying bikes and components with wrong weights announced and paying extra for that? And at home, are you on a rigorous diet but you don’t know if your fitness scale is accurate?

We can see this issue from the client’s point of view, but we can see it also from the bike store or brand owners’ point of view. If you have a business, you don’t want to mislead the market and customers by announcing wrong weights, right? You need to rely on accurate scales on all your business processes.

Accurate scales on cycling (and also on all the other business areas) are important… and now what?

Probably, the first thing to do is to find and contact a weighing specialist to evaluate your weighing needs (on the Weighing Review Suppliers Directory you can find hundreds of weighing companies from all over the world that can help).

Perhaps you need to verify and/or (re)calibrate the scales you are using to make sure they are accurate. Or perhaps you need to buy new and better scales for your business or to use at home.

So, if you are reading this and you don’t care about your weight or the weight of your bike, you are only interested in riding the bike and have fun… that is just fine! Go ahead and ride it! But if you care about the weight, you now know that you should rely on accurate scales either when you are buying apples at the grocery store, or when you are buying bikes at the bike shop.