I’m setting up my pain cave. I’ll be mounting a 32" TV on the wall, and I’m still figuring out the height.
I’m leaning toward around handle bar height for neck comfort. Just a few feet in front of the bike. I don’t have a lot of space.
I also bought one of those Wahoo Kickr desks knockoffs for $110 that is designed to go in front of the handlebars. Adjustable height.
I will be casting Zwift from the mobile app to my TV. I usually have two cell phones going. One for the app and one from Zwift companion (a separate app for Zwift.)
Previously I’ve wheeled my trainer to the living room and used the main tv, and sat my phones and water bottles on stool next to me. Kinda sucks to not have the phones right in my line of sight.
Before I unbox the cycling desk, has anyone had a cycling desk and decided it was a mistake because it interfered with your TV placement?
I think I’m overthinking this, but I did an image search for cycling pain caves and it seems very few people are using a desk in front of the bike.
I setup our two stations with a front TV support that also has a tray like your desk. Then I added separate side tables since we prefer to have a mix of locations for stuff. Most frequent access on the side with extra stuff at front. As you can see with my wife’s setup on the right, there is the ability to stay close to the wall if you imagine this without our PC mount below since your desk doesn’t do that.
What worked for me: I bought 3 drafting tables over the years. They worked great for plant stands and work tables for the business I ran. Now? They are PERFECT for pain cave stability. True drafting tables are out there and pretty cheap, and usually rock solid, with enough space for keyboards, water bottles, TVs and notebooks, tablet stands.
I have the same knockoff desk and a crappy 32" TV on a folding table a few feet away. The table is low about 22" off the ground. The desk doesn’t interfere at all. Setup works great for me.
love the cycling desk - keeps all my other stuff in easy reach, my setup looks much like Chad’s but my TV is a touch lower, the bottom of my TV is just slightly higher than the desk height. My TV is on rollers so that I can move it to the treadmill as well. The height was selected to be best for both. Treadmill and bike are side by side.
If I mount my TV at your height, the desk isn’t a problem. It’s more if I decide to mount the TV much lower (one the premise that the most neutral neck position is actually looking at the floor a few feet ahead of the front wheel), then I’m concerned the desk is actually in the way.
(Not sure if I articulated this well in my original post.
Screen height is very personal. I have mine so that my normal riding position has my head “looking” at the center of the screen in roughly the same angle as when I am outside on the road.
Yup….my main screen is significantly lower. It just sits on a low coffee table. If I tired to watch screens that high, my neck would be killing me by the end of the ride.
Unfortunatley, that means cycling desks aren’t really an option for me since they block my view of the screen.
I currently use a cheap walmart targt something like that computer desk, its 15+ years old so I don’t recall exactly. In the past I had TV high and a normal monitor on it, but learned that trying to look up that high didn’t transfer well to riding tri bike outside so now the tv sits way lower and I just have my laptop off to the side a little with TR. Can see both tv and laptop just fine.
I am probably going to switch to some sort of shelves on the wall for bottles and a flip down shelf for laptop since I don’t like how close it is to the weight stuff.
I agree, I think they’re pretty handy and give you a place to put a few different things you might need. I also like how they can help you setup to charge devices and keep things running so you don’t have to waste much time while you’re trying to ride. I was without mine for a bit while I was moving house recently and I did miss it.
No, but I found it does interfere with fan placement. I have a pedestal fan directly in front of me just below my main screen. I moved my desk to the side of my bike and found that the improved airflow 99% of the time outweighed the 1% of the time that I actually need to get use something on the desk.
Things I use my desk* for
Snacks for rides over 2 hours
Spare bottles, my trainer bike only has 1 bottle cage.
Holding the phone I run my workouts from and use as a video player.
Holding the bluetooth keyboard I use to control the workouts with shortcut keys.
Things I don’t use my desk for
I’m not a Zwift user, but I understand having the companion app open directly in front of you would be beneficial.
A place for my cat to nap on my laptop keyboard
*It’s not even a real cycling desk, its just an old but of furniture that is the appropriate height and size. I can see that a proper desk would be essential if you were only using a tablet or laptop as you main screen, but if not any old furniture or even a wall mounted shelf will do.
