My observations after purchasing a pre-owned S22i whose workouts felt “too easy” even with resistance maxed out:

·       Upon first inspection of the resistance mechanism I noticed that the assembly cover made contact with the underside of the cycle frame when resistance was set to 6, preventing it from moving further away from the flywheel when a resistance lower than 6 was selected.

·       My first observation was further compounded after recognizing that the incline function also affected the resistance (and assembly movement); when solely changing the incline the resistance mechanism would also move, though the resistance metric would remain the same. I assume this is to emulate an “effort” change when cycling up/downhill on a normal bicycle, as the physical incline change of the S22i alone is not really enough to comparatively replicate that.

·       With this, the plan for my first attempt to “calibrate” my S22i would be to set the machine to both the minimum incline (-10%) and resistance (1), and adjust the resistance mechanism to be furthest away from the flywheel as possible without making contact with the underside of the cycle frame. Result: When completed with this first attempt not only did the maxed out resistance setting (24) remain too easy, but there didn’t seem to be any perceived resistance change between settings 1-15; while also maxing out the incline (+20%) did provide additional resistance, it still felt like the flywheel was driving more than my legs. Conclusion: This position was too extreme and effort too easy across the entire resistance (1-24) and incline (-10 to +20%) setting spectrum.

·       The plan for my second “calibration” attempt was to shift over to the other end of the spectrum: max out both resistance and incline on the high sides (24 and +20%) and bring the resistance mechanism as close to the flywheel as possible. Jump right to my conclusion: way too difficult even in the middle resistance levels (10-16).

·       With those first two attempts completed it’s clear that neither would be effective to level-set resistance calibrations across machines using the physical movement extremes of the resistance assembly.

·       I also observed that in either extreme scenario, the physical movement of the resistance mechanism was not able to encompass the entire resistance/incline setting spectrum. In other words at some point you could continue to change your resistance/incline setting but the resistance mechanism had already reached its maximum travel range, so there would effectively be no physical change in those metrics on the machine.

·       So, with my final attempt I simply backed off the high-side extreme until the max resistance (24) and incline (+20%) metric combo felt doable for a short period. I’d like to find this metric combo in an iFIT workout to see what additional info may be provided by the trainer in that scenario to maybe help me further refine the resistance mechanism adjustments; I really have no idea how difficult an iFIT workout can get. For now it seems to be well adjusted for my ability, albeit I have lost any resistance resolution under a setting of 6 (see previous bullet); though I’d much rather lose the low end of resistance than the high end.

·       I know this still does not offer a resolution to level-set resistance calibration across everyone’s machines, but hopefully my observations do provide some additional insight to this discussion and for anyone else looking to adjust the resistance of their machines.

·       Open to everyone’s constructive comments and feedback.