Just curious what everyone is doing for indoor excercise at the moment? I’ve got the bosses road bike on a turbo trainer indoors and have been using it for the last 10 days to keep a bit fitter.
I’m in my early 60s, retired, just back into cycling with an emtb, which is/was giving me a whole new horizon as far as cycling outings are concerned but that’s a different story.
I started out at 20 minute sessions, seriously fecked, now up to 40 minutes and today I really enjoyed it. Still working up a good sweat but recovery time much improved.
I know it’s pretty subjective, which bike, which trainer, what gear etc etc but it would be good to have some comparisons so that I could tell how far I had to go to be making a difference for my health.

Cheers all.

I was doing https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/tt-tuneup/ from early Jan, before lurgy got me part way through final week.

Sometimes I do https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/less-than-an-hour-to-burn/emilys-short-mix/ , a great short and quite brutal workout for 30mins including warmup and cooldown.

https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/ftp-tests/ramp-test/ doesn’t have to be simply about getting an FTP ballpark figure, it’s a good little workout in itself that doesn’t have much TSS for mortals including myself.

Even if I wasn’t still feeling a bit rough, I wouldn’t be doing brutal workoutouts at the mo, like some of those TT Tune-Up ones that are ~80+ TSS per hour.

As part of chub club efforts, I’ve been doing 8min HIIT sessions on the turbo 3-4 times a week.
2 min gentle spin
20 second sprint like mad (up turbo resistance too for the 20 secs)
Do this twice more and 1min gentle spin at end.

Started off in a low gear and increased gear over the weeks as my legs got accustomed to the effort.

Not overly scientific but with better eating have lost weight and legs feel better on the trails.

You can make up some test, then workout x times a week for a month, then repeat the test. Then you know if it has made a difference.

Or become assimilated into the Zwift matrix which will do this for you and in a marginally more interesting way

My 11yo is doing the 10-12 week FTP builder in Zwift.

Out of interest (and it’s just lazyness asking, as I could google or even give it a go myself..) how do the workouts work?

I’m fairly new to zwift, so it knows my wattage etc…. and my HR zones are presumably calculated..

So does it simply ramp up the resistance automatically as per the workout schedule? Of do i just have to ‘tank it’ when it tells me, and calm it when I’m meant to…?

DrP

Have a smart trainer, BTW.

Out of interest (and it’s just lazyness asking, as I could google or even give it a go myself..) how do the workouts work?

Try googling it or giving it a go yourself

So does it simply ramp up the resistance automatically

is the default, it sets the resistance so you meet the target power, no matter your gear or cadence

‘tank it’ when it tells me, and calm it when I’m meant to…?

is an option, but then the resistance is set to the terrain, so if hilly it can be tricky to keep to the target

So does it simply ramp up the resistance automatically as per the workout schedule? Of do i just have to ‘tank it’ when it tells me, and calm it when I’m meant to…?

Most mortals on a road bike can simply select the small chainring and a sprocket in the middle of the cassette before starting the ERG workout, Zwift and your “2-way interactive” turbo will do the rest, all being well. It ignores the gradients in terms of it changing your power effort, but your speed on the gradient will be proportional to your power and W/Kg.

What constitutes a work out on turbo trainer?

I think the answer to this: Whatever you want it to be. There is no real wrong or right answer imo. Enjoy the process 🙂

If you doing it everyday, then I would suggest that most ‘workouts’ are at an easy rate so you can recover for the next day. You’ll still get fitness gains. Riding moderately hard most days is more likely to lead to injuries.

I’m doing Sufferfest workouts everyday as we’re not allowed out (otherwise I’d alternate with running). They vary a fair bit, but the basic structure is something like:

* Warm up for 5 minutes

* 30-50 minutes divided into blocks with 3-5min recovery between blocks

* Cool down for 5 minutes

Warm up starts easy, then slowly builds with a couple of decent 15″ efforts to get the blood flowing, then maybe a minute to get your breath back. The blocks can be anything, but usually something like 3x2min hard / 1min recovery (ie 8 minutes / block). Or maybe 40″ on / 20″ off, repeat 8 times. Etc.

You don’t need a smart trainer to do them, just use perceived effort. For the 40″ intervals you should obviously be going quite a bit harder than the 2 minute ones. If you’ve got a HR monitor the end result should be a saw shape with an upwards trend.

Anyway, if you want to try Sufferfest the first week is free. FWIW I prefer it to Zwift.

Simple answer:

Get a PC, anything vaguely modern will do.

Get a speed sensor (the minimum, cadence and HR are also useful), and ANT+ dongle, and a USB extension lead (you need the dongle within ~1m of the crank, rear wheel and HR sensor). Assuming you have a reasonably new and popular trainer most software wil be able to infer your power from your speed. If not just pick one and keep it consistent (It’s generally consistent but not accurate anyway).

Download Trainer road

Do the free Fortnight/month trial, start with an FTP test to get a baseline, then try it again the next day once you know roughly how hard it should be, then again the next day if you still didn’t nail it and either blew up too early, or got to the end without crawling off the bike and vomiting. Then do some workouts, there’ll probably be a 4 week plan in there somewhere.

Once that’s up repeat the process with Sufferfest’s free trial.

Differences – uses something called 4DP, whereas trainerroad just assumes everyone can sprint at ~5x their FTP for 30s, Sufferfest makes you do a 30s interval (and 5 minute, 20minute, and 5s etc) and uses the exact figure to set targets in future workouts.

Generally sufferfest’s workouts are more like real life with lots of small changes in power and cadence, whereas trainerroad makes you do big blocks at a constant effort.

Sufferfest also has a sense of humor and story line, so a lot of the workouts are actually cut together race footage, the intervals are attacks, the decent are rests.

Then try Zwift.

If it’s only a dumb trainer (i.e. it won’t automatically compensate for hills) then I found it a bit pointless and dull. I actually found it easier to get absorbed into the videos on Sufferfest.

I have a basic tacx trainer. Got my wahoo with speed,cadence and HR monitoring bits.
I get on the bike and pedal for 30 mins at 16-18mph, twice a day. No idea what is does for me but given that ive ridden bot all this year I dont feel unfit when I get out on the road proper, so its working for me.

Or just follow something on the GCN youtube channel. They’re really quite good to be fair, you can select a work out which suits what you want to do for what ever length of time you fancy.

Personally dripping with sweat from every pore and close to vomiting has always worked for me, I am not a personal trainer though. Once I started to commute by bike again the turbo hasn’t seen any love. Should we get into serious lockdown it’ll get setup in the garden. I also used the GCN HIIT sessions on youtube.

Usually, one or two turbo visits a week, consisting of approx 40min, 5min warm up, 30mins either steady pace, or 2mins flat, 1min rest and repeat, then sat morning in the real world. Currently 3-4 40mins a week before working from home kicks in.

I’m a turbo virgin, having panic bought one before lockdown.

I’ve been on it 3 times so far using Zwift.

I’ve done the Emily’s 30 min mix twice and a longer “mtb focused” one.

I just picked ones that looked like they had a reasonable graph with not too much red in it.

I’ll keep an eye on this thread for tips. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Doing a 100km gravel training program on sufferfest using a smart trainer. Probably going to have to do a gentle daily roller session outside so the dogs can still have alone time and not start to suffer from separation anxiety when normality eventually returns.

Once the socks and underwear on the top tube are dry, I have to go upstairs to put them away.

Feel the burn!

I stick on a DVD- Jessica Jones series 1 at the moment- and just do intervals, hard enough to sweat up a storm and arrive at the end of the episode feeling glad it’s over, but not so hard as to be completely miserable or missing bits of the episode. It’s almost certainly not the best I could do, but the point is I’ll keep doing it, which is better than doing a really virtuous top performance session three or four times then going **** that

A heart rate sensor and training in zones is a good way to go to start. And gives a good personal level of effort required.

I used to find that after a couple of weeks feedback you didn’t need to look at the sensor.

Three or four one hour long sessions a week is plenty enough to get fitter. With maybe one 2 min fast, 2 min recover interval session included.

GCN YouTube +1

Thank you OP for posting this, I’d not ridden a bike since November and before that early last summer commuting. Breaking my leg in December meant a crash in fitness and weight gain, so this morning I got the turbo and bike out and cracked on with a GCN session again, I used to use these over year ago in winter). Feel much better now after.

Thanks for that and thank you for all the answers so far. I’ll be honest, a lot of what’s been said is really white noise to me. I’m really a spiral note book and stolen Screwfix pencil sort of guy when it comes to technology.
I’ve dug out fathers stop watch and I work out my times, pedal rate etc from that.
I can relate to the sweating from every pore comment and I’ve been trying to devise a routine and plan that’s going to work for me and isn’t going to result in a medical incident but its fascinating to see what’s possible now with all the technology available.
Thanks once again and the best of luck to everyone.

I used to do an easy to do session. Two songs warm up then one tune hard one tune easy. I did it on rollers so it was easy gear and middle of the block.

That’s one I was going to try, it does get a bit tedious if you’ve no distractions.

Another good simple one to improve your aerobic capacity and lactate threshold is (i.e. ability to climb hills).

Warmup: low gear, low cadence, add 10rpm every 30s untill spinning at 100rpm. Then repeat in a higher gear so that the last 30s is really quite hard.

For the session; rest 3 minutes, go flat out for 30s, then try and keep it consistent for 6 minutes just below threshold (i.e. sustainable, but you shouldnt feel like you recover from that first 30s), flat out for another 30s (this should hurt) then rest for 3 (or 2 tunes on, one rest).
Repeat 5 or 6 times untill a gibbering wreck and cool down for 6 minutes in bottom gear.

For added pain, add another 30s sprint between the songs.

I got a turbo trainer and have joined zwift for a month. To be honest find it boring as hell so i just sit in front of the tv and watch a programme and find the time goes better quicker and am still able to get fit. You could get a bluetooth speed and cadence sensor cheaply and log your stats via wahoo on ur phone but you wont go wrong just gettimg on your bike everyday for at least 30mins, better than not doing anything.

That’s what I’m finding at the moment. What started as a necessary chore has become something I look forward to and actually enjoy.

+1 for Sufferfest.

They’re currently doing a whole month free, on top of the usual 2 week trial. 6 weeks, for nothing. This will be long enough to start seeing results.

I did use Zwift for a while. Mainly for racing, but I found it hard to get online at the correct time without equipment glitches 20 seconds before the start! Have looked into it again and there’s loads more on zwiftpower, so I may sign up for a month and see how it goes.

Sufferfest has workouts from 20 minutes up to 3 hours. They have various videos with the GCN staff on turbos chatting through. Workouts are quite good, but after the first watch I put on some netflix. Otherwise there are ones with no videos (see below) or the classic race simulation with plot and on bike footage from races all over the world. Even some MTB.

Ability to have a mini player for the workout, so you can watch netflix in the background with the graph and stats (power, heart rate etc) visible over the top.

There’s also yoga and strength workouts too which will work your core and upper body. I’ve found that after a winter of turbo my legs are good, but on the mtb my upper body gives up long before legs are tired!

It’s worth a go for a few weeks and try different videos. Once you’ve done a few do their Full Frontal test to get stats on sprint, 1min, 5min and 20min. Future workouts will be tailored to those numbers. (sprinters will want a much higher sprint power than time trialler, and a sprinter could’t hold the 20min numbers of the TT so it’s all customised to your type).

Also quite new to turbos, had one since November, mostly have used the bundled Elite software to do sub 1hr ERG-mode HIIT workouts, some of which I made myself. Even during lockdown I really struggle to get the thing out more than once a week in addition to an actual real world ride due to kids and WFH limiting time, so haven’t bothered with sufferfest or TR as they seem to be designed around doing 3+ sessions a week.

Tried RGT since lockdown began (currently free) and done a couple of ‘real roads’ rides which involve an animation of the actual road with other riders on it. Really enjoyed the Cap Fermentor one, about the right length, plenty of climbing and quote enjoyed chasing down people up ahead which helped me push myself. They only have about 8 roads though, 2 of which are crit circuits and one of which is Ventoux which is probably just too long time wise. Going to try FulGaz next I think.

Good write up of the main apps here: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/03/cycling-indoor-trainer-app-guide.html/

I stick on a podcast or an episode of whatever I’m into at the mo and 5 mins warm up the steady away and on the 5th min go mad for 1 minute. Repeat until my arse can’t take it anymore or the episode/podcast finishes. Normally 35-40 mins.

Another recommendation for the GCN YouTube workouts.

Unfortunately I’ve only got an ancient, slightly knackered and obviously non smart turbo, and there’s no way I’d use it at all without the those vids. Thing for me is to think of it as a workout, which means structure.

Tried a YouTube created personal playlist today, hmmm! 45 minutes of keeping up with ac/dc, foo fighters, dead daisies, Nazareth, managed it but that’s the hardest I’ve gone so far.
No way on earth I’d have managed that a fortnight ago so I’m a well happy bunny at the moment.
Off for a shower and a wee lie down.

🏆 sounds like your approach is working hotstuff!👍👍