Guest Author - Michael Connolly

Training Indoors

Fall has come and gone, we’ve opened all of our presents from Santa and drank perhaps a bit too much for the New Year, all the while the spring riding season was fast approaching. One of my riding buds just sent me a note that our first organized ride was in 84 days! 84 days and counting until I get my butt kicked. So I know that I need to ramp up my indoor training efforts so I can be ready for the spring riding season.

I think for most of us who love to cycle, we haven’t always spent time riding or working out during the off season. Cycling, being a warm weather activity, for most of us starts in Apri/May and ends in September/October. I followed this same pattern until I started racing.

What happens when you stop riding is that your base fitness that you have worked hard for all summer long begins to diminish and within a couple of weeks your fitness is down to 70% of your peak levels. Keep this up and you will be back to your original fitness level that you started with at the beginning of the cycling season. Add the additional year of age (or excess weight) and over time you will find it increasingly hard to start off with even your most basic fitness levels come spring.

Adding indoor training to your work out regiment is one way to keep the cycling muscles where you want them. Riding indoors doesn’t have to be a lonely, gruesome, painful experience. However it does require some creativity and focus on your part.

First priority: Pick a time that works for your schedule and stick with it, you are more likely ride consistently if you have a time set aside in your schedule.

Another aspect about cycling on a trainer is that even though you might like to ride by yourself, riding indoors on a trainer for 30-60 minutes seems like an 8 hour ride into the wind and it’s raining. This is where some creativity is needed.

I’ve found that riding to cycling videos of prior races is more than a motivator to me and since most of the tapes are between 60 and 90 minutes I can get a good workout and feel like I was a part of something. However if racing isn’t your thing then perhaps:

1. Adding friends to your indoor workouts is also a great way to have some fun and keep things interesting and honest. Have some contests highest rpm, highest heart rate, etc….
2. If music is your thing then add this to the background, whatever works, although I would recommend something with more of a beat and drive to it. Match your efforts to the sounds you are hearing.
3. TV? Perhaps, I had one friend who watched the Jerry Springer show during his workouts, raising his efforts during the inevitable fights that broke out.

Remember the goal is to maintain your fitness, if you can improve it even better. Also consider joining a fitness center during the winter months to augment your cycling efforts with weight-training. Focus on higher rep lower weight workouts as these will build your endurance and strength, you’re not looking for buff on a bike, buff is weight, and weight is bad.

There are basically two different types of trainers on the market: Stationary and Rollers

1. Stationary Trainers – These have evolved over the years from selective resistance units where you dial up your pain threshold (come on how many of us are really willing want to hurt ourselves?) to fluid resistive units that dynamically increase resistance based upon your effort and gearing selection.

I’ve used both; my first trainer was a bike mount/dial up which required that I take off my front wheel and mount the bike on the trainer. These are not as prevalent as much and I would caution getting one as it puts to much stress on your front fork and headset.

The more popular trainers today require that you simply lock in your back wheel to the training unit and then release the resistive device so that it comes in contact with your wheel. Add a riser for your front wheel and you are good to go. These types more accurately depict a more life like riding experience (without the headwind of course).

Performance and Kreitler are the two names that I recommend and have experience with.

2. Rollers – When you make the move to rollers you know you have arrived as a cyclist. Other cyclists will speak in hushed tones of reverence. Why? Because Rollers are scary.

Rollers require balance, skill and just a least bit of bravery. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to walk a tight rope, rollers come close.

Rollers help take your riding to the next level and smooth out your entire pedal stroke. A smoother pedaling stroke means more of two things:

1. Speed
2. Endurance

To start off your riding experience with rollers I recommend having someone who has already had some experience help you. However don’t be intimidated if you are going to go this alone.

Here’s what you need to do in order to ‘get comfortable’ on rollers:

1. Place your bike either between a door or next to a wall, which side depends on which hand you use to get water. If you use your right hand to get water then your body is already used to riding with one hand on the bike. This is important, because if you feel like you are going to fall you are going to naturally raise up the hand that your body is already accustomed to. The movements will be just like you getting water, except you will be thinking about falling not drinking (you may be thinking about drinking, but that’s another story), put your hand on the wall to balance yourself and then keep pedaling until you feel like letting go of the wall. The first time I rode rollers I had my hand on the basement support beam for almost an hour before I finally let go and rode solo.
2. Use a kitchen chair to stand on in order to mount your bike; although the rollers are only about 4” higher than the ground, it is somewhat difficult to mount your bike from the floor. Note: Make sure you have your bike in a somewhat bigger gear to start off your riding, since there is no resistance you will quickly spin out and need a bigger gear. Also you will feel more comfortable if you keep you cadence higher, in the 85rpm and up range.
3. Make sure the back of the chair is closest to your handle bars as you will use this as your balance to start with.
4. Mount the bike while continuing to hold onto the chair.
5. While holding onto the chair or wall start pedaling.
6. Get your cadence up to 85rpm or higher.
7. Keep spinning, feel the bike move on the rollers, let your body relax. The rollers are going to seem very narrow, look UP not down, just like you would when you are riding. Note – when the bike starts to move from side to side (which is normal for all riding), you will feel like the bike is moving feet rather than inches. DO NOT OVERCOMPENSATE YOUR BIKE MOVEMENTS OR YOU WILL FIND THE FLOOR QUICKLY. DO NOT STEAR THE BIKE OR YOU WILL FIND THE FLOOR.
8. Move your hand from the chair/wall and onto your handlebar and RELAX.
9. At this point you are solely focused on not falling off. RELAX. Start to focus on your pedaling cadence. You will quickly find that the reason you feel like you are wobbling is that your pedaling cadence is not smooth. Your bike will move side to side as your weight shifts from side to side. Focus on smoothing out your efforts; this will keep the bike straight.


When riding most of us don’t realize that we don’t apply pressure evenly throughout our entire pedaling stroke. Instead, we apply more pressure from our quads to drive the bike forward. If this is the case, once you are on the rollers you will feel the bike move from side to side because the majority of your cycling power is coming from your quads.

Start to focus on each leg separately and then try to even your pedal stroke so that the lower leg muscles are pulling back from the opposite side from where you are pushing down. Once you have mastered this you will have additional power on the bike and your experience on the rollers won’t seem so scary.

However always be attentive while on your rollers, even the best of us have fallen off and a broken collar bone is not uncommon. However even with some of the risks I think rollers are great way to add to your indoor cycling routine. And for about $130 you can get something that works price wise as well. Performance and Kreitler are the two rollers I have ridden and recommend.

Overall if you incorporate both types of trainers in to your work out you can think of the stationary trainer as your strength unit and your rollers as your speed unit