Incorporating drills into your indoor workouts is a great way to reinforce good habits and experiment with new techniques. It’s also easy to do. You can add these eight drills to your indoor workouts to enhance your time spent in the saddle and target the efficiency of your pedal stroke.
Drills for Efficiency and Strength
If you want to improve the efficiency of your pedal stroke, hone in on the details of your form, and break up the monotony of your intervals, on-the-bike drills are the perfect addition to your scheduled workout. Drills are on-bike exercises that use repetition and form to target skills. Regularly incorporating drills into your training can help you improve strength, efficiency, and even power. As a bonus, they’re easy to add and beneficial to athletes of all abilities. To get started, here are eight drills you can add to your indoor workouts to target efficiency and strength.
Indoor Training
Make the most of your hard work with an optimized indoor training experience.
Check Out TrainerRoad1. Pistons
A pedal stroke may feel like one complete motion but it’s actually a combination of two opposing muscle actions and four parts. In a full pedal stroke, your foot moves up, forward, down, and then backward. How well you maintain tension in your drivetrain as you move your foot from one quadrant of this motion to the next determines how efficient your pedal stroke is.
Pistons target the efficiency of the downward motion in the pedal stroke by addressing the position of your knees. Any lateral movement in your knees as you push down on the pedals is hard on your joints and is inefficient.
To practice pistons, focus on the position of your knees as you pedal. Your knees should move directly up and directly down as you pedal — much like pistons do. When you do this drill, focus on minimizing any lateral movement in your knees. Try this drill in 30-60 second intervals, focusing on one knee per interval.
2. Kick & Pulls
The top and bottom of your pedal stroke are the toughest points to maintain tension in your drivetrain. Kick and pulls reinforce your ability to maintain tension through the weakest points in your pedal stroke.
To kick and pull, lightly kick your toes into the fronts of your shoes as your knee approaches the top of your pedal stroke. As you move through the pedal stroke and your foot approaches the very bottom of the circle, lightly pull your heels into the backs of your shoes. To complete this drill focus on the kicking motion for 30-60 seconds, and then the pulling motion for an additional 30-60 seconds. When you feel good about both motions combine them for an additional 30-60 second interval.
3. Isolated Leg Training (ILT)
Isolated leg training (ILT) is another drill designed to help you balance out your pedal stroke and pedal more efficiently. Instead of focusing on the top and bottom of each pedal stroke though, this drill has you hone in on each individual leg.
To perform ILT drills start by unclipping one foot. You can prop your foot up on a chair or leave it hovering away from your pedal. With the opposite foot still clipped in, start pushing the pedal. Begin with a low cadence and focus on maintaining consistent tension through your pedal stroke. Don’t worry about power during this drill — your power will naturally be low without the help of your other leg. You may notice a dead spot in your pedal stroke; if this happens use the kick and pull technique to maintain tension throughout. As you progress with these drills and improve you’ll be able to practice pushing higher cadences.
4. Single Leg Focus (SLF)
Single leg focus drills are another way to addresses your technique in each leg. In these drills, focus all of your attention to one leg’s motion through the bottom of the pedal stroke, the upstroke, and then over the top. Try and lightly pull your foot across the bottom of your pedal stroke as you lift your knee upward. Follow it by softly kicking your foot over the top.
Your cadence may falter during this drill and that’s okay, as the goal is to focus on the details of your pedal stroke rather than speed. Do this drill in 90 second intervals, alternating between your left and right leg. If you notice a large discrepancy in ability between legs, feel free to spend additional time on your “weaker” leg.
5. Speed Endurance Intervals
Speed endurance intervals are a drill designed to help improve your efficiency pedaling at different cadences. If you can turn the pedals with less strain on your muscles, it broadens your ability to stay in the aerobic energy zone and conserve energy.
To complete a speed endurance interval you’ll maintain the same power target prescribed in your workout while riding at an RPM higher than the cadence you’re most comfortable riding at. This is typically 3-5 rpm above your usual cadence. If you don’t have a cadence sensor, you can do this drill by feel. Intervals should be at least five minutes long.
6. Force Intervals
Force intervals are intended to help you generate power at a low cadence. To complete this drill, find a gear that still allows you to hit your target power while spinning a cadence between 50 and 60 rpm. When you’re doing this drill focus on the top and bottom of your pedal stroke by kicking over the top and pressing your foot downwards. If you have any pain or issues with your knees, feel free to skip this drill altogether.
7. Form Sprints
Form sprints are a sprint simulation completed at low power with a high cadence. To complete a form sprint, wait until you’re in an interval with a low target power output. When you’re ready to start the interval exit the saddle in an easier gear and quickly wind up. This drill is all about leg speed, form and technique, so focus on winding up quickly while maintaining good form. These drills should only be about ten seconds long.
The transition from seated to standing is an opportunity for energy, power, and momentum to be lost or gained. Focus on the mechanics of moving in and out of the saddle smoothly as you move through these drills.
8. Strength Sprints
Strength sprints are another standing sprint drill designed to help you turn over a big gear and quickly recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. You’ll begin these drills at a near stop. Your goal is to pedal as gracefully as possible from this near stop in twelve pedal strokes, without exceeding 90 rpm.
This drill may emphasize strength, but its main focus is still proper form. Focus on maintaining the form that you’ve been practicing in your other form drills. As you stand up to pedal, hold onto your handlebars and drive each foot as hard as you can without compromising technique.
When to Add Drills
The nature of indoor workouts makes them the perfect place for adding drills. There are very few distractions from the mechanics of your pedaling, and you can narrow your attention to the smallest details of your body position. It’s also a low-risk environment, perfect for making mistakes and experimenting with new techniques.
Not every indoor workout is perfect for every drill. Drills are generally easier to add to low-intensity workouts and base training. With that said, they can still have a place in other workouts and the rest of your season. When you do add them to more dynamic workouts try to choose drills that compliment the intervals in your scheduled workout. For example, form and strength sprints can be a great addition to a VO2 max workout, and single leg focus drills are perfect for endurance rides with steady state intervals or resting intervals in between. On the other hand, adding strength sprints to a recovery ride may interfere with your recovery, and single leg focus drills will probably prevent you from hitting your power target during a threshold workout.
How to Add Drills
Prioritize quality over quantity when you add drills to your workouts. Doing drills in a fatigued or rushed state risks reinforcing bad habits instead of good ones. Add drills when you have the mental bandwidth to take on another task, and the focus to reinforce good technique. If you feel yourself losing focus or struggling to maintain good form, switch to an easier drill or resume pedaling normally. It’s better to complete a fraction of the drill at the highest quality than the whole drill at a lower quality.
When you first start doing drills, try and give each drill a shot. Over time you’ll see that some drills are more beneficial than others and that your own individual strengths and weaknesses call for more focus in certain areas. Feel free to tailor your drills to your own individual needs.
Additional Drill Tips
- Turn on the workout text in your TrainerRoad workouts. Lots of TrainerRoad workouts already have drills incorporated into the workout through the workout text.
- If you’re using a smart trainer and you have it in Erg mode, you may want to turn it to resistance mode for drills work that impacts cadence and power. Drills like ISL drills and force intervals can be challenging to do in ERG mode.
- Write the drill down on a note and put it somewhere you can see during your workout. When you first start incorporating drills into your workout it can be tricky to remember them all.
Share this Post
Does Trainerroad have a video showing a rider on a Kickr doing a form sprint? I find it almost impossible to spin with low resistance out of the saddle. Also, it’s very unrealistic because the bike is fixed whereas IRL when you sprint, the bike is being swung from side to side. So I would actually like to see someone do this. I cannot find any videos on You Tube much less on Trainerroad. All the talk on theory is well and good, but the talkers have to walk the walk (or ride the ride) once in a while. Otherwise it’s just a lot of hot air. IRL when sprinting, there is significant resistance on the pedals, so IDK what form sprints are supposed to prove. I frankly see them as useless since the “snap” a rider wants to develop is never done standing, and high cadences, except for sprints, are typically done in the saddle. When standing, you need more resistance than when seated, and ERG mode does not provide the needed resistance when you jump out of the saddle to do a form sprint.
Try this: with the bike on a trainer, take the chain OFF, then try standing and spinning at a very high cadence with virtually no resistance in the cranks. It’s almost impossible, and I don’t see that it as a valid “training” method. That’s what I’m getting when I try to do a “form sprint” with TR on my Wahoo Kickr 5. What am I missing? Is my Kickr defective?
Hi Henri,
Thank you for the feedback! I’ve passed your comment along to the team and we have a few answers / potential solutions.
We don’t currently have any videos demonstrating how to do these drills on a smart trainer but agree that a video would be a really helpful addition to these instruction. We will plan on creating some videos to go along with these drills in the near future.
As for the drill itself, the primary goal of form sprints isn’t to practice the cadence of a standing sprint, but is intended to target your controlled leg speed. At a low resistance level controlling leg speed is more of a challenge than it is with resistance, which allows you to focus entirely on the form of your sprint. Here is an excerpt from the workout text in Pettit written by Coach Chad for more details on the intention of this drill:
“We’ll briefly break down exactly what a form sprint is. One of the best, time-tested ways to improve efficiency is through speed work. More specifically, CONTROLLED speed work. In order to build fluid, efficient speed, control has to come first. And it’s much safer to build control when the resistance is low.
So form sprints utilize a light power requirement in hopes of allowing you to focus on controlled speed instead of high power output. Accordingly, you’ll use a very light gear for each sprint unless you’re on an electronic trainer in Erg mode. In that case, no shifting necessary. The trick is to jump up, out of the saddle and wind up a ton of CONTROLLED leg speed very quickly. As you reach your highest, controllable peak, you’ll gracefully transition back into the saddle, and finish out the 10-seconds with no slip in leg speed.”
While this drill can be performed in ERG mode switching your trainer into resistance mode can make it easier to incrementally progress your form sprint. That way if the resistance level is too low for you to productively work on this drill you can add a few gears and find a resistance that does allow you to target leg speed.
Thanks again for the feedback Henri, I hope this information helps. If you have any other questions or suggestions please let me know.