Having spent 7 of the last 8 winters on indoor trainers along with a large number of coaching clients, I’d face the same dilemma every year when the weather improved – do I shift my training outdoors or do I maintain my indoor consistency and regimen?
And while it’s been said that he who has choice has torment, I was previously spared this grief as my decision was made for me since indoor, power-based coaching wasn’t only my training method but my profession and primary source of income. And so I watched, as season after season the same pattern emerged in those riders who maintained their indoor training once, twice, even three times weekly as compared to those who chose to do their intervals outdoors.
Telltale Signs
The first indication of deteriorating fitness was visible in the halfhearted “confidence” I’d recognize when talking to my winter warriors prior to outdoor training races or weekend rides. I’d ask them how their training was going, and while I suspect the occasional rider would baldly lie to me in fear of incurring my gentle ridicule – yet knowing this lie would soon be evident not long after the race or ride commenced and a very public light shone down upon his waning fitness – most would only shrug and offer the same, “Well, I’ve kinda just been riding” reply that became plainly evident when the disappointing indications of performance decline were on full display over the course of the ride or race.
Harder still was watching as these riders along with their fitness declines were left behind as many other riders left them and their winter peak fitness literally in their dust, never to see them again unless they had the misfortune of getting lapped during a criterium or circuit-style ride.
Is This You?
Is this true for every rider who decides to shift her training outdoors? Definitely not. Plenty of them understand what it takes to stay sharp, and better still, continue to build their fitness toward properly timed peaks. These riders, however, are in the minority and many of them have hired personal coaches. So this is not as much a recommendation to continue training indoors as a sincere bit of advice encouraging all riders who gutted out some brutal, consistent, & structured indoor workouts: Honestly assess how much discipline your potential training independence requires and determine if you alone are capable of such self-control. Put another way, can you keep yourself on track? Do you have the motivation, the training knowledge, the support system?
For most riders, the answers to these questions are moot because indoor training severely pales in comparison to the outdoor experience we long for during stretches of often harsh, occasionally unbearable and almost always demotivating weather.
So who can blame any rider for ditching their indoor suffering for the promise of those first few rides in shorts & jerseys minus the layers of clothing necessary only weeks earlier? Who can be fairly criticized for wanting to reap the rewards of all their indoor contrition? Not me, but I’m here to tell you that a balance between outdoor enjoyment and indoor training can be struck.
Indoor vs Outdoor: Quality Sessions
Consider the quality of intervals done on a trainer with very specific wattage targets displayed before you, with instant feedback in the form of as many metrics as your hypoxic brain can make sense of, without the distraction of all things outdoor riding includes, e.g. varied wind conditions, cars, stoplights, ever-changing road surfaces, etc. And while I do recognize that eventually your fitness will have to be transitioned to the outdoors where it will be applied during races, events, and group rides, I’m still hard pressed to acknowledge that outdoor intervals are as productive as those done indoors.
So why not maintain your interval schedule indoors thus ensuring 2-3 high quality workouts each week? Many riders even swap a mid-week training race for an interval session and further reduce their indoor sessions to just 1-2 per week with a high level of training adaptation and improved fitness over the course of the competitive season.
Performance Upkeep
Once that fitness (capacity) is built, it’s only a matter of maintaining or sharpening (power work) your fitness while applying your hard-fought gains to your events. Often the most highly dedicated, successful and performance-driven riders will work out indoors a couple times each week, if not more, throughout the entire year except perhaps during their transition periods. So why not you?
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Good article,
It’s my first off-season with Trainerroad and in a month or so starts my peek period, but I can honestly say that I’ll continue focusing on the stationary trainer as the main resource of fitness. You can’t beat the specific power goals with Trainerroad, especially for those of us living in cites who have to cope with stop signs.
There’s also the factor of a controlled environment and the ability to test power output with the same repeatable situation, you just can’t do that outside.
Off topic: I see in the pic that the riders are competing using virtual power, I know this is one of the goals for the dev team, how far are we from having this implemented?
Cheers
I fully agree, John. And you bring up a good point that I forgot to mention, and that’s the minimized time requirement, especially for those riders how have to ride just to get to the actual ride.
OT: We actually swapped that pic out because it could be a bit misleading. We have the intention of offering a multirider solution this Fall, if all goes as planned, but no firm date as of yet.
Fantastic Chad, thank you. I recognized the the pic as another well known piece of software, no worries there. The multirider solution is something that the original group that completed the “Tour of Sufferlandria” is looking forward to. Keep up the great work.
I figured out about 3 years ago that outdoor intervals were not working for me given where I live. So I started trainer rides during the week and longer outdoor on weekend. My fitness for riding really improved and already feel with 4 months of Trainer Road this winter, I am far ahead of where I was.
Here’s the hint to more enjoyable trainer riding in nice weather,…. I put mine in my backyard and if really hot put a fan outside, but for the most part I ride first thing, so it is really nice to get fresh air, see the sun rise or ride with the light of day as summer progresses and still get in a good quality workout without cars. I just put my computer on a chair and away I go!
Excellent tip, Elise. Anything that limits or removes the potential monotony of stationary riding gets my vote!
Good stuff Chad. Looking back with the benefit of a lot of hindsight, I think you are right, at least in a way. The benefit of trainer riding for most of us is the high ratio of TSS:time. That is, we can pack a lot of work into the smallest time period. So one challenge of the transition to outdoor work is recognizing that it may take longer to get the same workout.
The point you don’t hit on is “what to do, then?” I find that outdoor rides are PERFECT for shorter work… say the 5 min vo2max or 1min all out intervals. Those are way more fun riding a hilly course than they are watching a timer count down on the screen. With outdoor rides supplementing the intensity, IMHO, it’s endurance (L3/L4/SST) that suffers. That stuff also has great bang for the buck for burning calories and for those of us who are used to it, those sorts of steady state workouts aren’t really all that hard on the trainer.
Of course that kind of work can be had outdoors, but doing an hour climb at tempo, nonstop, usually takes a lot longer than an hour (ride to climb, climb, descend, ride home from climb). See my point #1.
Hope all is well and that we’ll actually see one another riding bicycles one of these days!
Hey Shawn, great to hear from you!
Agreed. Much it it comes around to who can make themselves do the work without the feedback & guidance we try to provide in the absence of a power meter. So while this post is targeted at anyone who trains indoors, it was a response to a subscriber’s specific question that evolved into a more general response regarding workout quality.
And I’m sure I’ll see you out at there at some point over the summer!
is it just me or does his frame look small? I’m 5’6″ and on a 53… I feel stretched out.
Thanks for the article, great stuff as always.
I was recently thinking about this and wondered how many other TR users stick with it during the warmer months. I am also on the tail end of my first winter using TR 3-5 times a week riding almost exclusively SufferFest videos(the cure for monotony!).Although I must admit this winter of TR has done terrible things for my preexisting metrics addiction.
For the previous two winters I had attended spin classes at the gym, and never made any real advancement. TR also works well for those of us who keep weird hours and don’t live in workout cycling friendly areas.
I cannot wait to set my bike up in the yard and ride outside-light. Awesome suggestion 🙂
Yet ANOTHER good point I didn’t mention: TR/indoor training accommodates all hours, no matter how “weird”. Thanks for chiming in Steve!
Chad – I just emailed you guys on this topic. So my dilemma is that I seem to be able to produce much more power outside. I am relatively new to cycling and have been using TR since Jan to prepare for an event in two weeks. I finally took my power meter outside last weekend and was able to break every avg pwr for a given time period that I had ever set in TR (by 10 – 20%). With that logic, I’m feeling like I am getting a better workout outside than inside. Am I wrong?
Hey Trevor,
There’s probably aways going to be a discrepancy between indoor vs outdoor watts, much of which I attribute to cooling but motivation certainly factors in too. Because of this, I’ve tried using an indoor AND an outdoor FTP.
My discrepancy is only on the order of 4-5%, but some riders see larger margins in which case having 2 different FTP’s becomes more important. But this is a pain when it comes to plotting/analyzing data in a third party application when you basically have 2 profiles. Ideally, you’d minimize this margin such that you don’t need 2 different FTP’s.
Regardless of being inside or outside, we’re seeking a closely-matched physiological strain and associated adaptation, so I’m concerned that something is limiting you with your indoor performance. 10-20% is a pretty massive margin and I wonder if your cooling system is adequate. Riding in a too-warm room can be tremendously limiting (or specific, depending on your target events) and can keep you from reaching your power output goals due to nothing more than overheating.
If you consider the cooling nature of an outdoor ride on even a low-to-no wind day, it’s probably more than you realize. I’m guessing you’re using a fan, but if not, definitely use one. If you’re already using one, turn it up, change the angle, experiment until you feel like it’s doing an adequate job. Lowering the room’s ambient temperature is an idea too, but I’m not too fond of training in a cold room because the recoveries can be miserable when your sweat cools.
In either case, try to minimize the difference between your 2 training environments lest you’ll end up changing the nature of your workouts.
Thanks, Chad. My trainer is setup in my basement where temps are usually in the high 50s on winter mornings. I have a fan down there, but I often don’t turn it on because I’m cold first thing in the morning.
I suspect temp, motivation and trainer inertia (or lack thereof) all play a role. I’m planning two more indoor trainer rides this week after a pair of outdoor weekend rides. I may dial my TR FTP up a few watts and see how it goes.
Thanks, as always, for the detailed responses!
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No offense Chad, but you kind of have to write this article this way don’t you? If we all go outside to do our intervals when the weather gets nice TR loses money.
I definitely could see a side for short course athletes that do shorter, much harder intervals, but I would argue for someone like myself who races only 70.3’s that training in the environment that you race is much more beneficial. For instance, half distance racers should work on and master pacing to have their best race which means learning how to hold say 250 watts on their own for 120+ minutes. There are certainly challenges outside that don’t exist inside, but a bigger challenge for me personally is the transition from a 30 minute sweet spot interval inside at 270 watts that I can hit with some suffering on a consistent basis to holding that same interval outside. If I don’t learn how to hold that 270 outside then the indoor training is really just a numbers game as I don’t race on my trainer. Over the course of 30 minutes I go up and down and side to side all while teaching my body how to maintain speed and balance and big wattages. I know I can hit 270 for 30 minutes as I’ve done it indoors, but teaching my body to do it with other variables is much more valuable.
I say this as a huge TR fan as it helps me get through the Pittsburgh winters extremely well and I use it when the weather turns to rain or dark all year long. TR has helped me tremendously! A better part of this article or a separate article would be to explain the best ways to try and achieve certain intervals outside instead of saying its not best and just stay indoors.
All the best,
Mark