We’ve been getting a ton of questions regarding indoor training lately as it seems a lot of us are moving our training inside due to light/weather/etc., so we took some time to answer audience questions about the topic and give our personal tips for best practices. Hope it’s helpful!
Whatever you guys are paying Jonathan, double it. Knowledgeable, entertaining, relevant, caring, quick thinking, high EQ, clear speaker/thinker, excellent host, “real”/genuine, etc etc etc. Actually, triple it.
Definitely going to pick up a proper fan to add to my indoor setup. I had a noticeable improvement just getting an AC pointed in my direction and probably gimped my training for a few weeks earlier this summer due to neglecting the training environment.
Hi @trainerroad, a lot of people as I’m sure you know, are talking about the benefits of heat training. That the gains may be even greater than those associated with altitude training. With that in mind… what do you think about not using fans when you cycle inside? Or, not opening windows etc to keep temps up. Is this a good or terrible idea? If it’s ok, how often should it be done? On all indoor rides - or better for endurance rides? Or, perhaps harder ones say Vo2 rides? Better for longer or shorter rides? Or perhaps part of the ride in the heat and then fans on for the second half? Better to do block of heat training or just one ride week? Always great to learn from you. Cheers!
The podcast seems to have evolved to a place where it’s more applicable to newer riders that are less experienced with structured training. I really miss the dives (deep or not so deep) into relevant studies.
I know Jonathan is aware of training studies because he mentions them off hand, but we rarely get more than that. The interesting marginal gain stuff is continually downplayed in favor of the same fundamental basics which we already know are important because we have heard it dozens of times. We don’t need a weekly podcast for that.
We used to get fascinating new scientific information and interpretations from Chad, and a weekly podcast should allow for much more of it without losing sight of the basics.
I would argue that we don’t need another podcast regurgitating journal articles, sure, I would like to know if there is a breakthrough in training methods, but certainly don’t want that to be the focus. It goes to show that it’s hard (maybe impossible) to please a large audience .
I would not try and heat acclimate on anything above endurance.
I’ve got a poorly air conditioned office I do my trainer workouts in and the heat and humidity this weekend absolutely killed a threshold workout for me. First set of over Unders felt good, almost easy. Recovery interval my heart rate did not come down like it normally would. 2nd set I couldn’t get my legs to turn after the first over. Body just noped out of it.
Much cooler today and doing VO2max my HR didn’t come close to that lower power threshold workout.
Most of what I’ve seen on heat adaptation is to do it at the end of your ride or at a completely separate time. Shouldn’t incorporate your training intervals into it because it’s just going to sap power from you and you won’t get as good of training.
Everyone is different and respect the opinion of those who enjoy the deep dives. Personally for me, they were kind of long monologues that were hard to follow. If it was a true debate and discussion I think it would be interesting but there wasn’t much discussion.
And on that note, I am missing Nate as well as another co-host. I appreciate hearing other perspectives and (while I still enjoy the podcast) it has become more of an interview. Which is fine… but I miss the “bike talk.” Again, that’s me. I know others are different but I enjoy feeling like you are along for a ride and listening in.
It’s tough to please everybody for sure. If we do deep dives into studies, we get feedback from some people that they don’t like it while others do. Same thing goes for most of the different content types, hehe.
This was the first solo podcast in a long time, but we’ve also delivered 3 podcasts in the past two weeks with 3 more coming in the next two weeks, so we hope there’s something for everybody.
This is great advice. @AndyMac Current research suggests that it’s possible to get heat adaptations doing any sort of training in hot conditions, but the opportunity cost has to be considered. It’s tempting to try to accomplish multiple goals with a single training modality, and while that certainly happens at various scales, sufficient levels of heat to induce heat adaptations have such profound detrimental impacts on performance potential that it just isn’t a good match with any sort of training that is intentionally high intensity, and even mid intensity.
Personally speaking, I find I do less damage to my training while also accomplishing heat adaptation when I do sauna sessions immediately following training on non-rest days. That doesn’t conflict with training and doesn’t make a rest day unintentionally hard.
In my opinion, @Jonathan and Nate (and Chad) have done a much better job covering studies in the past than other podcasts are doing now. Some of the other training related podcasts are borderline unlistenable for me after years of the TR podcast.
“indoor training might be even more fun than riding outside” said no one ever. WAIT… some great tips and suggestion to get your indoor training setup dialed, but please don’t say that training indoors are more enjoyable than training outside because you have netflix or zwift.
https://trainerroad.cc/trzwiftclub
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