My experience is that indoor riding is a great alternative when you can’t get outside, but structure outdoors is far superior to structure only indoors.
In my case in Arizona, most of the year I have been outside for 90% of my rides, but the recent heat has made me switch to the trainer for all but one ride a week pretty much. I have executed my indoor rides pretty well and they are great for sweet spot, Vo2, threshold and endurance (albeit with a 5% lower FTP). However, when I only do the indoor rides and then go out into a group ride I find I am seriously lacking any snap and repeatability when it comes to top end efforts over Vo2. I also find that my overall fitness is a little lower as its harder to get the volume indoors that I was getting outdoors. I am doing 1 h 30 minute workouts, and to be honest its as much as I can take for the boredom factor.
I am sure there are more targeted workouts I could do inside to maintain the top end, but the trainer is really not designed for out of the saddle efforts / sprints etc and I don’t trust it won’t do damage to my dropouts to be honest. Would be interested in hearing what riders who target crits / more explosive races do when they can only train indoors?
Which just goes to show there is nothing inherently wrong with indoor training / ERG mode. Some people just find it easier to produce power in one situation or the other. No different than people able to hold a higher power on a climb compared to flats, or vice versa.
I train indoors and ride outside. Sounds daft I know. Mentally differentiating the two has really helped me both physically and mentally.
Maybe I’m using ERG all wrong (I kinda know that I am in some instances…) but I’ve only found it to be beneficial. I like to let my cadence drop, start the ‘Spiral of Death’ and then have to muscle my way out of it. It’s like hitting the bottom of a punchy climb in the wrong gear. I also drop my cadence before the start of short 30/30 VO2 intervals. This really has helped me with muscle activation.
My apologies if anyone has already mentioned this…this thread was just too much for me to read through entirely. This is a very fluffy response.
My personal feeling/experience is that indoor and outdoor riding are just different. Not a LOT different, but enough to explain the difference you are seeing. If you do something you love as much as we on this forum do (presumably), we become very attuned to even small differences/changes. Things that can’t necessarily be measured (yet).
The grade of hills affect your weight distribution and thus the engagement of muscles, the momentum you feel from your wheels affects your acceleration and cadence, swaying the biking, pulling up on the handlebars, feeling the wind direction change…all these things are just different indoor vs outdoor and they affect the way your muscles are engaged, your technique, and ultimately the way you feel…which I think we’d all agree has a very direct impact on how you perform on any given day.
Despite all the technology we have and progress we’ve made I still think there is a special magic in our bodies and brains that crave the right mixture of familiarity, routine, and excitement.
Bottom line, if you want to do better outdoors, ride more outdoors. Better yet, find a friendly group of folks that are better than you at it and ride outdoors with them once a week. They will challenge you, teach you some good tricks for different terrain, and keep you engaged.
After re-scanning some of the other content I have some additional (more scientific) advice for the many folks who commented that their increased power/FTP is not making them faster outside…
Keep in mind that wind resistance is exponential.
So, the faster you are going, the more power you have to put out to go just a bit faster.
For example if you’re going 10km/hr, an extra 10W will make a big difference to your speed (on flat ground). When you’re going over 30km/hr an extra 10W will barely be measurable to your speed.
I don’t share the opinion expressed by several that the solution is do your interval session outside. By that I don’t mean never train outdoors.
You need a specific training plan to help improve your specific goals. A Plan is periodised over several blocks, with each block delivering different ingredients. It isn’t until the end of the plan that you have that and can start to expect to see performance improvements for your specific goal.
If improving your FTP was your goal, well it seems you achieved it. But if that wasn’t your goal, what was it, and did you create a plan to achieve it. It seems you are only part of the way?
Unlike others here, I climb better outdoors after I have done blocks of indoor workouts. Provided your FTP is set properly in TR, then I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t be able to climb better outdoors. Here are a few things to consider:
Gear? - What gear are you in on the trainer? Inertia is real. Also are you using the same bike?
Cadence - Related to gear. Small gear on the trainer will remove alot of the inertia from your pedalling so you will be applying torque for more of your pedal stroke which will be likely the same as your 15 minute climb. So if you are pedalling using a high gear on the trainer, the sensation will be different.
Body - Your hip angle will close up on a climb. How are you on the trainer? Sitting up on the tops?
Power - Are you doing the same power on the trainer as your are on this climb? Is it a constant gradient?
Conditions - Do you have 6 lasko fans plus airconditioning set to 11 degree Celsius in your trainer environment?
This bothered me for awhile too and still baffles me. I can’t see how training inside would be beneficial in that case if you can push 25 more watts outside. Maybe aerobically it’s creating similar adaptations, but muscularly it can’t be.
Personally, I found with enough cooling, and using power meters that were accurate/consistent my inside/outside FTP/RPE weren’t as far off as I once thought.
Cycling is an aerobic sport….so if it is benefitting you aerobically, you are getting fitter.
If you can train exclusively outside, and feel that indoor training will not benefit you based on the numbers, then absolutely just train outside.
For me, indoor training is vital to my annual training because I live in Chicago and the weather sucks for 6 mos of the year. But it also gives me the structure I need to address weaknesses (primarily VO2 max for me).
I don’t worry too much about my numbers inside vs outside. My metric outside is how well I am doing on group rides, etc. I know that if my numbers are improving inside, I am getting faster outside. The gains inside translate outside regardless of the numbers.
