Indoor Training on Rollers ?s

Equipment
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when I’m forced indoors, I get sooooo bored I can’t take it. I feel like someone on a flight to the other side of the world stuck in the middle seat. I load up fantastic movies and still my brain just needs to stop after like 20 min.

outside I never listen to podcasts or music and I always ride alone. I can just enjoy silence, wild life, dodging cars and potholes, hitting my numbers on my garmin, smoothing my pedaling, and watch the world pass me. love it.

I have great outdoor clothing so I’m ok if it’s not icy…but there are some times just in general in life where it’s much easier to bang out an indoor session.

I know most of us prefer outdoors…wondering if anyone who REALLY hated indoors found a way to enjoy more and what they did?

Current setup: e-motion rollers (the dumb version), good fans, an ipad. really good setup.

are smart rollers worth the upgrade? I don’t really see a difference if I can just shift gears?

I was considering doing an artificial course (zwift?) where I have scenery - this sounds stupid but I’m afraid I’ll “turn” on my rollers and fall. is that a thing? also wonder if i’ll think it’s neat for 40 seconds and go back to being bored.

ty for any tips

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IIRC @Jonathan has said on the podcast that he trains on rollers. Ive not got the skill to, especially for sharp sprinty stuff, but I would spend hours on them pre and in lockdown on more stable state stuff. When I changed to resistance rollers it was certainly more engaging but that would be with artificial course (RGT which was better/ cheaper than Zwift but is no more). I wouldn’t be confident to spend more than 1 minute on them now.

Edit: There’s been a few threads on the topic of rollers for training, a quick search brings up this one, which might be of use:

Switching to rollers - and why you should try too - Training - TrainerRoad

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You specifically asked if anyone who really hated indoors found a way to make it work… I am one of those people.

The biggest factor I found that helped me get past the dread was building a very inviting and welcoming space full of entertainment with minimal barriers to just get on the bike and ride. Mind you, I train in an unfinished, 100+ year old basement and I’ve been able to accomplish this.

How I built an inviting space: fans (controlled via my phone), two TVs (one for Zwift, the other for entertainment), cycling desk, shelf on my drive side, gym floor mats, towels, full surround sonos system, and organized storage for my gear nearby.

I also cannot watch shows and movies as a distraction. I don’t end up enjoying the show/movie, and it doesn’t help me pass the time. I found that watching cycling races (CX, MTB, road, criteriums, gopro footage) are the best way to pass the time. If I am doing hard intervals, I will also listen to music (metal or EDM) with the race on the tv. Airpods are great to use because I can either connect them to my Apple TV OR connect them to the music via my phone while the race is on the TV.

I have also found the Zwift gamification super motivating to go longer on the trainer. I consciously try to earn XP, drops, bike upgrades, challenges, and route badges.

Lastly, I have to build up my tolerance to longer sessions on the trainer. Even if I take a 3 month break from the trainer to ride outside, I can’t just jump on it and knock out a 90 minute workout. I’ll do 20 mins, then 25, then 35, then 45, then an hour progressively across 1-3 weeks to get used to it again. After that, I am much more comfortable with 90-120 minute rides.

I hope this helps. I really did despise the trainer and now I actually enjoy it. I even find myself looking forward to it. :rofl:

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i only used to use rollers inside for many years…was pretty good on them, never had an issue of riding off them and falling. and then i tried zwift and indeed I did slightly leaninto some turns and almost crashed numerous times on the first few rides. So i switched to a smart trainer and a wobble board…its much better. The smart trainer certainly makes it more enjoyable and the wobble board makes it feel a bit more like outside

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yes thank you. you’re def onto something here. I had forgotten in winter 2023 I got up to two hours per ride indoors…looking back I see I worked up to that gradually.

last night I did 45 min and today I did 60 and it was quite a bit more tolerable.

I think next year I’m gonna try to do at least one hour per week indoors just to retain my tolerance.

your basement sounds like fun! wish we were neighbors.

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sheesh! ty I was a little scared of that. i’ll ask around and see if I can hop on a smart trainer somewhere to give it a shot. tyty

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Never had an issue of leaning into turns on zwift, but found zwift on rollers totally uninspiring. Because zwift can’t control the rollers (unless you have smart ones), the resistance doesn’t change with the profile, and as a result, it just looks like your avatar starts crawling at slow speed randomly. It didn’t feel engaging at all to me, just more hassle.

You can try zwift for free I think, so could just give it a go to see if you like it.

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That’s my fear now, but I never had a problem when I was practiced on them and lots of folk manage them fine.

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just riding on swift was fine, but I found that when I raced, sometime I would drift to the edge of the roller. It really wasn’t worth potentially crashing to me. Plus, as someone else mentioned, the chang in resistance is what really makes zwift more fun.

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I use kreitler rollers and zwift. There are some courses on zwift I won’t do, like the downtown makuri islands one. Way too many turns in quick succession. If there’s too much going on in the screen, sometimes I just look away.

99.999% of the time, I have no problems using zwift and dumb rollers and can turn off my brain’s steering portion

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I used to watch car racing while on the rollers. I would find myself turning, but it’s easy to train the brain not to.

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I alternate between rollers and trainer indoors. I confess that I did once “turn” off the rollers and crash while watching a race video (A Sunday in Hell - there was a crash on the road and I tried to steer around it), but haven’t since. It might be tougher to “turn off” steering in your head on Zwift than watching a movie or race.

Given that you have rollers now, why not load up a zwift workout and give it a shot. Assuming your rollers have some sort of resistance, you should be able to generate something close to threshhold before you spin out, and you’d at least know whether you can get the benefits of the workout while enjoying the benefits of rollers.

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On this topic and it depends on the size of the roller drum, the resistance you get from the rollers can be modulated largely by tire psi. It took me a while to realize this

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I’ve been on e-motion rollers for 15+ years and switched to the smart rollers when they came out with the current version (I think it’s been over 5 years now). The smart resistance works really well with Zwift and you also have the ability to change resistance manually with an app on the phone. It’s a nice feature when doing intervals, I’ll often do intervals at a higher resistance and then spin some z2 for an hour or so afterwards at a lower resistance. I’ve been injured a couple times in the past decade and has forced me onto a stationary trainer, totally sucks compared to the rollers IMO.

I’ve been on zwift since the beta came out and it really makes indoor riding/racing engaging for me. Not for the scenary, but for the group dynamics. I’ll sometimes do intervals in zwift by myself just to have something up the screen, but 95% of the time it’s group rides or races. Besides the lack of wind/aero effects, zwift has most of the same group ride and race dynamics you’ll find in real life (both the good and the bad). It’s just a matter of finding the right groups to ride with. I’m a big fan of the BMTR masters events. They have Tuesday/thursday night rides that are about 1:40 and a saturday morning 100 mile ride that takes the better part of 4 hours. They are some of the least dysfunctional group rides I’ve found in real life or in zwift. There are still folks sometimes trying to rip the group apart, but for the most part it’s less of an ego-fest than your typical group rides. And there are some legit riders who could rip things apart if they wanted. I never would have thought I could stomach 4 hours on the trainer, but those rides have many of the same dynamics that make outside riding interesting (working together as a group pushing the pace, holding on for dear life at times, helping out the weaker riders, friendly banter on the chat, and just pushing a lot of Kj’s through the legs in a short amount of time). All my 3-4 hour power PR’s come from that saturday ride, there is no other effort I do that requires that big of an effort for that long. It’s all deliberate pedaling, makes the typical gravel race seem like an easy effort. Highly recommend giving them a try. On rollers, no coasting…

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I started out on a Kickr Core and switched to InsideRide Smart Rollers. I haven’t used the Kickr in the past 2 years after I got the rollers. I don’t value the smart aspect of the rollers much. For workouts, I prefer to have ERG off and just shift gears, it just feels better to me. On the Kickr, I only used ERG for workouts, but there’s something different about the rollers. I want to be in control and engaged, and not just sit back and let the trainer set the resistance.

For Zwift racing, I do use the smart resistance, but I turn trainer difficulty down. To be honest the main reason that I do that is so that on super steep hills I’m not spinning super slow, which makes it hard to balance. I like having some smart resistance because my competitors surge on the hills, so feeling the resistance makes it natural to surge in power as well. If I didn’t race on Zwift, I probably wouldn’t care about having smart resistance at all, I do all of my workouts and most of my free riding on Tempus Fugit anyway (super flat), so I’m not really using it.

As far as falling on the rollers during turns, I’m fine 99% of the time, it’s only got me on really fast really sharp curves, but I’ve never fallen. I definitely hit the bumpers when we did a team time trial down the Alpe and hit curves at insane speeds.

Now for making riding indoors fun? I gave up on training plans (sorry TR :grimacing: ). I’ll do an ERG workout every once in a blue moon. My winter training plan is: indoor velodrome track workout on either Tuesday or Thursday, indoor velodrome track workout Saturday morning, Zwift race Sunday morning, sometimes a Zwift time trial race throughout the week (depending on league schedule), maybe mix a Z2 Zwift ride in the week. That kept me the most engaged, got me the most accumulated kJ’s, and made me the fastest I’ve ever been this past winter.

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you lucky dog you!

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