Indoor training can be a horrific experience. Even if you’re set up with as many distractions as possible, for some people it’s a step too far. But unfortunately, the indoor trainer is one of the most efficient ways to fit in a session if the weather’s just too bad to ride (think hurricane or blizzard) or if you only have an hour and want to get some quality work done.

Working 9-5: how to adapt your training to working life

One of the beauties of indoor training is the consistency. The resistance level on a trainer will stay the same until either you change it or you change your level of effort, it can’t be affected like all those external factors like wind, hills, road quality or anything else. For example, the classic (and dreaded) 2 x 20mins threshold session is the perfect way to get in some quality time-crunched training indoors. With warm up and cool down, you can sweat out 40mins of quality work in just over an hour’s total riding, which is a great way to squeeze some training into even the busiest schedules.

Five turbo trainer sessions to help you build form

On top of that, indoor training isn’t as limited as it used to be. With online coaching systems like Trainer Road offering a whole host of different workouts in their database you can find yourself flooded with ideas for sessions. And if even that’s not enough, you can train and race with and against people from all over the world with software like Zwift or Tacx’s Genius. It almost makes indoor riding into a computer game, albeit a very, very sweaty one.