There’s no way around it. If you want to get a good number of hours in during the cold and dark winter months, you will most likely find yourself having to ride on the dreaded turbo trainer.

We all know just how boring – and painful – the turbo can be but it is undoubtedly a very effective way of training. With no freewheeling and constant pressure on the pedals, a focused turbo session can bring about big improvements in your form.

My number one tip is to focus on the quality and not the quantity of your sessions on the turbo – and this concentrating on your specific efforts (intervals), rather than trying to stay on the turbo for as long as your sanity will allow. Doing specific intervals has the added benefit of breaking up your training sessions into blocks – concentrate on each block, one at a time, and hopefully time will go by much faster.

During a turbo session, try and concentrate on a specific aspect of fitness and work on that. With that in mind, here are five turbo sessions – strength efforts, threshold, sweetspot, VO2 Max and cadence drills – to not only make things more interesting, but to also ensure you are getting more out of your time on the turbo.

These sessions will refer to your training zones – you can read my previous article to find out how to set your training zones.

Want to buy a turbo? Take a look at our turbo trainer buyer’s guide.