5 Mistakes to Avoid When Training on a Home Trainer

The indoor trainer is a good fallback solution when the weather is gloomy or the days are too short. It can even be fun and motivating if you subscribe to apps like Zwift or Bkool. But excessive practice exposes you to a number of inconveniences detrimental to progress and performance.

By Guillaume Judas – Photos: Tacx / DR

The home trainer is one of the essential tools for those who take charge of their physical condition or their progress.. It is especially beneficial for those who cannot get away during the day in winter, and who have no other option than to cycle indoors in the evening. But overdoing it would be a mistake. Here's why.

1. Riding the home trainer too often

Pedaling on the spot is nothing like a real ride.. Firstly because on a home trainer, you don't have any freewheeling, there's no scenery or traffic. The session therefore seems much longer. And since you can never really replace an endurance outing on route With a home trainer session, the only solution for it to be effective is to program exercises into it. These are most often carried out in an uninviting environment: in the evening or early in the morning, in the cellar or garage, with dim light, or in the house or apartment but with a temperature that is too high.

Driving too hard without experiencing the feeling of performance on the route is very taxing on long-term motivation.

Driving too hard without experiencing the feeling of performance on the route is very trying for long-term motivation. When you manage a season, it's a bit like having a bag of 100 marbles. Every time you impose something difficult on yourself morally, you lose marbles, but you recover completely or partially when you have satisfaction. It can be a day of rest, a good meal, an outing with friends, or the hill that you climb faster than the previous time. By pushing yourself too hard morally and physically, you are no longer worth anything when you are confronted with the reality on the ground. Because the idea is to keep marbles in the bag until the end of the season.

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2. Riding too long on a home trainer

Pedaling on the spot and indoors does not provide good ventilation and causes heavy sweating. Up to one liter per hour, while the body cannot assimilate more than half of the liquid in the same time. You therefore find yourself in a water deficit. But not only that, because with sweat, you also lose lots of minerals. Their lack is the cause of fatigue, cramps or other dysfunctions. Also of injuries, muscular or tendon, which can poison your life for long weeks. A fixed position on the saddle can also cause injuries to the crotch. The minimum is therefore to hydrate yourself with an isotonic drink (which improves the speed of assimilation) and energy with vitamins and minerals during and after the session. A well-conducted session can last from 40 minutes to a maximum of one hour. A longer and exceptional session can be considered, but you have to balance its interest and the risks incurred.

3. Making yourself train too hard

Exercise sets, cardio, watts, it's good, but in small doses. If your training is based only on intensity, since land is not really worked on a home trainer compared to the route, you are not progressing. Added to the factors stated above, you sink into a state of permanent fatigue, and in addition you work in conditions that are far from optimal. Many cyclists force themselves to train like a slave on the home trainer in winter, with intensities that the least pro would not want, and especially without land training behind. Result: they do not exceed the level of a Pass'Cyclisme rider.

Instead, consider doing other activities as a complement until you can do a workout on route sufficient.

Instead, consider doing other activities as a complement until you can do a workout on route sufficient. Do not hesitate to shift your preparation and insist instead on developing your abilities as an athlete before those as a cyclist, while running, swimming, with gym or bodybuilding, team sports, in short, anything that can be done at night or when the weather is bad, without locking you into a predetermined plan. And if you fear humidity and cold for weekend outings, equip yourself with a mountain bike or a gravel bike instead. You will come back dirty, but you will not be cold.

4. Overexerting yourself on the home trainer

Depending on the type of device you use, it can damage or even break the bike. Because an effort that is too violent in force or power subjects the frame to constraints that do not exist on the route, and for which it was not designed. Sweating can be very corrosive to the bike, especially around the rider position.tage. Clothing, shoes, heart rate monitors can also be damaged by being bathed in sweat. It is best to keep an old bike for home trainer use, or to stick to sub-maximal intensities.

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5. Expecting too much from home trainer practice

The home trainer is only a last resort for a safe practice route or mountain bike. The devices where the rear wheel is fixed do not faithfully reproduce the movements of the bicycle on the route or on the paths. And that changes a lot of things on the muscular level. So, when we do of the force On a home trainer, the legs only have to undergo constraints on the longitudinal plane, but not lateral as is the case on the route where you also have to steer the bike more or less. In velocity, it's the same thing since the pelvis does not have to take into account the oscillations of the machine. Rollers remain the best way to reproduce as faithfully as possible the balance and movements of the bike. But they make it difficult to apply certain types of training, such as overspeed, or strength. In short, rollers allow you to maintain a very nice pedal stroke, but are not enough to progress between two outings on route. Also, since they practically prohibit the dancer's gesture, you can quickly get a sore crotch.

Some people use home trainers hoping to lose weight: it's just an illusion!

Some people use home trainers hoping losing weight : it's just an illusion! In reality, you need to spend about 8600 Calories to lose a kilo of fat (the equivalent of a bottle of oil). A normally active person spends between 2000 and 2500 Calories per day, and a Tour de France rider between 3 and 5000. But that's without counting the intakes of that same day. However, to lose weight, the balance between inputs and outputs must be in deficit.

If you lose a pound quickly, it's not a pound of fat., but a kilo of various other elements, such as food residues (which we evacuate when going to the toilet), glycogen (the energy stock in the form of sugars installed in the muscles and the liver), proteins (because of the catabolism of the muscles if the needs are not covered), and especially water through perspiration or that which is stored with glycogen. By going to the sauna, we also lose weight, but it is not fat. By doing a home trainer, the only real impact on weight concerns the calories actually burned during the session, which is roughly 400 to 800 depending on its intensity. It therefore takes between 10 and 20 home trainer sessions, and on the condition of not consuming more calories than a day without physical activity, to lose a kilo. The route or mountain biking are always more productive on this side.

The right measure

The home trainer is an interesting tool when used wisely. It should be practiced as a means of keeping fit rather than wanting to break records, and in addition to other physical activities with a predominantly aerobic effect such as jogging, swimming, and of course cycling outdoors whenever possible. The right measure is around two sessions per week in winter, for about forty minutes to an hour maximum, and a few exercises to get the heart rate and watts up but without seeking exhaustion.

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