It's the season for indoor training sessions, using increasingly sophisticated equipment. A home trainer, whether basic or advanced, even connected, can be a good solution for precisely training power. However, there are pitfalls to avoid so that your sessions don't turn into a long, arduous ordeal. Let us explain.
By Guillaume Judas – Photos: depositphotos.com
More and more of you are using indoor trainers to compensate for outdoor rides, which are often very difficult or even impossible at this time of year. You're also taking advantage of this to train very precisely with power, a metric that is essential in all the connected apps on the market (Zwift, MyWhoosh, BKool, Rouvy, etc.).
The home trainer is presented as an advantagetagThe idea is to force you to pedal throughout the entire session (without any freewheeling) and to allow you to perfectly structure your workouts, regardless of external factors like weather or traffic. So, theoretically, we're talking about precise and well-structured exercises. To achieve this, many people use either a stationary bike trainer that measures power, a power meter on their bike, or software that estimates power based on various parameters such as speed, cadence, and simulated inclines. The intention is commendable and stems from a desire to do things right. But Beware of excesses or misinterpretations…
A different power output between the route and the home trainer
The power produced on a stationary bike is different from that which you can produce on the route. The friction or resistance to forward motion is not the same.However, the home trainer presents its own difficulties, with more constant effort, more dehydration and consequently a more sustained heart rate that is harder to bring down during the session.
Power on a home trainer, whether measured by a power sensor on the bike or by the device itself, can only be compared to power on a home trainer. If you insist on defining a point of comparison, you would need to carry out a test with a stable heart rate on route and on a home trainer, and try to determine a standard deviation..
In other words, It's a big mistake to try to reproduce on a home trainer the power thresholds you know on routeYou risk overtraining by targeting power zones that don't truly correspond to the effort exerted. To give you an idea, the difference between route and home trainer. This means that if you have an FTP rated at 250 watts on route after a test On the road, this is only about 225 watts on the home trainer.
An imbalance that promotes overtraining
When you think about indoor training or the time optimization associated with this practice, you tend to forget the essential factor for progress in an endurance sport like cycling on route : training in the aerobic zone, i.e. in "base" mode. Cycling, even competitive cycling, is 95% aerobic.To perform well, very high intensities are of course necessary, but above all you need to push back the transition zone between aerobic and anaerobic mechanisms as much as possible, so as to still be present at the end of the event.
And since progress in one of the two areas comes at the expense of the other, due to the principle of communicating reservoirs, you understand that...An unbalanced training program, without a large proportion of aerobic exercise, does not allow for progress and sometimes even leads to overtraining, with a state of generalized fatigue.As for the expected benefits, it is quite simple to understand the interest of a high aerobic level: during a competition, each attack, acceleration or difficulty of the course requires a production of power for a few seconds. Someone with a higher level of endurance doesn't push themselves "into the red". and produces virtually no lactic acid, thus preserving its meager reservoir of "super fuel" for the decisive effort at the end of the race.
Someone who, conversely, may be powerful and explosive but has a lower level of endurance will find themselves "in the red" more quickly with the same effort.and has no energy left at the end of the event, and his muscles are full of lactic acid, which limits their function. We also know that "moderate" efforts, such as Zone 3 (below the anaerobic threshold), allow for rapid progress initially, but quickly become quite tiring, which greatly limits their usefulness. Therefore, theThe model that works well involves spending at least 80% of your weekly time in the basic endurance zone, and dedicating 20% of the remaining time to higher intensities.Whether it's threshold training, VO2 max training, or short or long sprints, if your training is based exclusively on indoor cycling, you have to push yourself to complete 4 out of 5 hours or 8 out of 10 hours of a week at a relaxed pace!
So, is the home trainer a good thing or not?
The key takeaway is that The home trainer is only a substitute for training on routeIt is useful for maintaining a minimum level of fitness and preserving basic skills, but caution is advised regarding its use and duration, and care must also be taken when performing strength-related exercises on this type of equipment, which could quickly prove counterproductive…
