Speaker: There are loads of great reasons to cycle indoors. It's really time-efficient.
You can fit it easily around your other life commitments. You can also train in a way that
you just can't on the road and it doesn't usually rain inside. There are also some really
rubbish reasons to cycle indoors such as, of course, if you're not actually allowed
to go outside. Well, fear not. In this video, we're going to show you what you need to cycle
indoors. You only need to invest in a couple of bits
of equipment and then you're away, so to speak. Firstly, we're going to look at dedicated
exercise bikes versus an actual bike. For many of us, indoor cycling involves the kind
of bike you find at the gym or the vintage exercise bike that you find at your grandma's
house. Well, spend any amount of time on one of those and you will quickly lose your mind.
Fortunately, there are better options. Firstly, the easiest thing to do is to use
your actual bike and connect it to an indoor trainer or turbo trainer. You do this by suspending
the back wheel over a flywheel which creates resistance against the rear tire and simply
pedal away. Now, a quick Google search reveals that you can get basic indoor turbo trainers
for as little as £100 or $100 delivered to your door, but if you're on eBay and get a
secondhand one, even less. Broadly speaking, there are three different
types. Now, the cheapest, a're usually wind resistance generators, so they're quite loud
and quite noisy. Then you have magnetic resistance in the flywheel. Usually, you can adjust this
by a way of a lever as well so you can increase or reduce the resistance. Then, there's fluid
resistance. These get progressively more expensive. Fluid would be my choice, but it depends upon
your budget. With your turbo trainer ordered, all you need
to do now is to set your bike onto it and then put something under the front wheel to
just raise it slightly to get you in a better position. I'd suggest an old Yellow Pages
if you've got one lying around. They're the essentials, but there are some other bits
of equipment that we'd recommend. Something that you can put under your indoor training
setup to catch sweat. Now, there are dedicated mats that you can
buy, but these can be quite expensive and there are less expensive options. A yoga mat
works really well or a towel or an old bit of carpet or your actual living room carpet.
Sorry, mom. Cycling indoors can get really hot as well because you don't have the cooling
effect of the air brushing past you as you ride outdoors. There are a few things you
can do to cool yourself down. Firstly, fans are really useful. If you've
got an old fan lying around, by all means, dig it out. If you don't, again, you can pick
up fans pretty cheaply these days, so a couple of those would be useful. I'd also recommend
having some fluids to hand and also probably a towel that you can just wipe the sweat off
as well. Lastly, if you're riding indoors with slick road bike tires, you'll find it's
much quieter on a turbo trainer than if you use a treaded tire or a mountain bike tire.
These will create much more noise, a proper racket, which could be really annoying for
other people you live with or your neighbors. You can buy a slick tire and put that on your
bike and we'd recommend it. There's actually dedicated tires for turbo trainers. They're
not essential, but they do work really well. They're designed for it. They actually save
your tires from wearing down as well. They're really hard-wearing and don't wear out on
your trainer. Next, I'd highly recommend that you have some
sort of entertainment when you're riding along. Something to follow like a gym class. If you
just jump on your bike with nothing to follow, then I guarantee, even if you start with the
best intentions, after about 30 seconds, you will be completely bored out of your brains.
Now, some people like to turn on the TV or watch a movie.
This definitely works, but again, without having any structure to follow, after about
30 seconds, you'd probably feel like you just sat on an uncomfortable version of your sofa.
Instead, I would suggest you follow something that gives you purpose, a workout where it
tells you when to pedal hard, when to pedal easy. By breaking the workout down into those
little manageable chunks with little goals, it will just fly by.
Perhaps, here at GCN, we could help you out with that. We have a massive library of free
online sessions available on YouTube where you can follow indoor training workouts. They
also feature guidance from some incredibly inspiring, charismatic, and handsome individuals.
Seriously, who wrote this? Anyway, there's everything from short intense 15 to 20-minute
HIIT workouts right through to 60-minute epics and everything in between. You can do a lot
of great quality work in a short period of time on an indoor trainer and burn a stack
of calories and get mega fit. There you go. That's the basics covered. It really is as
simple as that. One final thing just to pay attention to and that is the kind of axle
your bike has at the back. If it's a disk brake bike, whether it has a through axle
or a quick-release skewer. Now, most indoor trainers support quick-release
skewers. Just check that your bike is supported by the trainer that you're going to get. Higher-end
more sophisticated turbo trainers give a much more realistic and immersive indoor riding
experience, such as direct drive trainers. A good example is the Wahoo KICKR. You remove
your back wheel and directly attach your bike onto it. They weigh an absolute ton, but that's
good because it means that they have a really heavy flywheel.
A really heavy flywheel is able to generate a lot of inertia which translates into that
realistic riding feel. It feels like riding a bike outdoors. More than that though, they
are also smart, so they can connect wirelessly to your computer or tablet or whatever you're
using. The resistance can adjust automatically depending on the kind of terrain you're riding
in a virtual world. They can simulate hills and descents.
This is the ace card of smart trainers because they take indoor cycling to just a whole nother
level. It's just way more immersive and way more entertaining. There's loads of software
and platforms out there that you can put on your laptop or your tablet or your smartphone
and then connect to your trainer. You've got ones like Sufferfest and TrainerRoad. These
have structured workouts in them that can be tailored to your actual fitness levels
and then you can follow those. There's entertainment and stuff that comes
up on the screen to make it more stimulating. There are others that allow you to ride in
virtual environments. Say you've got Kinomap, Rouvy, RGT cycling, and the big hit's of course
Zwift. There's a social aspect to these as well because you can actually ride with people
that you know and other people who are riding with their avatars also in the virtual world.
This is great because it effectively allows you to escape the isolation and the confines
of your house and interact with other human beings albeit in a virtual environment. You
can do races on there, group rides, all sorts. You'll find all ability levels as well. From
absolute beginners right through Tour de France champions. I hope you found this video useful.
If you've got any questions about indoor cycling or training, then just post them to us on
social media and we'll do our best to answer them and get back to you.
Also, if you want to see a video on a budget basic Zwift set up and what you need, then
we've got that as well down here. You can also click onscreen for some GCN free indoor
workouts. [00:08:08] [END OF AUDIO]