 Hey what's up guys my name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at Carmichael Training Systems and today we're going to be going into seven tips that you can use to stay motivated when you're riding inside on the trainer. These are tips that I found work for me and for my athletes that I coach whether you have a big ride on the calendar and Mother Nature just isn't cooperating or you spend most of your time in the winter indoors on the trainer and it's really starting to drain on you. I'll start off with some of the more obvious tips and then get into some methods that you probably haven't thought about or tried. The last method is the one that I've found to be most effective at getting me to stay on the trainer for hours so be sure to stick around for that. If you're new to this channel I make weekly training topic videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of racing experience that have gotten me to the top of the Ultra Endurance mountain bike game in the US and as a coach at CTS. I also go into the science on your training questions so if you want to learn more about how to get fast or just sports science in general be sure to subscribe for more and if you have a training question be sure to leave it in the comment section down below and I'll either answer it down there or make a whole video about it. For a lot of us winter means a lot of time indoors on the trainer which can be an absolute killer for long miles in motivation. The training plan says get in time I'm saddled but Mother Nature isn't cooperating. I'm going to get into some of the hacks that you can use to stay motivated when riding indoors but first I need to make a public service announcement that many of you probably won't want to hear. Now some people will tell you that trainer time counts as more time than if you were outside. I've heard riders make all sorts of comparisons like an hour on the trainer counts as an hour and a half outside or other sorts of conversions. Apparently because you don't stop peddling when you're on the trainer you can just add more time or maybe it's because riding on the trainer is so boring that people need to give themselves an excuse to get off sooner and end the ride earlier than they would have. I don't know but if you want to know my thoughts on this issue it's probably not the answer that you're looking for. This is complete nonsense one hour is one hour and you don't get to add time because you were on the trainer and it was really boring. If you were to ride outside on a flat surface and you never stopped peddling you wouldn't add an hour just because. When we determine how stressful a ride was there are two variables time and intensity and the undulation in power when riding outside gets accounted for in intensity. Also most of the time when you're riding outside you end up with a higher normalized power than when you're riding inside just because it's easier to ride harder when you're outside. So if we're looking at the value of an outdoor hour versus an indoor hour an outdoor hour usually wins and you probably need to ride longer indoors to make up for this. Okay I'm done ranting about that basically just don't take shortcuts. All that being said though too much time on the trainer can really start to drain on your motivation so it can be easy to overdo it. When you just need to spend some time and get the work done though here's some methods that you can use to stay motivated when you're on the trainer. I'll wrap it fire through the more obvious ones and then get into some tips that you probably haven't thought about. First of all make sure you have your trainer set up correctly with fans to cool you down. You generate a lot of heat when you're riding and since you're not moving you generate sweat very quickly which can raise your perceived exertion. I like to set up my trainer outside on my screen and porch so I'm out of the elements but the temperature is still very low. A garage or shed works great for this too. You'll probably find that even in freezing conditions all you need to wear when you're on the trainer is a pair of bibs but obviously this depends on how hard you're going. Make sure you have some way of measuring your effort because you're not going anywhere when you're on the trainer it can be really difficult to tell how hard you're going. On top of this perceived exertion is usually higher for a given power output when you're inside. Anybody with a power meter can attest to this. If you just hop on the trainer without any way to measure how hard you're going chances are you're going way easier than you think. Power meters and smart trainers with power and erg mode are great for this but you can also use a heart rate monitor if you don't have one of those. Using apps like Zwift or Sufferfest can be a huge help for motivation by making you feel like you're actually riding and coming with prescribed training plans and workouts. However you need to be careful with some of these workouts. For starters a lot of them are way more complicated than they need to be. An interval session doesn't need to be complicated it's just about accumulating time at certain zones to create an adaptation. However the far bigger potential problem with these workouts is that a lot of them are very high intensity and a lot of times you don't need to be doing this sort of high intensity in the middle of winter when you're so far away from your race season. Higher intensity will lead to a plateau much faster which is why we want to use it in the month or two before an important race and not in the middle of winter. If you don't have some of these training apps which usually cost money then just watching pro races on the computer while you're riding can be a huge motivator as well. The next is probably the most obvious but is extremely effective so needs to be said and that is put some headphones on and listen to music while you're riding. This is one of the best ways to pass the time when you're on the trainer. Now that we've gotten the obvious out of the way let's get into some of the less obvious hacks that you can use to stay on the trainer even longer. First of all don't have your ride time visible on your cycling computer and make sure no clocks or watches are within your view. We've all heard the phrase that a watch clock moves slowly or maybe it's a watch pot never boils. I don't know but the point is if you watch your ride time the ride is going to go a lot slower. I think we've all experienced this when we've been somewhere that we don't want to be like school or work and we keep looking over at the clock only to find that hardly any time has passed at all. This is the same when riding on the trainer. Looking at the clock will have you counting down minutes until you can get off which is a negative mindset that you don't want to be in. The next tip we have for staying motivated on the trainer is arrow bars. Okay hear me out on this this is actually a huge help and anyone who rides a TT bike indoors knows. When you're riding inside you're going to want to constantly be changing positions and the arrow bars give you one more position to be in and there's just something about riding in the arrow bars that allow you to zone out and let time move faster. It's hard to explain but when you're down in that position it's more easy to get into a zone and shut out outside distractions. Like I said people who ride their TT bikes indoors can attest to this. It sounds crazy but don't knock it until you try it. On top of this riding the trainer is a good time to practice being in the arrow position. Now if you're saying right now well I race crits or mountain bike races or gravel races so I don't need to learn how to be in the arrow position that's where you're wrong. Riding with your forearms on the bar is faster than even riding in the drops so anytime you have a flat safe section of road in a race it's advantageous to do it. I even recommend installing arrow bars on your mountain bike or gravel bike for events where they aren't banned that have long flat sections of road or gravel. Yeah it may not look cool but you know what's cooler than looking cool going faster which arrow bars most certainly are. Now this is a topic for a whole nother video so I won't go into too much more detail but expect videos in the future about the advantages of arrow bars for certain events like the Leadville 100 or Dirty Kanza or other endurance mountain or gravel races. The final and perhaps most effective tip is to have some way of holding yourself accountable. This is the reason why a lot of people hire coaches and it works. If you're accountable to someone it makes you more likely to follow through with it. If you don't have a cycling coach then telling your spouse or maybe a friend that you're going to spend x amount of hours on the trainer will help you get through that time. And in this age of social media it can become really easy to be accountable to many people. You can make a Facebook post saying exactly how long you intend to be on the trainer and then upload your Strava data afterwards to prove to people that you did it. This past weekend I had a five hour ride scheduled and it was 40 degrees and raining which left me with a tough decision. Suffer through the cold and wet and risk getting sick or suffer through boredom on the trainer. Ultimately I chose the trainer. When I started riding the trainer I snapped a picture and put it up on my Instagram story and I created a poll. Can I make it to five hours? I didn't think much of it at the time but this ended up being the biggest motivator to get me to five hours. Most people said yes I could make it but a lot said I couldn't. I didn't want to let the people down who said yes and the rest of the people said no. I had to prove them wrong. Even though in reality probably no one cared it was helpful to trick myself into thinking that they did so that I couldn't get off the trainer until I actually hit five hours. Those are my tips to stay motivated when riding indoors to review don't take shortcuts you don't get to add time because you rode on the trainer. Make sure you have your trainer set up correctly with fans or in a cool area like an outside porch or garage because you're going to be producing a lot of heat and a lot of sweat. Have some way of measuring how hard you're going on the trainer like a power meter or a heart rate monitor because if you don't you're probably going to be going way easier than you realize. I recommend using apps like Zwift or Sufferfest to stay motivated but be careful about the workouts that these apps provide. A lot of times these workouts are too high-intensity for what we're trying to do in the winter when race season is so far away. Be sure to listen to music this is probably obvious but it helps a lot so I've got to mention it. Some less obvious tips include not having a clock in view so you can't count time and realize how slow time is going. Invest in some aero bars if you don't already have a TT bike to ride on the trainer. Aero bars add another position for you to ride in and they're just downright faster for a lot of events that you wouldn't normally think about using them in. Finally find some way to hold yourself accountable to other people. This could be to a coach or a spouse or to your friends on social media whatever motivates you to stay on the bike. Thanks for watching and I hope you guys found this information helpful. If you like this video be sure to give it a thumbs up, share it with a friend and subscribe for more training tips. If you want to see more coaching content be sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and if you want to follow my training be sure to check me out on Strava. Finally if you're looking for a coach shoot me an email at djohnsonandtrainright.com