If you’re planning some of your first turbo training rides, professional cyclists Hannah Barnes and Julia Shaw offer up a few tips for you.
Hannah gave the advice of keeping sessions short, to prevent boredom, and trying spin classes at your local gym, where there is an instructor and you can make new friends and “have fun.”
Julia favoured keeping your training interesting, saying: “I’d recommend maximum variety and maximum number distractions as long as long as they dont stop you pedalling!” – she likes to use BBCiPlayer for TV and Radio.
Her key piece of advice was also to always have a session plan – she said:
“Always have a plan for each session as this will pass the time more easily – even if its just something like alternating between high and low cadence, rather than just pedalling.
“My favourite session would be an easy one rather than a killer super effective one! For example, some kind of pyramid session, such as:
Turbo training pyramid sessions
- 5 minutes high cadence (>100)
- 5 minutes low cadence (~70-80)
- 4 minutes high cadence
- 4 minutes low cadence
- 3 minutes high cadence
- 3 minutes low cadence
- 2 minutes high cadence
- 2 minutes low cadence
- 1 minutes high cadence
- 1 minutes low cadence
“Once you’ve completed the sets above, go back up, from 1 back to 5 minutes. With a bit of a warm up and down this is more or less an hour.”
Though we can’t promise that session will make you a National Champion, we think Julia’s advice is a good place to start.
Turbo training can be hard work, but hard work pays off in the end – so get spinning and enjoy the benefits!
