Home Trainers how to prevent the boredom?

When people train on their home trainers what do you do to prevent the boredom? Normally after about 30mins you can get pretty bored and you feel like just jumping off so what do people do to stop this happening?

 

Ride outside?

 

This is why I don't have an indoor trainer. You could always put on those TdF videos you recorded last year. You do have some, right?

 

this is why I normaly just use my trainer for recovery rides or interval training. Most I've ever been able to stay on is 45 minutes.

If you keep varing your resistance (a mission on most trainers) and your gearing and cadence then it becomes a little less boring.

I once rode infront of the TV and watched infomercials, it did not work for me.

 

Sometimes you just don't have a choice. I come home from work between 8-9 PM. In Belgium this means that during weekdays, I can only ride outside during the summer months.
I have no choice but to ride on the trainer.

Now, how to overcome the boredom:
* change your routine as much as possible (recovery, power, extensive and intensive intervals, ...)
* for the easier rides, put on the TV, and watch something that doesn't require too much of your concentration
* on the easier rides, break the monotony by adding some very low resistance sprints in the saddle, keeping your hips straight and look at what cadence you can reach
* Try to interpret the output your HRM gives you and how you can control your HR
* on the harder workouts you won't need any tricks to overcome the boredom... the pain will keep you focused

Niek

 

nferyn, has got it spot on! you want to try to alleviate the boredom by doing something else! here are some other ideas

read a paper or magazine whilst doing endurance rides

prescribe a varying intensity session (e.g., increase the effort from recovery to tempo in small sections every 5-mins - going up and down the scale)

alter cadence. every 1-min increase by 5 revs/min until you reach a set level and then decrease your cadence

Personally, i use Netathlon, which really makes the time fly -- i often do 2+ hrs on the trainer!

Ric

 

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is Netathlon?

Niek

 

Netathlon is software for your PC that 'controls' your trainer -- and gives you the opportunity to race against computer pacers or real people over the net! The scenery is good and it feels pretty realistic. www.fitcentric.com

Ric

 

So to use it it requires you to buy a home trainer that you can hook up to your pc already so can be a little pricey for starters but in the long run due to what you can do with it can be a benefit in the end cause you will ride on it longer

 

If you don't have the PC equipment:

Listen to music
Watch a movie
Watch a race and race along, especially nice RVV L-B-L and roubaix just pick up the pace when cobbols hills enter your screen and beat them on the finnish line.

Have a mate? put trainers alongside or opposite to eatch other and have a chat. On training camp we have a group chat on the trainers some guys come some go always someone to chat to sometimes even at 7 in the morning.

 

Just a word of warning. I was on our balcony last winter with a mate on windtrainers, talking rubbish. I recieved a letter from our Body Corporate stating "Balconies are to be used for passive recreation only" (I replied asking for them to define the term passive recrreation for me) and that there was "Unreasonable and disruptive yelling and shouting".

I guess the lesson to be learned is not only to monitor how loud your speech and music are, but also what you are talking about..

 

I train in front of the television and watch a DVD, either a movie or episodes of Star Trek. Definitely helps pass the time, in fact it flies by pretty darned fast actually!

Sometimes I'll just watch whatever is on television, but I've been caught out a few times doing that - the program ends and then I become bored sitting there riding away on the spot, and/or begin to notice/think about pain I wouldn't have otherwise.

 

I love dance music. I put that on my system and train away. With thta I can spend up to 2 hours at a stretch.

 

Ok then, Listening to Music is a great way of passing the time, this is what helps me, but does anybody have any suggestions on good music to listen / cycle to. The tracks should be pretty upbeat (around 100 beats per minute), which helps you keep track and focussed on something else other than time - this keeps your cadence constant. Maybe we can start a kind of CyclingForums compilation here.

Rob

 

I often listen to audio books for workouts like this. There's a good website out of the U.S., www.audible.com, where you pay US$19.95/month and get 2 book downloads. You can stream the books online, download them to your computer, burn them to CD, or put them into MP3 format. Anyway, I really enjoy it. I've found fiction works best, but nothing too dense that you'd really want to pay rapt attention to. Sci-fi works well for me! Enjoy!

Tom

 

I don't use an indoor trainer (yet at least), but for my other cardio workouts, one of my favorite soundtracks is "About a Boy", by Badly Drawn Boy. It has several really good, upbeat tracks that are easy to keep up a cadence with (this was a very good movie starring Hugh Grant - should be readily available in the movie soundtrack section of your music/video store).

 

The boredom factor is the killer, definitely.

My main tip is to get a magnetic, as opposed to fan resistance, trainer - being much quieter means you can listen to the radio, music, whatever.

The other tip is to use an HRM intelligently. If you're focused on your HR, then you can 'forget' to be bored up to a point. And vary your workouts, obviously.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to motivation. If the weather's bad and you're short of time, then the trainer is a very, very cost-effective way of maintaining fitness. If you've ever tried wearing an HRM on a training ride, you will probably know that it is actually very hard to spend as much as 30 mins of that time at or above, say, 85% of your max HR. Whereas, on a trainer, you can warm up in 10 mins, do 30 mins in the zone and warm down in 5 mins. You're showered and changed inside an hour - and feeling pretty pleased with yourself.

 

For music, try Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, and Crystal Method. If you don't know who/what they are, I guess I'd call them techno with some guts. The song playing in the opening dance club scene in Blade is Crystal Method (many think it's Prodigy), and the song is called Bloodbath Rave. Warning -- your cadence will be high from this since the beat is fast.

 

I set up a TV with cable in my basement so that I could watch sports on TV or the outdoor channel which frequently features cycling. If I have a football game (US based) or sportscenter to watch, I've been able to spend up to 1.5 hrs on the trainer. The problem I've faced is that you don't alter your position nearly as much and the rear end gets much more tender.

I also agree on the HRM issue, I use that with TV and found its quite bearable.

Tom

 

Techno of just about any kind is terrific for piling on the miles indoors. I queue up enough mp3 files to take me there and back, fire up the Computrainer, and away I go. Usually it's my butt that tells me when it's time to quit.