Indoor cycling mistakes: 10 things we all get wrong, and tips on how to solve them

Indoor training is brilliant. No traffic, no punctures, and no weather excuses. But for all it's perks, it is also the easiest place to let small errors stack up until your legs feel cooked and your motivation drifts.

To keep you on the straight and narrow, here are the common slip-ups I see in pain caves everywhere, many of which all of us here in the Cyclingnews team have fallen foul of, plus the simple fixes that keep your numbers rising and your bike from dissolving in a puddle of sweat.

Mistake 1: Doing high-intensity intervals on every ride

Discover the dark magic of 30 x 30s, and it can be very tempting to chase that productive suffering every time you hop on the indoor trainer. Stack high-intensity rides day after day, though, and your fatigue will rocket before you realise, leading to a big old fitness plateau.

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For most people, keeping the fireworks to two quality sessions each week (maybe three if you can handle a higher load) is plenty. Fill the rest with genuine Zone 2, or steady endurance, where you step off feeling better than when you started.

It's worth remembering too that rest weeks are where you make the gains. Every three or four weeks, bring in a lighter week so the adaptations have room to land.

Mistake 2: Overheating and dehydrating

When riding indoors, you lose the real-world wind chill that keeps core temperature under control, and once your body starts to cook, your heart rate drifts up, power drifts down, and everything feels harder than it should.

Yes, this is painfully obvious, but it is so easy to end up feeling fatigued and groggy through not staying cool.

A good quality fan is absolutely essential unless you are training specifically for heat tolerance (something that should be done under close expert supervision).

If you like smart gadgets, the Wahoo Headwind plays nicely with all of the best smart trainers. Crack a window, wear a light wicking base layer, and throw a towel over the bars and top tube so the worst of the salt never reaches the bike.

Heat and fluid loss travel together, so treat fuelling and drinking as part of the same fix. Indoors, you sweat more and burn through glycogen faster, so for rides of 60 to 90 minutes, aim for 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate each hour. For longer or harder work, move to 60 to 90 grams per hour. Most riders land around 500 to 750 millilitres of fluid each hour, and heavy sweaters will need more. Don't forget to add electrolytes to this, too.

Mistake 3: The ERG mode anchor

ERG mode is a gift until it traps you in a low cadence death march. If you let your RPM sag to the 60s, the trainer piles on torque to hold the target power, which leaves your quads sending complaint letters.

For most sessions, it tends to be better to spin up the legs to 85-95 rpm to prevent being forced to slam on the anchors mid-interval.

Mistake 4: Forgetting the cooldown (and warmup)

One of the main benefits of indoor training is that you can cram in an awful lot of quality into a fairly short session. However, being in the comfort of your own home often makes it very tempting to jump off the bike the moment you finish your last interval.

Your legs, lungs, and head all need a short spindown. A simple ten minutes of easy riding will suffice, but make sure you let any heaviness and burning drain from your legs. A static stretch post-ride is great too, to reduce the likelihood of your legs feeling stiff the next day.

Mistake 5: Forgetting your bike fit

Ride for an hour in the outdoors, and you'll stand up, sit down, stop pedalling, change riding positions, and rock the bike around. All of these motions help to keep you comfortable on your bike without you really noticing.

On the turbo, things are totally static, and that means if you have any bike fit issues at all, they will be found out. The fix for this is to make sure your setup is sorted before your winter of training, and not to push through pains that don't feel right.

The benefit to riding indoors is that you'll start to feel them very quickly, likely before you would have if you were riding outside, so you'll be able to act on them earlier.

Mistake 6: Ignoring your gears

Even if you are sat, happy as Larry, pedalling away while using ERG mode, you should still pay attention to your gear choice on the indoor trainer.

Under high torque, cross-chaining can cause excess wear to your bike, ultimately costing you money in the long run. There are ride-feel considerations too - a higher gear will give your trainer's flywheel more momentum, which will make your trainer experience feel a little more realistic, but immediate shifts in resistance (during those HIIT sessions) will take a little longer to come into force.

Mistake 7: Not looking after your bike

Sweat-induced handlebar corrosion is real, and really dangerous if unnoticed.

Sweat can easily creep under our bar tape and corrode the metal of alloy handlebars, or the stem bolts on your carbon bars, or the clamp on your shifter hoods. This will eventually weaken said components and make them dangerous to use outdoors.

I have seen genuine holes in bars from this before, so it really is one to watch, even if it sounds crazy. Just consider how much stress your put on your handlebars when sprinting, climbing out of the saddle, or hitting potholes in the road. Now imagine the same handlebar snapping off right at the worst point. It happens, and it's not fun.

Luckily, the fix is simple - cover your handlebars with a towel, and check your bars when you replace your tape.

Mistake 8: Chasing numbers with no plan

Riding indoors makes it incredibly easy to get carried away with your training. After all, you are most likely surrounded by segments on screen, or a wealth of ready-made training sessions to choose from when you ride.

The issue comes when you start to chase segment times or race every single time you ride on the trainer. You can get away with it if you are riding once a week, but if you do it too much, you'll find yourself stagnating.

Mistake 9: Forgetting to make training fun

Trainer boredom is not a personal failing, it's just something you have to stay on top of.

There are a whole host of ways to keep boredom at bay, whether that's bringing in some competition, participating in an online group ride, or just getting your music choice right.

If you just can't deal with the noise drone from a smart trainer, any of our cycling headphones recommendations will do wonders for motivation. I'd advise mixing solo workouts with the odd race or group ride to keep you feeling fresh through the winter

Mistake 10: Making setup difficult

Humans are lazy creatures, and it is far better to work with that fact rather than fight against it.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with regular indoor training is putting stuff too far away so that even setting up your space becomes a chore.

Of course, not all of us have the luxury of a dedicated indoor training setup, but by keeping things tucked away next to where you train, and keeping an extension cord handy so you can plug and play, will make a big difference to how much you end up riding.

If you're already struggling for motivation to get on and ride, the added effort of setting up will quickly turn you off.

Or if you only have 45 minutes to train, a 15-minute setup and then a 15-minute take-down afterwards will quickly derail your best intentions. You complete 0% of the rides you fail to start, so at least give yourself a fighting chance by keeping things together, tidy, and accessible.