01/13/2026
Happy New Year and I hope 2026 is treating you well so far! Winter is here, so here are my top tips for making riding the trainer as enjoyable as possible:
Make sure your trainer and bike are actually level. Many basements and garages are not level, so your bike might be tilted to one side or angled slightly up or down. Use a bubble or digital level to find the most level part of your trainer area. Use the adjustable feet on your trainer for fine tuning. Many wheel off trainers claim that you don’t need a front wheel stand for your bike to be level, but that is often not true. To make your bike level front to back, measure the distance from the center of the thru axles to the ground and make sure they are equal. It is better for the front end to be slightly higher than lower. Use a wheel riser or a book to get the front end higher.
Avoid neck and shoulder pain on the trainer by not using a tv that is mounted high on the wall as your screen. You wouldn’t ride outside looking up like that, and you shouldn’t ride indoors like that, either. Use an iPad or laptop that is position directly in front of your handlebars or a tv that is on a low coffee table.
Don’t use ERG mode for the majority of your workouts. ERG mode makes you lazy and gets you out of practice of shifting to increase or decrease effort outdoors. There’s no ERG mode in bike racing, so don’t use it as a shortcut indoors.
Long endurance rides are harder mentally on the trainer. If you can’t get outside, have Zwift/Rouvy going on one screen and find something engaging to watch on another screen. I always find YouTube playlists of race highlights to keep my attention better than trying to watch a whole movie or whole TdF stage. Get off the bike every hour and use the bathroom, change clothes if you’re sweaty (a fresh pair of shorts can make all the difference on a long trainer ride), and make sure to eat and drink just as you would outdoors.
