I do my indoor TR training with a Lasko fan running on mid or high.
With only my bib on, I barely sweat even during hard vo2max or threshold workouts etc.
Mind you I run hot in my daily life, and whenever I forget to turn on the fan I instantly feel sweat coming on. So I chalk this up to the Lasko fans being an amazing cooling setup.
Today I did an inside group ride at a local club for the first time and the cooling was much less on point, so I got an incredible sweat on during the vo2max workout.
This is a serious cycling club with a ex-racer coach etc. Which got me questioning … am I overcooling my workouts at home?
I do feel it was more realistic to sweat as much as I’d be sweating on a regular outdoor day putting out those watts than barely sweating a bead …
Am I “pampering” my body too much indoors and pushing adaptations that may not stick once I hit higher body temps during outdoor rides?
I would argue that cooling allows you to do harder workouts. There is value in heat adaptation, but I don’t think it outweighs the value in being able to complete harder workouts easier. I live in Houston, Texas, where it’s very hot and humid, and I tend to perform at a significantly higher level during the cold months and just do a ton of easy stuff outside in the summer.
Im no expert but I wouldn’t have thought it was possible but on the trainer I’ll eat and drink more than I would outside and for quite a while I could deliver more consistent power inside than out.
Lately I have been wondering if much of the benefit of indoor training is just heat adaptation (which has been shown to improve ftp by as much as 8% in a few weeks!)
Heat is just another form of stress just like intensity and duration. You have to be careful if you are increasing or trying to use all three at once without proper recovery. Personally, I’d much rather be cool and add stress in the traditional sense from volume and intervals. And have more frequency rather than cooking myself from heat. But also because there is nothing worse than riding indoors when suffering from heat, just miserable.
Step on a scale right before and after your indoor ride. I bet it’s much more that the powerful fan is evaporating your sweat rather than you being so cooled down that you aren’t actually sweating that much. Obv you’ll sweat more if you’re hotter, but you’re def still sweating whether you’re physically wet or not afterwards.
Like a previous poster said, I usually only use a fan during interval workouts and skip it if I’m spinning easy
The more cooling the better for indoor training. The best thing I ever did was install a portable air conditioner in my training room. I can do 20-30 minute SS intervals without a bead of sweat dripping down my nose.
People that leave a giant puddle under their bike or corrode their bars and bike from sweat are doing it wrong.
You are wrong. Some just sweat more. 2 Lasko fans on high and 2 additional smaller fans in a basement perpetually in the mid 60s, and I have dripping sweat over z2 power. This is with wearing nothing but bib liners.
Only if the amount of work you do is held constant. Undercooling workouts often leads to being able to do less work, thus you’re hindering your performance. If you want to do heat adaptation, you do it in very small doses on the bike or do it off the bike. The primary factor there is blood volume and you can increase blood volume without on-bike heat adaptation as well.
Heat adaptation is also perishable. There was a pretty good TR Podcast about this, but the TLDR is it’s most important close to your target events.
Best of both worlds - cool and dry to do as much work as possible during build. As you get closer to events and hot weather riding then start to add in the heat work.
There have been some mentions of long term adaptations to heat and mentions of some potential upcoming studies, but I haven’t seen anything definitive on it.