I can go without TV, but I find it difficult without music. RPE goes up exponentially.
For anyone who knows of or is a fan of David Goggins, I think he said it best. When training with college football players who only lifted weights and worked out with music, he says to them - when you get punched in the mouth, when you get smacked in the face, there is no music to pump you up. It’s just you, and your brain, and how you overcome.
I have to listen to high-ish BPM music, like the Beast Mode playlist on Spotify. I can do podcasts at 75% or below IF workouts, but I can still wander a bit.
I do music in Zwift too, but my feeling is I could do without music when if I’m racing because I’m focused. I never need (or even want) music outside.
Always. Totally focused on the data. I train on rollers and need to focus otherwise I will fall off! Have tried having music in the background, but too much of a distraction. Rides up to 2 hours.
Early 1990s, I was riding juniors, had a former East-German elite coach. He made us sit on the rollers for hours facing a blank wall. He called it “character school”, “learning to deal with suffering” …
… I’m glad we moved on from these times.
I find that not having ERG mode means that concentrating on hitting the right wattage, and reading Chad’s notes are enough to get me through. Rollers would be even better at that. My guess is that it’s helpful to train without entertainment so that you don’t crave the distraction on long Sportives etc.
For the longer endurance workouts I watch the TR Podcast. If it’s more intense, I prefer to turn off the other distractions.
I did 4 hours on the spin bike Saturday. An hour into it I started calculating battery life on the phone and decided to go without the tunes for a couple of hours. It was hard, but I managed. Fortunately (this was at the gym), I could still see the TV that was about 25m away and there were some good NCAA basketball games going on. Normally I have specific playlists blasting to get me through the high intensity stuff. I will probably be deaf by the time I get to Specialty phase
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, during a game they’ll be plenty pumped up. You don’t need any outside entertainment at your event itself because that’s literally what you’re training for and it’s exciting to be there.
I’m really bad about losing concentration if I watch TV, so I just listen to music. I find music doesn’t distract me at all. It’s easy to tell from my workouts if I tried watching netflix, there will be a lot of times where I just stop pedaling to watch tv. I would like to get better at not doing that.
Can’t watch anything demanding attention-wise. If anything, I watch bike race videos, sound off, with frequent « how did this guy end up in front? » as I zone in/out. Music in my ears most of the time on the trainer.
I cannot watch anything at all while I’m training, quite often I’m averting my gaze from my front wheel to the laptop back and forth and that’s about it. I can’t even concentrate on a podcast (unless it’s recovery week).
I simply MUST have music though.
Everyone’s different. His point is that you are training mental toughness and if you can train yourself to get through these difficult situations without external motivators, you’ll be able to push through more than you think you’re capable of.
I think this is true. However, the point of the training is to train at the highest stress you can manage to generate the adaptation that allows you to do more. In my opinion this is kind of the opposite of the common podcast question about training in heat. Chad says, don’t train in the heat because you will be able to do less and thus the adaptation will not be as good. In this case, distraction allows you to train harder (at least me anyways), and thus the adaptation will be more than without. I think the mental toughness is relative. The toughness is the same if you are doing your max whether distracted or not.
I find cyclocross races to be useful; there are tons on the internet and they’re just about as long as i can stand being on the trainer!
For the trainer, I like having music for sweet-spot/VO2max, but I’ve enjoyed catching up on shows for easier stuff (seems like I’m similar to many others here). This is also true on rollers–I can watch stuff while on rollers, but I definitely don’t pay as close attention when I am trying to hold 130+ rpm smoothly.
For outside, I never, ever listen to music. Even if it’s a 2x20’, I just get into my own head.
But inside, I admit I do like having some music or other entertainment along with the blue blocks. BTW, I am not in ERG either–I like the focus of trying to hold power, and I think it’s more similar to what I need to do outside (finding the right gear/cadence combination, and holding it).
I do have a friend who listens to audiobooks, but shuts them off when doing hard stuff. He has no other entertainment, just him, his bike, and TR, during hard stuff.
Is the goal to train mental toughness every workout? Do your physiology systems (aerobic, threshold, VO2 max, anaerobic) know if your brain is entertained or distracted? Do those systems adapt less/more if you stare at a wall or have music blaring as you push through that last over/under? No, those systems are impartial. There’s is a time to strengthen mental toughness, TR gives you plenty of opportunities, but the goal is generally to push those physiological systems. So if your brain is the limiter to furthering physiological adaptations, using every advantage possible should be utilized.
Much like training without a fan would build mental toughness as well. However, we all know that overheating is a limiter, so we use fans to maximize physiological stresses to elicit the most adaptation.
If I couldnt have Netflix or YouTube I wouldnt even bother getting my gear on. Its all part of the experience for me.
I gotta disagree totally with him here. To me it sounds like a super old school guy set in the mindset that training has to be hard and unpleasant to be effective.
I’ve done many rides without any entertainment so you’re not the only one.