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For most people, 30 to 75 minutes. An indoor hour contains more actual pedalling than an outdoor hour because there is no coasting or stopping, so it does more work than the clock suggests. Go shorter and harder, or longer and easier, but do not simply copy your outdoor durations.
A two-hour outdoor ride might contain ninety minutes of actual pedalling once you subtract junctions, descents, freewheeling and the cafe. A two-hour indoor ride contains two hours of pedalling.
That is why experienced riders will tell you an indoor hour is "worth" more than an outdoor hour. It is not mystical: it is that you did not stop.
So when you move a session indoors, shorten it. A rider who does three hours at the weekend does not need three hours on the turbo to get a comparable stimulus, and attempting it is how people come to hate indoor training.
If you are coming to indoor training new, or back to it after a summer outdoors, start shorter than you think and add time gradually.
A reasonable progression is to begin at 30 to 40 minutes, three times a week, and add five or ten minutes to one session a week. Your legs are rarely the limit: it is contact points, heat tolerance and patience that need building, and those adapt over a few weeks.
Jumping straight to 90 minutes because you can ride for three hours outdoors is the classic error, and it usually ends with saddle soreness and a trainer in the loft by February.
Indoors, the temptation is to measure a session by how long it was. Resist it.
Forty minutes containing twenty minutes of genuinely good work at the right intensity beats ninety minutes of aimless pedalling while watching something. Both have their place, but only one of them needs you to be on a turbo.
If you only have three sessions a week, make them count: one harder session, one steady session, one easy or whatever you feel like. That is a perfectly respectable week and it is sustainable, which matters more than any individual session.
Yes, especially if it has structure. Thirty focused minutes two or three times a week will maintain and often build fitness.
For most people with jobs, several shorter ones. They are easier to fit in, easier to complete and easier to keep doing.
If you need a minute off the bike at some point in a long session, take it. Nothing is lost, and it is better than abandoning the whole thing.
That is the problem we are actually trying to solve. Turbo Trainer Games turns your watts into the controls of a browser game — your power flies the aircraft, climbs the mountain, pulls the sledge. Nothing to install, and it works with a smart trainer you already own.
It is in closed testing at the moment, so there is nothing to play yet. But you can put your name down.
Ask for early access