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Boredom is an attention problem. Effort you are paying full attention to feels worse, and indoors there is nothing else to attend to. The fix is to occupy your attention with something that needs a response from you, rather than something you merely watch.
The standard advice is to be more disciplined. It does not work, and it makes people feel worse about a problem that is not a character flaw.
What is actually happening is simpler. How bad an effort feels depends partly on how much attention you are paying to it. Outdoors, the road, traffic, weather and scenery take most of your attention and the effort gets what is left. Indoors, there is nothing competing, so you monitor your own legs continuously and watch the clock, and watched time crawls.
So the question is not "how do I become more disciplined" but "what else can I give my attention to?" That is a solvable problem. See also why time passes so slowly.
A session with intervals is far easier than "ride for an hour", because you are never more than a few minutes from something changing. Six by five minutes is easier than thirty minutes, though the work is identical.
Cover it. Use a session that tells you what comes next rather than one you time yourself. Checking the clock makes time pass slower, which makes you check more.
Not background music: music with a tempo that suits the session. Pedalling in time to something occupies more of your head than listening does.
Works well for easy rides, less well for hard ones, because when the effort bites your attention snaps back to your legs. Best for zone 2. See what to watch.
A video call with a friend doing the same session is genuinely effective and costs nothing.
Riding in a virtual environment with other people. Well established, works for a lot of people, and the social side is the strongest part.
A plan that tells you what to do and controls the trainer. Removes the decision-making, which matters a lot on a tired Tuesday.
Where your power is the controller rather than a number on a chart. The difference from watching something is that it will not go well if you stop paying attention, which means your attention has somewhere to be.
The reason "put a film on" only half works is that watching is passive. You can watch and still monitor your legs, and when the session gets hard you will.
Anything that requires a response takes more of your attention, because it breaks if you stop. Pedalling in time to music, chasing someone in a virtual world, following a session that changes every two minutes, or playing something where the pedals are the controls — all of them make it harder to think about the clock.
That is the principle this whole site is built on. Your watts fly the aircraft, climb the mountain, pull the sledge. Whether that appeals is a matter of taste, but the mechanism is sound and it is why games work for people whom films do not.
Completely. It is the most common reason people stop indoor training, and it has very little to do with how motivated or fit you are.
No. Structure, music and hiding the clock are free and between them solve most of it. Paid options add social contact and variety.
Structure, and something rhythmic rather than something to watch. When the effort is high your attention will not stay on a plot.
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