Home › Guides › Comfort, heat and the practical stuff
Get a fan that moves real air and point it at your head and chest from about a metre away. Open a window even in winter, turn the heating off in that room, and wear as little as you reasonably can. Cooling does more for your indoor performance than any other single change.
Of everything on this site, this is the page with the best return on effort.
When you ride, most of the energy you produce becomes heat rather than propulsion. Outdoors, moving air carries it away continuously. Indoors it accumulates, your core temperature rises, your body diverts blood to the skin to cool you, your heart rate climbs and your legs get heavier.
Fix the cooling and you will hold more power for longer, your heart rate will sit lower at the same watts, and sessions will stop collapsing in the final third. People routinely find their indoor power gap closes substantially the week they buy a proper fan.
Most people start with a small desk fan and wonder why nothing improved. A desk fan stirs the air. It does not replace it.
What you want is something that moves a genuinely large volume of air. The categories that work:
The test is simple: standing in front of it, it should feel like a strong wind, not a breeze. If you cannot feel it clearly through a jersey, it is too small.
Mount it on a box or a chair if it will not reach high enough. A floor fan blowing at your shins is nearly wasted.
You may read about athletes training in heat on purpose to drive adaptations. That is a real thing, but it is a specific, carefully managed protocol with a particular goal, usually preparing for a hot event.
It is not the same as accidentally cooking yourself in a closed spare room because you have not bought a fan. If you are doing it by accident, you are getting the downsides without the structure. Sort the cooling out, and if you later want to do heat work deliberately, do it as its own planned block.
Bigger than you think. The practical test is whether it feels like a strong wind on your face from a metre away. A typical small desk fan does not pass that test.
No. Head, face and chest. Your legs will feel pleasant but it does much less for your core temperature.
For cooling it is close to ideal. Just warm up properly, keep your knees warm at the start, and be aware that very cold hands and feet can be uncomfortable for the first ten minutes.
It is a convenience rather than a necessity. A large fan on full does the same job for less money.
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