Well, this has been a long cold winter for most parts of the U.S. and Europe. Usually by now, I’m out on the road and deep into my aerobic base building for the summer season. But this year’s lovely weather has forced me to do more indoor training than usual. Not that I’m complaining. I actually find working out indoors to be extremely focused and I can control all of the variables to do the exact workout I had planned for the day. But there isn’t much that most of us can do to break up the boredom of riding indoors. I used to watch race footage from the previous season’s grand tours and one day classics, but knowing the outcome made that a not-so-interesting option. A few years ago I started working out indoors using a couple of different coached training DVDs from Spinervals and Carmichael Training Systems and those made all of the difference in the world. You see, I grew up as a competitive swimmer and triathlete so I was used to being coached and doing interval training. I realized that some of the boredom of my indoor training regimen was due to a lack of structure. Well, these two DVD series gave me plenty of structure and good coaching as well.  The DVDs made a huge difference so I thought I’d share some of my favorite training DVDs with you so maybe your winter training blues would get better…well maybe a little better.  That being said, here are some of my favorite training videos from Spinervals and CTS along with two relative new comers to the indoor training DVD party Epic Planet’s Epic Rides and The Sufferfest (you’ve gotta love the name on that one!). And please, feel free to share your favorites if they’re not listed here.

Spinervals

Aero Base Builder Five Pack: This is a great set of 5 DVDs, each containing different aerobic base building workouts that really do the trick. Four of the videos in this set run a little over an hour and one of the videos is a two hour compilation of great aerobic interval training. If you’re looking to build your aero base in your pre-season ramp up, definitely grab this series and hop on your trainer with them.

Strength Builder 5 Pack: Another great 5 pack of DVDs, these 5 move you past your aerobic base and get into increasing your sustainable power output by helping you build your leg strength and increasing your anaerobic threshold.  My favorite DVD of the bunch is called Bending Crank Arms.  I love the name of it and I love the intense 50 minutes of strength building it offers.

Climbing: For some good indoor climbing workouts, my favorite Spinervals DVDs are The Uphill Grind and Hillacious.  They both do a good job of giving you some tough climb-simulation intervals that really work you hard.  It’s no replacement for doing real climbs on real roads, but these will get you some good climb training on those days where your favorite climb is still covered in ice and snow!

Anaerobic training: For some flat out anaerobic training, the two videos I end up training to most are Have Mercy and Muscle Breakdown.  I don’t do these more than once or twice a week and I’d recommend that if you do either of these, plan on doing a recovery ride the next day.  These are tough workouts that you should do during the strength building phase in your training schedule.

General fitness training:  For my quick fitness type training, I usually use the Fitness 2.0 DVD and when I’m really short on time I fall back on the Time Savers DVD.  I don’t use either of these much, but I usually take them with me when I’m traveling for business and I know I won’t have much time to train.  Fitness 2.0 is a short session of about 45 minutes, and the Time Savers DVD is a series of 3 30-minute workouts.  Good focused workouts if you’re super short on time.

Here’s a sample of what Spinverals DVDs look like:

Carmichael Training Systems Train Right DVDs

I own four of CTS’s Train Right DVDs and I use each one of them for specific training needs.  My favorite two are the Time Trial and Climbing DVDs.  They’re pretty focused and relatively intense.  Both DVDs are all about improving your steady state/climbing lactate threshold and time trialing and climbing cadence.  Chris Carmichael does a good job in both videos and offers some good advice during the interval sets.  I use both of these DVD’s regularly during my climbing phase of my training season even when I have the opportunity to get out on the road.  They’re a great supplement to road training.

The other two CTS DVDs that I use to varying degrees are Cycling for Fitness and Criterium.  Being that I’m not really racing crits these days, I barely use the Criterium one anymore.  But it is really good at getting your legs used to lots of pace changes and building repeatable high power efforts.  I use Cycling for Fitness in conjunction with the Spinervals Aero Base Builder series during my aerobic base building phase.  It’s a good steady state workout that is pretty easy to fit into your aero base phase.

Epic Planet

Allen Jones from Epic Planet recently sent me three DVDs from their Epic Rides series.  These are a little different from the coached training DVDs from Spinervals and CTS, but I liked them a lot.  The video portion of the presentation is some well shot video out on the road on some of the most well known and scenic rides in the U.S.  The three that I got to check out were in Vermont (climbing the Appalachian Gap), Acadia (Bar Harbor/Acadia National Park in Maine) and Tuscon (Mt. Lemmon Climb and Saguaro National Park).  The three virtual rides vary in training time from 45 minutes for the Vermont ride, 60 minutes for the Acadia ride, and 115 for the Tuscon rides.  All three videos livened up my training sessions with some really nice scenery and the feeling of really riding on the road.  Plus, if you go to the Epic Planet website, you can download training guides for each of the videos.  The training guides offer pretty good workouts, but you’ll have to coach yourself.  I’ve actually worked it out where I can play the CTS or Spinervals audio to go along with the pleasant video from Epic Planet to have the best of both worlds…a good audio coached session and nice visual scenery.

Another way I’ve used the Epic Planet videos is during my indoor lactate threshold sessions.  To measure my lactate threshold, I do about a 15 minute warm up followed by an all out 30 minute ride. I take my average heart rate from the last 20 minutes of my 30-minute all out and use that as my LTHR for my next two weeks of training.  During the early season, I do these tests indoors on my trainer and they are BORING! But, I’ve put the Epic Planet DVDs on during these sessions and it makes them slightly more bearable!

Here’s a sample of the Epic Rides DVDs featuring the Tucson ride:

The Sufferfest

The guys at The Sufferfest also sent me a video recently and I’d have to say, it’s interesting.  This one is not quite like any of the others I’ve described.  The video they sent me, The Downward Spiral,  is basically  a compilation of different cycling events from classics like Paris-Roubaix to things like bolting down a downhill mountain bike course.  The video is quirky at times but interesting (and truth be told, I’m not huge on MTB at all, so the MTB sections were kind of lost on me).  But, it was a good change of pace from the usual gang of folks sitting on their bikes on indoor trainers.  The video also includes a decent interval workout that’ll get your heart pumping.  I’ve use this one a few times this year just to break up the monotony of doing the same few videos every week.  The thing that this one really has going for is a pumping soundtrack.  If you’re into the harder side of the alt-rock world, you’ll dig this soundtrack.  It includes bands like Phantom Black, Deatheletric, the Watermarks and more.

Here’s a sampling of what The Sufferfest looks like:

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