Originally Posted by
couldwheels
I have actually become a lot better indoor training with too low saddle. You're right about the "training effect". I won't recommend this training style ofc. I only did it because the crank on the trainer is quite short compared to my outdoor bike - have to make the top pedal position the same between the short crank trainer and my outdoor bike by lowering the saddle on the short crank trainer.
It did result to big improvement on the outdoor bike. I went faster by more than 10% on climbs without burning my legs.
I'll keep a lookout for the Garmin 800, sounds cheap enough thanks! Won't be soon as big maintenance spending is coming up on tires, brake pads, chain, disc rotors, etc.
I spend 5 minutes on stretching, 10 minutes warmup. No more weighed strength training for me at least for this year. I have hurt my core muscles a few times and set me back a week each time! Weighed training was terrific if I didn't hurt my back! I think my back muscles have atrophied a bit for being a couch potato most of my life before I took cycling. I'm trying to build core muscle strength slowly with body-weight core exercises and ofc, low cadence, high resistance drills on the trainer.
I agree with jonathanf2 up there. My wife has 151mm cranks on our tandem and 165mm on her trainer bike. She doesn't really notice the difference and she's 73. My proper size cranks would be 165, but all my singles have 170s and the tandem 175s. It's all fine. You're right about the high effort low cadence work. It helps a lot. IMO a good bit of training time can be usefully spent riding outside the envelope. So another very useful thing you can do is very high cadence work, like 115-120 rpm, or however fast you can pedal without bouncing, in a very low gear so you don't get your HR too high and just pedal like crazy for as long as your legs can take it, like up to 40'. I do that once a week starting in the fall and until February. But any time is good.