Yes, I would be concerned.

Unless I'm training for race specificity, like doing intervals, or long-ride simulations, I don't ride in the aerobars. This includes 95% of the trainer time. Why? Because the aerobars suck and are uncomfortable compared to sitting up. And I do pretty well out on the road racing. So don't worry about it. Just ride however you're most comfortable, and be sure you put in the right amount of training to be comfortable racing in them and pushing the right amount of power.

Also, this is why a lot of athletes train on the road bike and race on the tri bike.

Riding on the trainer is not the same as riding outside. The trainer & front block are doing all the work to keep the bike upright. You are just spinning without the normal side to side "give" that you have outside. You are not engaging a lot of the same core muscle groups. I have a similar problem where I am uncomfortable on the trainer & even get hand numbness more easily than when I am outside.

To me, the trainer is a necessary evil. It does little to improve your bike skills, but can help you improve your stamina & strength. Kind of like running on a treadmill instead of running outside. When you run outside, your body gets in a groove & paces you. On a treadmill, you set it to run at a 7:30 pace & just mind numbingly keep up.

I have the same issue. Aero position is very comfortable outdoors, but on the trainer, aero becomes uncomfortable around tempo/Z3 and unbearable above threshold. I do the majority of my bike training on the trainer year-round and spend the majority of that time out of aero position. I'm sure you'll hear different opinions in this thread, but I have found that work on the trainer out of aero is still very effective at building fitness.


No, because if I forced myself to hold aero position on the trainer, my workouts would be lower intensity and I would also hate life.

I would be concerned about going into a race with very little time in aero position. I wouldn't worry for off-season training. As races approach, I just make sure that I get some time in aero (preferably outdoors) to acclimate.


Most people find that power is lower on the trainer. Many people find that power is a bit lower in aero position. I have found that, for me, these two effects roughly cancel out. So power on the trainer out of aero position is roughly equivalent to power outdoors in aero position. I would assume that outdoors and out of aero would yield the highest power numbers..

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Same opinion and situation as Cody here, minus the professional level success backing my words ;)

Oh how I needed this thread! I've worked myself up to an hour 3x per week on the trainer and I get out of aero for 1 minute every 10. If I'm doing 30 minutes, I can stay in aero, otherwise, it's just a morale suck. Out on the road, I can stay there for a couple of hours with no problem.

I was thinking I might have been wasting time or doing something wrong if I couldn't stay in aero the whole time, but this thread has given some insight that that might not be the case.

twomarks

I ride my trainer 1 hour per day, 7 days a week. I am out of the aerobars 99% of the time. Who cares, just not comfortable in the aerobars. And when I was forcing myself
to do it, I started to have real back issues so I stopped.

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As others have already told you, it doesn't matter much. Try raising the front of the bike a little.

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So the overall output of this thread is

"Its OK not to trainer ride in aero"

Can I take this 1 more step and say

"Its OK to not trainer ride on your tri bike, a road bike is good enuff"

Or is too much trainer time on a road bike going to screw up future tri bike perf?

Have you been professionally fitted? I know you have no comfort issues while riding outside, but staying completely stationary in one position (i.e. without the balancing motion you put forth while riding outside) might be one factor to consider.

Also, make sure you put enough (but not too much) height on the front wheel (a book or something similar underneath the wheel). If I don't have a level bike I feel like I'm sliding forwards which is very uncomfortable.

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Strava

I think you should be able to ride in your aero bars most of your ride if:
1- you are fitted right
2- you have a good trainer.

Problem with the conventional trainers is your bike isn't moving with you so you will feel a lot more pressure from the seat. Also, try directing a fan toward your seat as well. The amount of sweat you have in that area can make things very uncomfortable.

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Is this based on evidence or conjecture? In particular the underlined part.

If you have a link to a study or paper I'd be very interesting in reading it. I'm not claiming you're wrong (the trainer feels different to me too) but I'm a little skeptical of this particular claim.

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I do about 95% of my time on the trainer in aero. That said, on the trainer I get a lot more saddle pressure than when I ride outdoors so I get out of the saddle for about 20secs every 10mins. Sometimes I do this while keeping my arms on the aero bars and sometimes I get on my basebar and open up my hip angle a bit.

Initially, aero on the trainer sucked. However, I made a lot of tweaks to my position and my equipment... and sucked it up a bit... until I could make it tolerable. The last piece of the puzzle I'm missing is the "perfect" saddle.

I'm also on a computrainer now though I had a kurt kinetic RR. Honestly, it was more comfortable to ride for extended periods than a trainer that's "locked in".

What's funny is that I do like 95% of my riding in aero because sitting up isn't comfortable for me. As others have said maybe it's fit, maybe it's other things but I don't think I would be too worried about making sure you are in aero now, focus on the workout and do the workout the most comfortable way possible. Plenty of time to be uncomfortable once the season gets closer.

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Personally, I have no documentation. Just personal conjecture from talking through my numbness issues on the trainer with my coach. But if you think about it, when you ride, does your bike sway freely side to side or does it stay rigidly upright the whole time? That answer alone should tell you that the movements on the trainer vs the road alone are different & you are activating (or not activating) certain core muscles to counteract that movement.

I'm not saying that the trainer is bad, I'm saying that it is not a 100% representation of being on the road.

Go look at the Kurt Kinetic Rock and Roll. It was made specifically to address this. They even say on their site that typical trainers do not engage the core to keep stable like you do when on the road. Of course, this is product & marketing, so if you can find a study by Kurt, that may be a good place to start,

I'm in the same boat, but it doesn't bother me.

I usually will ride sufferfest videos, depending on the video I'll do the warmup and threshold/sweetspot work in the aerobars, but as things get harder I either start coming out of aero to do the sprints/intervals or on the recovery when I'm seeing stars. For some reason the TTT at the end of HHNF usually ends up being done in aero no matter how bagged I am at that point.

If it's just recovering and watching TV, I can do that in the aero no problem.

Outside I don't have any issues riding in aero, I actually find it more comfortable than sitting up.

I bet I could make aero on the trainer a lot more comfortable with some tweaks to my position. But I'd rather optimize my position for outdoor riding. I think there's actually a significant difference between the two. One year, I built up a tri bike over the winter and had it set up very comfortably for the trainer. But once I got outside in the spring, the position felt all wrong. I had to change saddle tilt, saddle fore/aft and pad height. I would even say that my ideal saddle for the trainer probably differs from my ideal saddle for outdoors.

I think TunaBoo has a solution above: use a road bike on the trainer, at least for certain workouts or phases of training. That's my plan as soon as I get a PM on my road/cross bike.

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Appreciate all the feedback.

I have two tri bikes. One on trainer, and one for outside. The bikes are completely different, but set up is fairly close. I might actually take that into consideration, and try to have a more "trainer" focused set up on the one that is dedicated to Compu trainer.

For now I will just keep cranking away. Wow riding with watts make all workouts hard, LOL. Even EN rides are way harder than before. It's all good as long as FTP keeps climbing. So far up to 370, but I'm also tall, 6'8" so watts/kg aren't that spectacular.

Now if I could just learn to swim.

Thank freaking god that I dont have to ride on a trainer so my take on "how to ride trainer" is to do it for the shortest amount of time possible and that's not easy because riding on a trainer is so icredibly boring that time just stands still.

Here's some food for thought.

Did a study with 6 riders on ftp gains over a 1 month period. 4 riders in road position, 2 riders in tt position. The road riders on average had a 5.5% bigger improvement if I can recall correctly.

Therefore, I always have people train in road position until about 2 months out.

My next study will be on adaption time to tt position and power carry-over

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And that is why I ONLY ride a road bike on the Computrainer. Done it that way for years. Seems to work for me. I transition seamlessly to tri bike (outdoors) in the late spring. YMMV.

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I wanna go fast!

Cody, don't you have a CT ? If so, why do you need a PM ?
Just curious

I usually ride my indoor trainer rides 50% aero, 50% sitting, standing for 1 minute every 15 minutes just to mix it up. It is easier to hold the watts in the upright position. As I get closer to springtime I will do most intervals in the aero position.

Would you not be tempted to widen the study to cover more riders? Without seeing the data and knowing the details I would be concerned that: maybe one of the road riders had a big increase in FTP because the month training was different to previous training (e.g used to do LSD all the time and know he's doing hard intervals), maybe one of the TT riders hadn't slept well and his improvements didn't really show in the test, if the absolute FTP improvement over the month was small (e.g. 10 watts, then 5.5% of that increase could simply be in measuring - ~0.55 watts).

I think the fact that you are testing is great, although I'd be careful about drawing a specific conclusion without further details.