Are you looking for more cycling motivation in your training?
Riding outdoors is great and fun. You get some fresh air, and the passing scenery creates interest in your ride. But it’s not always that straightforward in practice. The weather can turn, and there can be weeks of rain and cold, or the traffic could be crazy where you live. Sometimes there isn’t enough time to kit up, get the bike and nutrition ready and head out to your training route. The need at times to drive to a cycling location can also be time-consuming.
So what are the alternatives to riding outside?
Indoor training is a great way to overcome all those obstacles for recreational and avid cyclists. Your bike and trainer are always ready, awaiting a pleasant training session with many advantages and benefits. This activity makes one pedal constantly with few breaks or stops as you’d have outside, allowing your heart rate to drop often. Studies have shown that you work 25% harder and get a bigger bang for your buck by training indoors, where you can choose not to freewheel as you’d do outside. You keep a constant heart rate and watts by turning the pedals to keep moving along the route or workout. For that reason, doing an FTP test is usually far more practical indoors as there are fewer distractions, pedaling is constant, and you can put your head down and go!
Indoor cycling is not what it used to be years back when it would be a chore and drag to force yourself to pedal for up to an hour, if possible, because any more time spent doing so was unbearable. One would watch cycling on TV or follow a training routine on a piece of paper that your coach asked you to follow. Boring!!
Here are some excellent tips to keep you interested and motivated to train indoors.
These questions may come to mind: But what about boredom? I’m getting fit, but how long can I keep up this monotonous regime or keep up the regular sessions without losing interest? Those days are long gone! Today your indoor cycling involves exploring and experiencing actual routes from all over the world, with some real-life simulations and no boredom throughout the journey.
Welcome to the ROUVY app, which provides one with a solution and becomes immediately habit-forming in a good way! Rouvy is a cycling app you can install on your phone, tablet, laptop, PC or iMac paired with your trainer. The app brings the great outdoors into your home. Pick and choose routes from around the world to ride or race on. You can also enjoy workouts with a video background loop to make harsh or recovery sessions more enjoyable. But, you ask, what if you don’t always like riding alone all the time? That can also be demotivating sometimes.
How can ROUVY become social, a habit and help you push to the limits?
On ROUVY, you don’t have to ride alone if you don’t want to. With your avatar as an overlay to the video, you can ride, race or participate in social and non-competitive group rides with others. If you are one of the more relaxed and casual cyclists, take part in the group rides and get the feeling of riding together in the real world, social riding is great fun too.
There is also an option to add virtual partners or your other past times you did for that course to try and improve each time. Add as many as you like for a fun and fast challenge. The ghost rider feature is another way to add others in the form of bots to your ride. You can add from 1 to 10 or disable them. These are there to keep one company along the route.
Riding with ROUVY can quickly become addictive and a good training habit and routine you want to keep doing as you have fun while getting fit. Racing on Rouvy can also help you push harder than you’d even push outside because of fewer dangers and distractions and the will to compete with other avatars on the screen. Keep in mind that every avatar represents a person in real life. Try to get in contact with them, and you can compete together in this virtual world as in real life. A lot of fun is awaiting you.
ROUVY Career - make cycling fun and rewarding
The ROUVY Career is another fun and motivating way to stay on course and keeps you earning coins and rewards each time you get on the bike. Whether it’s your first 100km, 1000km or hamburger calories burned, you reach a milestone along the way with coins and achievements earned with every pedal stroke. Each achievement is a small reward for your efforts. You can achieve an accomplishment no matter how fast, slow, or far you go. Also, the Career offers a way to climb to higher levels and reach the ultimate goal of Legend. Achieving Legend level is no walk in the park and requires many hours of dedication in the saddle to work your way up the ranks. Consistency is vital, and the Career will undoubtedly keep one cycling regularly, forming an ongoing healthy habit. Results you can gain from riding on an app like ROUVY:
- Reduce perceived exertion due to the fun distraction
- Improve your mood
- Increase endurance, strength and stamina
- Distraction from pain in your legs
- You can ride for longer
But what if I like riding outdoors and want to earn coins for my Career simultaneously?
ROUVY will push you through all year long, whether winter or summer. You get your coins and badges for your inside and outside rides. If you’d like to keep earning coins in your Career while enjoying the fresh air, sunny weather and time with your local club friends, that’s also not a problem. Enable cloud settings to automatically import rides seamlessly via one of the latest Garmin products or record the activity from your Strava app on your phone or Apple Watch. These will sync with the app and add coins to your career account. Other devices such as Wahoo are on the future development roadmap.
The ROUVY app is a fun way to keep one motivated while riding indoors and will see your fitness and strength improve naturally without even realizing that you are trying and riding for over that hour inside!