The new year is the perfect time to start getting ready for a great season on the bike and indoor training is the most time-efficient way to train. Follow our great tips to make your winter indoors the best one yet!
All bets are off over Christmas. But once you’ve finished off the turkey, and the chocs, and the cream liqueur, it’s time to waddle back to the bike and get some hours in so you can be ready for a great season of riding. Indoor training has some big advantages at the start of the year. The winter weather saps your resolve and eats all the moving parts of your bike, and while you’re busy at work catching up on those two weeks where you didn’t know what day it was, it’s also a very time-efficient way to train. Got a spare hour? You can probably spend all but five minutes of that riding.
Zero to Zwift – app store (credit: road.cc)
Zwift is the biggest online training community, and at this time of year you’ll find tens of thousands of like-minded riders training and racing on the routes of the 12 different worlds. If you’ve never tried Zwift then you can try it free for up to 30 days, so why not give it a go in 2026? To help you on your journey, here are five tips to get the most out of your new year’s resolution to be your best!
Tip 1: Upgrade your rig
Zwift will work with more or less any trainer setup: so long as you have a speed sensor of some sort, you’re good to go. But you’ll get the best out of your time indoors on a smart trainer, and there’s never been a better time to get a new rig.
2025 Wahoo Kickr Core 2 Zwift cog (credit: Zwift)
What’s a smart trainer?
Simply put, it’s a trainer that can talk to a training app on your device. It transmits your power to the game, and it can change the resistance to mimic the gradient on the road you’re riding, or hit a power target when you’re doing an interval session. A smart trainer makes riding online much more immersive and enjoyable.
Smart trainers have come a long way in the decade or so they’ve been widely available. The first time we reviewed the Wahoo KICKR, back in 2015, it was a thousand pounds just for the trainer, and you had to add your bike to that. Right now you can get the Wahoo KICKR Core with Zwift Cog for just £449.99 – £50 off RRP – which offers great ride feel and virtual shifting to minimise wear to your bike’s transmission.
Zwift ride deal (credit: road.cc)
Get the Zwift ride for just £899!
Then complete smart bikes came along, and they’re fantastic as a permanent setup: there’s no wear to your outdoor bike, and you can easily adjust the frame for different riders. The main downside was the cost, but when the Zwift Ride arrived in 2024 it offered full Zwift compatibility in a dedicated smart bike for not much over a grand. We really liked it when we reviewed it: it’s super easy to set up and all the controls you need are right there at your fingertips. The big news right now is that the Zwift Ride is currently at its lowest ever price in the UK: you can get it until 5 January for just £899 , less than just a smart trainer would have cost you a few years back. It’s a serious bit of kit for the money and a worthy upgrade to your setup. If you’re committed to putting the hours into Zwift in your spare room/garage/shed then it’s well worth checking out.
Get the Zwift Ride for just £899!
Zwift ramp test (credit: road.cc)
Tip 2: Benchmark yourself
One of the best things about having a smart setup like the Zwift Ride is that it’ll give you repeatable power numbers that allow you to check your progress. Not everything is about Number Go Up, but having reliable numbers in Zwift means that workouts will be tailored to your fitness, and you’ll be able to enter races with riders of a similar ability. Zwift’s Baseline is a four-workout series that benchmarks your power over four intervals (5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 20 minutes) to give you an overview of your fitness.
Zwift Progress report Nov 2025 (credit: road.cc)
You can see those numbers on Zwift’s new Progress Report screen along with a whole bunch of other metrics: you can track your progress in weekly goals, see your career totals and how far you are from moving to the next level There’s a training score too, which represents the intensity, duration and frequency or your riding as a single score that’s easy to track.
TransConHungry-Scales.jpg (credit: road.cc)
Don’t forget the other number!
We all know that weight is pretty important in cycling, and I’m not talking about your wheels: if you can stay off the pies and get your weight down then your watts per kilo will improve, even if your power stays the same. That’ll mean you climb faster, so if you’re setting yourself a goal like climbing the Alpe du Zwift in under an hour then losing the timber is just as effective as increasing your power.
Tip 3: Get organised
There’s no doubt that having a plan and sticking to it is the way to see improvements in your fitness. Zwift has loads of ways to add a bit of rigour to your indoor time, so let’s touch on some of them here.
Zero to Zwift fit phone (credit: road.cc)
Download the Zwift Companion app
The Zwift companion is a super useful addition to your home training setup, and it’s free. You can search for events, track your progress, join Zwift clubs and find friends. You can message other riders when you’re riding, and it’s super useful when you’re racing as a second screen to track where other riders are.
Zwift FTP Builder plan (credit: road.cc)
Pick a training plan
There are hundreds of workouts on Zwift and it’s easy to use up training minutes trying to find the one you fancy. With a training plan you don’t have to choose: just work through the sessions every week and you’ll come out of the end a better rider. There are all kinds of plans, but for starters look at FTP builder or Back to Fitness, or Active Off Season if you’re planning to spend some long hours indoors!
Ride with Pacer Bots
There are always a happy gang of pacer bots in Zwift: robots that ride at a certain pace that you can join at any time you like, for as long as you like. Pick an easy one for a recovery day, or go one or two above what you can sustain and see how long you can hang on for! The new Teleport function in Zwift means you can zap back on again if you get dropped.
Zero to Zwift fit Computer (credit: road.cc)
Get acquainted with the home screen
Another way to save time when you’re picking a ride is to use the Home screen. At the top in the For You section there’s always a mix of suggested workouts and routes, and below that there are a bunch of challenges you can attack. Lower down the Workout Anytime section has a curated list of workouts you can try. Events that are starting soon are also listed on the Home screen if you fancy riding with others.
Tip 4: Get comfortable indoors, and more powerful outdoors
One of the great things about a smart bike like the Zwift Ride – did we mention it’s just £899 right now? – is that it gives you an opportunity to work on your position on the bike. The first thing you’ll probably do is set it up to exactly mimic your road bike, but let’s be honest: changing your position on a bike can be an expensive game of trial and error. When you’re riding indoors, it’s so much easier to try things out. Here are some tweaks you can make to see if they improve your on-bike comfort…
2024 Zwift Ride – seat post.jpg (credit: road.cc)
Saddle position
There are two things you can play with here: the saddle height and the saddle layback (how far it is behind the bottom bracket). Personally, my experiments with saddle height indoors have led me to drop it by nearly a centimetre from where I thought it should be, which has hugely improved my comfort outdoors after some quite serious back issues in the past.
2025 Bike fit cleat position set up (credit: road.cc)
Cleat position
Most of us don’t think too much about cleat position: somewhere in the middle will do. But many knee problems are linked to cleat position, and most people aren’t symmetrical. If you have knee pain in one knee, try adjusting your cleat angle and fore/aft position to see if you can improve your comfort.
2024 Zwift Ride – adjustment.jpg (credit: road.cc)
Bar height/width and stem length
Bar height is easy to play with on a static bike like the Zwift Ride, and so is stem length. You can play with more or less aggressive setups and change the reach to the bars: if you’re planning to race in the summer you can see how you get on with a more aero position, for example, or get yourself used to it before the season starts. Bar width isn’t as easy – you still have to change the bars – but you can experiment with cheap bars at different widths before dropping a pile on some fancy carbon ones.
Zwift Racing League (credit: road.cc)
Tip 5: Get into racing
Nothing gets the blood flowing like being in a race! There is a full calendar of racing on Zwift, and if you have a few like-minded friends of a similar ability you could even enter a team into the Zwift Racing League: round 3 starts soon! Here are some top tips if you’re starting out on your indoor racing career.
Categories and racing score
There are two ways that races are categorised. The original letter categories (A-E) are based on your watts per kilo, and your Racing Score is more complicated and goes up and down with your results. Either way, you should be able to find races with riders you can stay with.
Zwift racing UCI Women’s eSports Championship TLBVelo photography @ TLBVelo.com_ (credit: road.cc)
Go hard from the off!
We all got dropped the first time. Zwift races start hard, so as the clock ticks down to zero wind your trainer up for the start. If you wait until the gun, everyone will be up the road and it’s a long way back from there.
Pick races that suit you (or don’t)
We’ve all got our strengths: mine is to hide in the pack on a flat course and trying to muscle a podium spot in the final sprint. If you’re a skinny lightweight mountain goat you might fancy something lumpier: there are regular races up the Alpe du Zwift, for example, which might be your idea of a good time; it’s certainly not mine! On the other hand, trying to stay in a race that doesn’t suit you is a great way of working on your weaknesses.
Zwift draft indicator December 2025 update (credit: Zwift)
Suck those wheels!
Just like in real life, if you’re stuck on the front the you’re going to be doing a lot more work than if you’re hiding in the pack. Zwift’s new drafting indicator gives you a simple to understand graphical representation of how much you’re benefiting from the riders in front. Keep it in the blue as much as you can, and save that effort for your big attack!
I hope you’ve found these tips helpful! If you’re looking to get on Zwift, or upgrade your current setup, head over to the Zwift Sale where the Zwift Ride smart bike is only £799 until Jan 5, and you can get £50 off a Wahoo KICKR Core with Zwift Cog too.
Shop the Zwift sale until 5 January