What we listen to: How the CW team stay motivated on their indoor trainers

While live power outputs, avatars, training-plan-bar-graphs and virtual worlds keep our eyes focused on the screens in front of us when we're on our indoor trainers, we still need something to listen to.

So for Indoor Training Week we asked the CW team what fills their ears (and sometimes eyes as well) while they're spinning away in solitary confinement in their pain cave. AKA, spare bedroom or garage. From death metal to bakery programs, some of the answers below surprised us.

If it’s an easy ride, I’ll put on a podcast – ideally one long enough that it won’t finish halfway through and leave me sweatily thumbing my phone in search of something else. The trouble is, most long podcasts are intolerable. The tolerable ones tend to be the sprawling political chats on Novara Media, about how capitalism is dooming us all to eternal misery and servitude – which, by comparison, makes serving my pace-setting Zwift master feel almost liberating.

If it’s a hard session, I’ll scan Spotify for an upbeat playlist of maximally mainstream bangers. Lyrical complexity is the enemy here: the catchier the hook, the better. ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd reliably delivers a few extra watts, but without question the adrenaline-spiker par excellence is ‘Don’t Call Me Up’ by Mabel.
David Bradford, Senior editor

For a long time, trainer time was my only TV time. The garage was the only place in the house with a television, so I used my 45-minute to 1-hour sessions to catch up on The Great British Bake Off or Grey’s Anatomy. I also enjoy watching documentaries on the trainer, breaking them up over a few workouts. These days, we have a TV in the living room, so most movies and shows happen there, but I still use trainer time to watch sports or shows my wife isn’t into. For hard sessions, though, it’s just me and the Zwift or Wahoo SYSTM screen.
Anne-Marie Rook, North American editor

It’s heavy metal music for me, and the heavier the better. There’s something about the double kick drum pedal and pig-squealing vocals that really gets me in the mood. I once timed a Zwift race with my playlist so it started on the exact moment Corey Taylor screams “I push my fingers into my eyes” on Slipknot’s ‘Duality’, my cue to give it hell. I saw Slipknot live about a year ago, actually, and half expected the screen behind them to flash up and tell me my second interval effort was about to begin.
Tom Davidson, Senior writer and features coordinator

I have to listen to music when on the trainer. If I'm watching a program, or listening to a podcast that demands my attention I know I'll get distracted and drift from my target wattage. No doubt harking back to some formative nights out in the late 1990s, I usually go for dance music, easily found on the BBC Sounds app via their Dance Anthems or Pace Setter 'Sounds'.

Not only do they play some old classics (Orchid Anthems as I know them, so called thanks to many heady nights out in an old, long lost nightclub in Croydon.) but they introduce me to some new tunes that - now my clubbing days are in the distant past - I wouldn't otherwise hear. Some of these I'll then download and add to my own playlists. And I have to admit to once hitting a prescribed wattage empowered by K-pop Demon Hunters which my eight-year-old regularly forces me to listen to.
Simon Richardson, Editor

What sounds I listen to on the trainer these days depends a lot on what riding I'm planning to do on it. Something involving hard effort – a time trial or something even worse, such as Emily's Short Mix, for example – is going to require a set of tunes that are appropriately rousing. I usually go for something upbeat, melodic, punky and alternative: The Menzingers perhaps, or ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

For more common or garden zone two pedalling, I find the sounds are there to keep me company rather than shove me unremittingly towards the edge of my physical capabilities.

In which case it's usually going to be soulful, bluesy rock, or maybe some sort of functional health podcast – Peter Attia or Rhonda Patrick, for example – allowing me to benefit from an explanation of the exact health-giving processes that are taking place in my body as I carry them out.
James Shrubsall, Senior News & Features Writer