Originally Posted by
PeteHski
I don’t know about psychological benefits. For me it’s more the practical benefits of being able to jump on the trainer and do a targeted efficient workout, regardless of weather and terrain.
Me too.
I do occasional structured workouts but mostly when I ride indoors it's just to build volume. This is vaguely related to a recent discussion about Z2.
Put another way, we know smart trainers enable more precise dosage; the question is "does training on a fast-response smart trainer produce better results than on a cheaper smart trainer with laggy response, or a dumb trainer with load determined solely by wheel speed?" Quick responding smart trainers are more fun to train on, and that promotes more volume but if you control for volume does it matter how that volume is generated?
It seems to me that the proliferation of smart trainers has enabled hyper-structured power-based training; there wasn't an existing demand for hyper-structured power-based training before the advent of smart trainers. Smart trainers created that demand.