The new genre of “virtual cycling” DVDs for indoor cycling training is picking up steam with Global Ride’s release of Speed & Power in Italy. The release is obviously timed well in advance of the upcoming winter indoor training season in the U.S. Starting with some of the early efforts of Endurance Films on behalf of the Spinning® company, Mad Dogg athletics, and then followed by probably the biggest producer of indoor cycling training DVDs, Troy Jocobson of Spinerval fame, this new type of training film is gaining popularity.

After these two behemoth’s in the training DVD business came two new comers to this current trend in indoor training; EpicPlanet and Global Ride. By the middle of 2009, there were as many as 13 virtual cycling DVDs among these 4 companies, and with the release of the first ride from Italy, the total comes to 14. In fact, with the release of this Italy DVD, Global Ride joins both larger companies with a total offering of 4 separate virtual cycling titles.

While these may be the companies targeting cycling training very specifically, it should be noted that the genre of “travelogue” videos has been around since possibly the early days of National Geographic Magazine. Probably one of the oldest ones focused on indoor cycling is Bike-O-Vision (affectionately referred to as “car-o-vision” by some of us in the cycling industry). While not structured for training as much as the companies mentioned in the first paragraph, they do provide more “road to ride”. More recently though, I have also been made aware of a company called America’s Best Bike Rides. The offerings here are somewhere in between the very structured & more difficult workouts of the first four companies, but definitely more training oriented than the travelogues of Bike-O-Vision. The good news in all of this is that there are many options for doing lots of unique indoor rides – literally, all over the world – without the cost and inconvenience of travel.

There are a number of reasons why this approach to indoor training has not been the norm; most notably because they simply haven’t been structured and oriented towards the avid cyclist or indoor cycling / Spinning® class. However, with new titles becoming available with greater frequency each year, it’s likely that we may be on the brink of the “new norm” for cycling training indoors. Cycling Fusion was started because we see the industry on the verge of “Indoor Cycling 2.0″ as John Macgowan from the Indoor Cycle Instructor Podcast puts it. Upgrading tools on the bike is the critical first step in making what we do inside translatable to the outside. Now, if we add virtual cycling and other similar media components, it will all come together to make the experience more compelling, more motivating… hey, maybe even more FUN!?! What could be better than achieving your training objectives, while having a blast doing it.