Deep Dive: Indoor Cycling Space Guide
After a delayed onset, winter is finally here in Salt Lake City, and so is indoor riding season. If you’re ready to take the plunge, whether starting from scratch or building on your hard-won fitness from the 2025 season, Contender has you covered.
In our latest Deep Dive, we go all in on optimizing your indoor cycling space with a step-by-step guide, from space selection (step 1) and best-fit trainers from Wahoo (step 2) to stylish and innovative gear organization from tons (step 3) to those finishing touches (step 4) that make all the difference. Already have one aspect of your indoor space dialed, but not another? Feel free to jump to the section that meets you where you are.
Bottom line, our goal here is pretty simple: to help you elevate your trainer sessions from loath to love, and to enable year-round fitness and race day readiness, no matter the format or discipline.
Step 1: Pick Your Space
This is a quick one, but if completely new to indoor training, selecting the right indoor space is a key input to setting yourself up for success.
Tight or spacious, single family home or studio apartment, a few key criteria can make all the difference. Specifically, we recommend shooting for the following:
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Dimensions: if possible, 10 feet x 5 feet is an ideal footprint for an indoor cycling space, allowing room for a mat, your bike and trainer, a laptop stand, and a fan. If lucky enough to have an abundance of space, 12 x 6 is the luxury move, while 8 x 4 is the bare minimum we’d recommend, with the caveat that you might feel a little boxed in. A higher ceiling is great when possible, but if not, aim for at least 7-8 feet.
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Ventilation: Choose a space with a window, door, or at least a clear airflow path. As you’ll quickly discover, indoor training produces significantly more heat (and sweat) than outdoor riding.
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Surface & Stability: A level floor is essential for trainer stability and minimizing vibration transfer to the rest of the home.
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Noise (and Odor?) Awareness: Garages and basements offer the best isolation for sounds and (ahem) smells, but if crunched for space, living rooms or home offices can work with mats and smart fan placement. Trust us on this one, and your family or roommates will thank you.
Step 2: Select an Indoor Bike Trainer (Featuring Wahoo)
At Contender, we curate Wahoo trainers because for us, they’re the most proven indoor platform, delivering the best blend of realism, reliability, connectivity, and long-term durability, across a wide range of needs and budgets. Depending on your needs, wants, and budget, the options below offer a compelling solution for every type of rider:
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Wahoo KICKR Core 2: The best bang for your buck, the KICKR Core 2 has all the bells and whistles that most cyclists will want, including wifi and bluetooth connectivity, quiet operation, reasonable weight (~40 lbs), up to 1800 watts power output, and grade simulation ranging from -10 to 16%. Comes equipped with an 11-speed cassette.
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Wahoo KICKR V6: Wahoo’s flagship trainer and our upgrade pick, the KICKR V6 builds on the Core 2 with faster connectivity, increased power output (up to 2,200 watts), better accuracy (+/- 1%), odometer mileage tracking, and an enhanced ride feel, made possible by subtle yet safe side-to-side movement, which is ideal for bigger sprints and climbing efforts, where you might dance on those pedals a bit.
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Wahoo KICKR Shift Bike: The main appeal of the KICKR Shift? Never having to remove your rear wheel. As a standalone, fully integrated indoor bike, this bike has a “set it and forget it” quality that offers the ultimate in convenience, with your indoor bike and your regular bike (road or gravel) always on, ready to go in a moment’s notice, for those weeks when mother nature rolls out a 20-degree morning one day (trainer!), and a 45-degree morning the next (outdoors!) Features all the same tech as the V6, plus -15 to 20% grade simulation, and comes stock with a saddle, cranks, and cockpit, all of which can be customized at the rider level.
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Bonus: If you want to up the ante on your ride feel even further, the Wahoo KICKR Climb is a slick upgrade to your trainer, as the device raises or lowers the front end of your bike in accordance with your virtual course, with gradient changes ranging from -10 to 20%.
Step 3: Organize & Curate Your Setup (Featuring tons)
Among the many reasons we like Danish company tons?
Their products take the edge off the well-known drudgery of indoor cycling by elevating one’s space and overall vibe, made possible by thoughtful gear organization and a bright, stylish pop of industrial design. If looking for ways to shift your pain cave from clutter fest or drab white walls to an intentional, inviting vibe, tons is the move.
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tons Classic Table II: A height-adjustable, rock-solid laptop stand designed specifically for indoor cycling. Handsome as hell, the Classic Table is also highly functional, including a hook to hang a towel, and a stand to vertically prop your smartphone, ensuring you won’t miss important texts or calls. Perfect for Zwift, TrainerRoad, or Rouvy, or for streaming your favorite TV show while you hammer out the miles.
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tons Rack D (Shoes, 2x Glasses, Helmet, Tray): A modern, compact organizer that stores outdoor ride essentials–helmet, shoes, and 2x sunglasses–while also elevating your space for trainer sessions. If looking for the ultimate in grab n’ go gear storage, you’d be hard pressed to do better than this guy.
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tons Bike Wall Mount: Have a rig that you love to admire, be it road, gravel or MTB? Need to get your bikes off the ground floor to make room for your trainer setup? Or simply looking for a proverbial carrot over the winter months, reminding you of the joy of outdoor riding and why you’re putting in the work everyday at 6am? Then consider the tons Bike Wall Mount. Clean, simple, and minimalist, this mount organizes your space in a hurry while turning your bike into an art piece for all to see (or if we’re honest, maybe just you?).
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Additional tons Products: In addition to the options above, tons has other solutions that might fit the bill for your space and needs. Specifically, check out the Wheel Hanger or Short Bar Rack (2x helmets, 2x glasses)
Step 4: Bring It Home with Finishing Touches
Last but not least, little upgrades and finishing touches can dramatically change the comfort, quality, and intrinsic motivation of your indoor cycling setup. For the Contender team, we’re especially big fans of the following:
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Cooling & Ventilation: A $50 box fan from Home Depot or Lowe’s works great, but the Wahoo Headwind is our upgrade pick. Compact, powerful, and automatically adjusts airflow based on speed or heart rate for a more realistic feel.
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Floor Protection: A yoga mat is the budget option, but can be less stable, and more likely to bunch or move during a big effort. Conversely, a Wahoo mat offers better stability, sweat protection, and noise damping.
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Sweat & Equipment Management: Just like the gym, mopping up your sweat and disinfecting with wipes after each use is the way to go with your indoor cycling setup. Your gear will look and smell better, and will last longer too.
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Cold Towels: Business class luxury meets indoor suffer fest? Yes, please. A cold towel right out of a mini fridge, or frozen the night before and thawed out while riding, is a surprisingly luxurious gift to yourself after a sweaty session.
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Recovery Drink (Skratch Labs): After a dawn patrol suffer fest, it’s time to treat ‘yoself. And why not do it the smart way, with a Skratch Labs Sport Recovery Drink Mix? Available in a variety of tasty flavors, this drink mix features a carb-to-protein ratio that is designed for glycogen replenishment, plus electrolytes to replace what you lost on the bike.
Learn More
Ready to get indoorsy? Interested in curating your own pain cave for the months ahead, but not sure where to start?
We’d love to help. Whether you need a Wahoo trainer or simply want to elevate your space with a tons product or two, we’re here to answer your questions and help you get rolling.
Stop by the shop any time, email us here, or give us a call at (801) 364-0344.
