If you're looking for a change of pace from outdoor training for cyclocross, road, or gravel riding, you may have considered various indoor cycling options. You have multiple choices, including studio chains like Cyclebar and SoulCycle, and options for training at home, like the popular Zwift platform. Let's zoom into one option - Cyclebar - and looks at the pros and cons, and whether it makes sense for competitive cyclists to give it a try.
What is Cyclebar?
Cyclebar is a chain of indoor cycling studios with a high-tech feel. Bikes have digital displays with power meters, and stats can be displayed on flat panel TVs. If you already ride outdoors with a Wahoo or Garmin head unit, power meter, heart rate monitor, and so on, you'll feel right at home on a Cyclebar bike.
An instructor guides you through the workout, moving from high cadence to low cadence drills, sprints, and other efforts.
Cyclebar features loud, driving music and unlike riding outdoors, also features upper body choreography and movements in addition to those focusing on your legs.
Which classes are best for more serious cyclists?
Offerings vary from studio to studio, but if you're taking your cycling more seriously you'll likely be interested in the "Performance" or "Classic" format. "Performance", as the name suggests, is more performance-oriented and tends to feature a harder workout and short head-to-head "races" against other attendees.
In the "entry level" classes you might find shared, group stats on the large TVs, showing the average RPM or power output of the entire class as a whole. In the more advanced classes, you may find individual rider stats, with your name showing on those same TVs as riders compete head-to-head.
Cyclebar Pros
If you geek out out stats like power, heart rate, and cadence you'll likely enjoy the indoor cycling workouts at Cyclebar, as the stats are a big part of the experience.
There's also the equipment. Generally, the bikes for indoor cycling feature dual-sided pedals, one for LOOK-style 3 hole cleats and the other for Shimano SPD. So you can bring your familiar outdoor cycling shoes.
It's also great to be able to get a reliable workout no matter if it's raining, snowing, windy, hot or cold outside. And there are no stop signs, stoplights, or traffic. Combine that with the fact that the bikes are "fixed gear style" i.e. no coasting, so you can cram a hard workout into not much time.
Cyclebar is also good if you are time-crunched, as the workouts are short, but intense - most classes are 45 minutes. There can also potentially be a time-saving component outside of the ride itself - no getting dressed in multiple layers, no applying sunscreen, and unlike when riding outdoors when the weather is poor, no painstaking cleaning and lubricating of a wet or muddy bike.
Another key pro is incorporating some upper body and core work, which outdoor cyclists often miss.
Cyclebar Cons
The key con of Cyclebar that power, heart rate, and cadence data can't be synced to other platforms - or even exported from Cyclebar. No, not even a log of your own data in .csv format. This is pretty much unheard of in 2025 where athletes are accustomed to quickly and easily moving data between platforms for logging and analysis - think Strava, Apple Health, Garmin Connect, Intervals.icu and so on. It would be really nice to take workout data from Cyclebar into other platforms but sadly, this doesn't exist.
Cyclebar workouts are also too short to build endurance effectively. This isn't a place for your Zone 2 steady state long rides. At 45 minutes, you'll barely have time to warm up before jumping into intervals and there isn't much cool down time either, perhaps 5 minutes.
It's also worth noting that the environment can be quite loud - think bass-heavy popular music. For some, that might drive them to ride harder, for others, it could be a turn-off. If this is bothersome bring foam earplugs.
Finally, visits can be expensive - in line with what you might pay for a high-end yoga or pilates studio if booked directly. For an alternative manner of booking that's a little more economical, check if your local Cyclebar is available on Classpass or Gympass, if you have access to those programs.
Recommendation
If you're racing cyclocross in particular, you definitely lose some days to dark, rainy, or windy conditions. Cyclebar can be a refreshing change of pace and still allow you to get a workout when the weather isn't conducive to riding outdoors. While Cyclebar isn't a substitute for longer outdoor rides, it can provide a short, but high intensity workout.