When the weather is too nasty for you to train outside, take heart: you can accomplish amazing things indoors with one trusty piece of equipment - an exercise bicycle. Perched on a bike in a warm room, perhaps with your favourite programme on a nearby TV, you can boost your VO2max, raise your lactate threshold, strengthen your legs, become a more powerful athlete and burn prodigious quantities of fat, even if you are not a regular biker. You don't need a sophisticated computerised machine to accomplish these stunning physiological feats; anything with pedals and a wheel will do. Best of all, you can prepare yourself specifically for your sport, even if it bears no resemblance at all to pedalling away on a bicycle.

Does this sound too good to be true? If so, don't forget that you're going to have to provide the actual physical effort, and many of the recommended workouts are pretty challenging. Nonetheless, it's very nice to know that on a blustery, chilly January day you can do fantastic things for your fitness while wearing just shorts, a vest and a comfortable pair of shoes.

To prepare properly for the rigorous workouts outlined below, warm up by cycling lightly for 10 minutes or so, then carry out appropriate range-of-motion exercises, making sure you 'unkink' particularly tight regions of your body. After you have completed your stretching and dynamic mobility exercises, jump on the bike again for a few more minutes of easy work, and then begin one of the high-intensity efforts outlined below. Always cool down at the end of a session with 10 minutes of light activity (cycling, jogging or walking) and stretch out thoroughly before climbing into the shower or bath.

Our first winter workout - the 'VO2max Volumiser' - does a great job of empowering your heart, making it both a bigger and a stronger pump. This will enable your heart to send more oxygenated blood to your muscles per minute of time as you exercise, thus hoisting your VO2max (your maximal rate of oxygen utilisation). Improvements in VO2max tend to delay fatigue for endurance athletes and make it easier for power athletes to carry out challenging workouts that involve repeated bouts of very high-intensity exertion. In case you are unclear about terminology, we define an endurance athlete as someone whose sport requires sustained activity for more than three continuous minutes, and a power athlete as someone whose sport usually calls for three minutes or less of high-quality effort at a time.

Naturally, endurance athletes often need power, and vice versa, but the three-minute borderline often separates athletes into two differing training styles. For each workout described in this article, we'll indicate its value for power and endurance training; you can determine what kind of athlete you are and thus the benefit you can expect to receive.

Rate your intensity of exercise for the vo2max volumiser

To perform this exercise properly, it's essential for you to be able to rate your intensity of exercise. Think of the various intensities of exercise of which you are capable as ranging along a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lightest possible exercise and 10 being full-bore, absolute-maximal exertion. For the VO2max volumiser, you should be aiming for an intensity of 9-9.5, ie 90-95% of your highest possible level of exertion.

Naturally, there will be some variation among athletes of equal ability with regard to the exact power associated with a 9-9.5 intensity, but don't worry about it; all that is really important is that you work very hard during this session, but not to the absolute max. If you are an endurance runner, 9-9.5 corresponds with the level of effort associated with a 5k race; if you are a swimmer, it is the intensity level usually chosen for a 1,000m competition; for bikers, it's the workload chosen for a 20k race; for rowers, it's the intensity chosen for a 17-minute race. Everyone else will just have to use their best 'guesstimates' in this respect.

Here's how to do the exercise: after warming up properly, as described above, settle into your 9-9.5 level of exertion, and keep it up for three minutes without stopping, then recover by pedalling easily for three minutes. After this respite, plunge back into another three-minute dose of high intensity, and continue in this manner (with three minutes of work followed by three minutes of recovery) until you have completed four or (preferably) five three-minute work intervals. Close the session by cooling down for at least 10 minutes.

Over time, as your fitness improves, the vo2max volumiser will become easier to carry out, so make the exercise progressive by expanding the work intervals, first to four and then to five minutes (keeping recoveries equal to work intervals). As before, go for a total of five work intervals per training session, keeping the intensity of the intervals between 9 and 9.5 at all times.

The 'lactate lifter' is great for endurance and sensational for power

The lactate lifter is the snappy title of our second winter workout. Warm up as before, but this time aim for an intensity of 10 - your best possible effort - for just one minute. Recover by pedalling very easily for two minutes, and then reach 10 again for just a minute. Continue in this manner, with one minute of maximal effort and two minutes of extremely easy work, until you have completed about 10 one-minute intervals. Cool down as above.

Over time, you can progress with this workout by increasing the work intervals to 90 seconds, with 150-180-second recoveries. Try for at least 10 work intervals per workout, aiming for 12-15 over time. During the work intervals, blood lactate levels shoot sky-high, creating the best possible stimulus for the improvement of lactate threshold, the intensity of exercise above which lactate begins to pile up in your blood. Lactate threshold - is possibly the best predictor of endurance performance, and the high blood lactate levels achieved with this workout enhance the muscles' ability to clear lactate from the blood and thus elevate lactate threshold.

Although the workout is great for endurance athletes for this reason, it is also sensational for power athletes because of its high-intensity, short-duration nature. Whether you are an endurance or power athlete, you will benefit greatly from the lactate lifter.

At this point, you should be getting eager to try our winter workouts, but you might be wondering a little bit about the 'settings' on your bike. Should you use high resistance (ie a high gear) and a relatively low pedal rate to achieve your lofty intensities, or is it best to go for modest resistance and high rpm?

In a perfect world, alternating back and forth between these modes of biking would be the best plan: high resistance will do a better job of promoting maximal leg strength, but low resistance and high pedal rate will enhance 'explosiveness' and is more realistic for athletes who use running in their sports, since this usually involves a rapid turnover - normally at least 180 steps per minute, which corresponds to 90 rpm on the bike.

You will probably gravitate toward the higher rpm, lower resistance types of effort, simply because it is very difficult for many athletes to sustain five minutes of intense exercise (as in the VO2max volumiser) against very high pedal resistance. Even one minute of the lactate lifter can be really tough on the body if the resistance is quite high.

Fartlek on the bike - fit high-quality 'pieces' into an easy session

We now move to the most enjoyable of our cold-weather sessions - fartlek on the bike. Despite its name, this workout has nothing at all to do with flatulence; fartlek means 'speed play' in Swedish, and this session - although tough - really revolves around 'playing' and being fast. You should be spontaneous and relaxed as you carry out the exercise; the idea is to fit high-quality 'pieces' into an otherwise easy exertion in a creative and unpredictable fashion.

For example, after warming up appropriately you might knock off one minute at your 10 intensity, followed by as much recovery as you need to feel energetic and vigorous again. You might then hit five minutes at a 9 intensity, followed by a three-minute recovery, and then three minutes at 9.5, followed by a 3-5 minute recovery.

These are just possibilities, however, and the actual intervals are not etched in stone. The important thing to remember is that you get to choose the intensities and work interval durations as the workout proceeds, and you can make these choices spontaneously according to how you feel at particular points within the session. Thus each fartlek workout will differ from the previous one(s), since your effort will depend on how you feel at a very specific point in time.

To complete this workout, continue the spontaneous alternation of work and recovery intervals until 35 minutes have elapsed (over time, progress to 45 minutes), and then cool down with 10 minutes of light cycling. Fartlek on the bike benefits endurance athletes by boosting both VO2max and lactate threshold; these changes help power athletes, too, because they foster the ability to extend very tough workouts - ie to include more repetitions of very rugged exertion during a training session. Power athletes can upgrade this exercise to include very short, very high-power work intervals, which would enhance explosiveness.

The fat buster session

A fartlek-on-the-bike effort can be a perfect complement for our fourth winter workout, the fat buster; while the former boosts both VO2max and lactate threshold, fat buster sessions make athletes' bodies leaner and swifter. Naturally, the fat buster is good for both endurance and power athletes, neither of whom wants to lug extra suet around the competitive arena.

Performance of this exercise is relatively simple, but it is one of those rare workouts in which a heart monitor comes in handy. What you'll need to do in order to carve mega-blocks of fat from your belly and thighs is warm up properly and then cycle for 75 minutes at about 80-85% of maximal heart rate. After you cool down, you're done!

If you don't have a heart monitor, you can approximate the correct intensity by aiming for 8 on your familiar intensity scale of 1-10. Of course, you might be surprised that we have chosen such a relatively high intensity to try to help you burn fat. Most 'experts' call for work at a relatively lethargic 55-65% of max heart rate in order to kick fat breakdown into high gear. Why the difference?

Well, while it's true that exercising at 60% of max heart rate causes fat to be the biggest piece of the energy pie (ie fat contributes the greatest percentage of total calories required for exercise), the problem is that the pie itself is quite small, since exercise intensity is so modest. It is far better to go for a big energy pie - in other words to burn calories at a higher rate. Although fat will chip in a smaller piece of the overall pie in this case (given the higher intensity), the pie itself will be so big that fat breakdown (in grams of fat per minute) will dwarf the puny fat catabolism associated with the lower intensity. To lose fat, try for 80-85%!

Don't forget, though, that this fat-burning session doesn't give you carte blanche to include copious amounts of fat in your daily diet; it is simply a nice way to get rid of fat when your diet is sensible and your daily caloric intake is preferably slightly lower than your daily expenditure.

Finish with the bike breakdown

There's just one last session, but it's an amazing one. We call it the bike breakdown, and it proceeds as follows: start with one minute at all-out intensity (ie at 10 on your 1-10 scale); then, without hesitating or taking a break of any kind, drop down to two minutes at a 9 level of effort; again without break, follow up with three minutes at about 8.5 - and that completes your first work interval!

Recover by pedalling lightly for about five minutes, and then repeat the series again (one min @ 10, two mins @ 9, and three mins @ 8.5, without rest). Follow with another five-minute recovery, and then complete one last breakdown before moving into a 10-minute (or more) cool-down period. Over time, progress to four breakdown intervals (four series of 10-9-8.5) per workout.

The bike breakdown does a bit of everything, sharpening VO2max, improving lactate threshold, burning calories like there's no tomorrow, and boosting strength and power. Because of its broad physiological impact, it is good for both endurance and power performers.

Return to the workout again and again until you are comfortable

When and how often should you perform these winter workouts? If you are spending the winter training for your primary sport and using the winter workouts on the bike as supplementary training, you can simply carry out one or two of these sessions per week, fitting them into your overall programme.

You may carry them out in the sequence suggested above (eg the VO2max session one week, the lactate lifter the next, and so on), or you could simply try all the sessions and then use the ones you like. My advice is to bias your training toward the workout(s) which you find toughest.

If a particular session is very, very difficult for you, that's a sign that you are either particularly weak in the attribute addressed by that session (eg vo2max or lactate threshold) or that you lack stamina at the chosen intensity. In either case, your best plan is to return to the workout again and again until you can begin to carry it out more comfortably.

If you decide to use the above sessions as a sort of linchpin for your overall winter training, try to do three of the sessions each week (on other days you may rest or train easily). One sensible plan would be to complete the vo2max volumiser, lactate lifter and fat burner during the first week, the fat burner, fartlek on the bike, and bike breakdown the second week, and so on. Naturally, if you begin to feel tired and/or particularly sore, you should include more easy training or rest in your schedule before picking up the quality sessions again.

Don't forget to progress with each workout, as indicated above. If you don't progress with time by making each type of workout tougher, your body will simply adapt to the basic workout over time, there will be less stimulus for improvement, and your gains in fitness will be that much smaller.

Owen Anderson