I can’t enjoy Spinning classes. This is my curse. In fact, Javier said it best today when he said, “Adam, your problem is that you are just too much of a performance coach.” I think he may be right, but then again…So here is the issue, Race with Purpose is helping the JCC of Mid Westchester to launch a triathlon club and providing a spring triathlon training program in concert with the upcoming Long Island Gold Coast Triathlon on June 15th (Father’s Day) in Port Washington, NY. To clarify for the non New Yorkers out there, Long Island, which may look like two words, is actually one single word with a Gollum-like sound in the middle, technically pronounced Lone-Gisland. Before going on, will someone - preferably female - please explain to me why it is completely cool to hold a triathlon on Father’s Day but a triathlon on Mother’s Day is considered verboten? With the fastest growing group of triathletes being mothers, I think this may need to be revisited.
So back to Spinning. As part of the repackaging of the JCC of Mid Westchester, one of the board members and her husband decided that incorporating indoor riding and triathlon at this facility would be a good idea. The reality though is that until they put their money where their mouths were and ponied up the money to buy 15 new NXT Spinning Bikes, nothing would have moved. The new Spinning bikes are to replace the current rusted Reebok bikes, which provided necessary modern art in the back of the main aerobics studio for years. Now the next logical question one might ask is, “Gee Coach Adam, if there were already bikes there what makes you think that anyone will come to ride now even with new bikes?” The answer like growing any good business is simple. You have to let your community know you exist and you have to provide them with something they need. It isn’t rocket science and part of delivering on this equation requires instructors, good instructors, not the kind like they have had in the past. Seriously, when I first took an indoor riding class at the JCC, the instructor was having a random conversation with one of the riders and no two riders were doing the same thing - and she didn’t seem to even care. What made it really bad is that when I came in wearing cycling cleats and sort of looked like I knew what I was doing she began pleading with me to take over the class for the day to give her a break. That experience was exceeded during another class I took there a year or two later where the male instructor came in wearing gold rings on every finger, the Mr. T starter kit around his neck and he taught the class without ever getting on a bike. Now I learned how to spin back in Santa Monica, CA at the original Johnny G studios and have taken and taught hundreds of classes since, so this experience was simply not what I was expecting or, quite truthfully, what I would consider acceptable.
Fast forward to the present time. There is now a full schedule of indoor ride classes at the JCC and one of my goals was to help the JCC cast an umbrella of consistency and quality over the top of these classes so that we all teach through a common philosophy and provide the members with a level of confidence knowing that attending any of these classes will provide them with a fun, effective and safe workout. I would also add that it would be one that would fit within the other aspects of their health and fitness goals. The first step to doing this is to take the classes being offered, as a participant.
This past week I took two classes from one of their instructors. I would describe this instructor as determined with a lot of energy and that ability to look like she would hurt you if you ever contradicted her or even thought about mixing it up with her. I took my first class with her on Thursday evening and then a second with her on Saturday morning. In both instances, my intentions were to get a workout in and to answer a few simple questions that I use with instructors everywhere to provide them with feedback on the effectiveness of their classes. And before you ask, yes, I am asked to provide this service, I don’t just go up to people and say, “hey can I give you some feedback? unsolicited. In any case, here are the four very basic questions:
- What is the purpose of the ride?
- Can I follow the instructor either by simply watching or by listening?
- Does the instructor walk the talk, does the instructor instill confidence and based on their own riding technique, have they established credibility?
- Will I get a better ride and experience in this class than if I simply rode on my own? Would I want to come back?
1) What is the purpose of the ride? The answer to the first question was absolutely not. Well not absolutely not but pretty damn close. I ‘think’ the purpose of the ride was to work as hard as possible for 45 minutes using a mixture of overload and confusion both in terms of resistance, body positioning and cadence. Now a lay person may look at this and say, “Wow, that was a great ride.” Unfortunately, this is my curse, because all I experienced was chaos. I couldn’t tell if this was a lactate threshold ride, a max VO2 ride, a strength ride, a speed ride or anything else. Why does this matter, you might ask. The reason is that we spend a lot of time training and very time we do this, it only makes sense that we contribute to achieving a desired benefit. The benefit of chaos is to help to pull you out of a plateau. Confusion and overload are core tenants in increasing one’s health and performance, but not all of the time, all that leads to is burn out, over training and injury.
2) Can I follow the instructor either by simply watching or by listening? The second question was answered with a B at best. She communicated what she was doing but not why and changes took place quickly and without much regard for common expectations of balancing hard efforts and recovery time. Again, this ride seemed to be more about just kicking one’s ass then achieving any particular physiological benefit. To make matters really confusing, she stared the ride out by saying that she uses a 0 to 10 scale. What she didn’t answer was of what. Is that a zero to ten scale of effort expenditure or of bike resistance, or of bike cadence? I decided to let the ride answer this question. As we rode, she would instruct us to increase the resistance from a seven to an eight, and so I began to believe that her 0-10 range was based on resistance. What also helped with this is the fact that she went to level ten maybe six or seven times during the 45 min ride. If 10 represented a max effort then one might think that this could only be sustained for a very brief period of time and certainly not repeated six more times during the ride. So content in my belief that the scale was a range of resistances and not effort expenditure, I rode on. And then it happened. As she was going through another one of her incremental increases in resistance intensities, we were out of the saddle and we were at 8 and then 9 and then 10. Now if ten represents maximum resistance then I would think that this would be the maximum amount of wattage or even more simply the max amount of resistance I can push without the cranks stopping. Given that we are more powerful out of the saddle, we were pushing this level-ten gear and I looked up at her and she was spinning around. How is that a ten? And if that’s a ten then is there an eleven? I immediately had a Spinal Tap moment. I know I’m being literal in my interpretation but if I’m not suppose to be literal, then why even point out that there is a ten point scale with ten being the maximum? To make it even more irritating, we then proceeded to go into a seated climb increasing from level 7 to level 8 to level 9 and then to level 10. “Resist the urge to stand up”, she instructed us. Are you kidding me? If ten has already been defined as the maximum resistance that you can push on the bike and if you know that you can push more by standing than by sitting, then how the hell are you supposed to get up to a level ten while seated? I’m sorry but the laws of physics seem to have been set aside for this cycling class. I know I sound a bit like Simon Cowell, but come on!
3) Does the instructor walk the talk, does the instructor instill confidence and based on their own riding technique, have they established credibility? This lady can clearly spin her legs quickly, but her body was bouncing all over the bike while she was seated and there was enough vertical oscillation when standing to provide suspension for a small vehicle. Her ankles looked frozen in a plantar flexed position as if her calf muscles were in a state of tetanus. She can clearly ride hard and she’s very powerful, but as a pure cyclist or as someone who uses the bike to train and race on, there are some improvement possibilities. Again, please understand the context here. This is an instructor who was quick to point out to me that she is an Ironman Kona finisher and an accomplished ultra marathoner. Someone with this pedigree should hold themselves to a higher standard and understand that what they do in front of class matters, because the students will pick up on everything and as instructors we all need to be bullet-proof.
4) Will I get a better ride and experience in this class than if I simply rode on my own? Would I want to come back? This is actually a toss up. What I mean by this is that given that I have been sick for almost a month now and have ridden all of three times and run three times during that period, a class that taxed my overall fitness in multiple ways wasn’t such a bad thing. I only wish it was announced that way from the start. I also think that as I get out of my base training phase and begin focusing on more specific elements of my training, I probably wouldn’t want to show up and hope that a class will help me to improve some specific capability and then find out that it won’t address it. For example, the Saturday class was almost entirely out of the saddle - except for the level ten during the seated climb - and that really taxed my lower back. Given that I’m running 26 miles tomorrow, had I known that this would have been the case, I may have opted to do something different. On the other hand, her music was entertaining, and if I want to find a way to burn off some steam, get over a tough day at work, or cool off from an argument with Cindy, this class may be just the ticket.
In the meanwhile, I’ll keep in mind that some amplifiers go to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don’t know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
