by Jim Karanas | Mar 26, 2021 | Indoor Cycling Group - Team ICG, Instructor Training
Whenever I teach an Indoor Cycling class, I try to create an experience that takes the students beyond exercise. A class can affect students even more when video is added. So far, though, video has been used in classes more as a backdrop to create atmosphere than to augment the experience.
The trick to teaching with video is to act as if the ride is real.
When we teach, we can make our students feel that they’re somewhere else through cueing, guided imagery and choice of music. When we dim the lights, play the perfect song, and describe riding through the desert under a full moon on a road with no cars, we can immerse the student in that imagery. Whatever doesn’t add to it detracts.
Can you imagine that same scenario with a disco ball? No congruence. The same holds true for leading a ride profile that has nothing to do with the video playing behind you, and never even referencing it. The video grabs the student’s attention from time to time but doesn’t create virtuality on the ride.
To make video more than a diversion or backdrop, we must embrace it. Then we can create an experience in our classes like never before.
John Chambers of Cisco Systems describes “telepresence” as technology that makes us feel present somewhere other than our true location. A popular application is videoconferencing.
Telepresence allows our students to feel themselves in the video. This leads to immersion, where a student’s self-awareness blends into the absorbing surrounding environment.
Video can create immersion in our students. The acronym ‘SIT’ describes the coaching process:
– Simulation references the video as a real-life scenario. “We’re on Highway 89 in the Arizona Desert, heading to Glen Ferry National Park. It’s 95 degrees with zero percent humidity. The road rolls, and we’re moving at 25 mph.”
– Interaction adapts the training directly to the video. “Our next stage is a straight-line climb, averaging 5%. Stay in the saddle and pedal at 70 RPM. Match your pedalling to the beat of the music.”
– Telepresence helps the class feel present in the video through cueing (words and voice), music (genre, tempo, structure), and the workout (cadence, resistance, intensity and choreography). “You’ve ridden hills like this before. Relax. Control your breathing and fall into the tempo of the music. It’s mellow. Let the music carry you up the hill. We’ll peak our HR at the summit of this climb. We’ll ride the first 3 minutes in the saddle and stand for the last 2, increasing resistance every 60 seconds without losing one RPM.”
With this link, (it's a big HD file so you may need to wait for it) you can download a segment of an HD virtual class, created by the Indoorcycling Group of North America, in conjunction with Virtual Active. When we use video this way — selecting words, music and a workout that make sense to us with the footage — our students achieve immersion. Note from John – you really want to watch that video 🙂
The degree of immersion will vary with the club setting and your comfort, which grows with experience. But even instructors with less experience can create immersion. As your coaching develops, your students’ immersion will deepen. The focus is less on the instructor and more on the video and the thrilling sense of forward motion it creates.
Video quality and high-def imagery enhance the forward motion feel, thus immersion. Virtual Active’s video enhances indoor cycling in a way that’s been missing till now.
You are now ready to begin delivering a complete and synergistic experience for your students.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Originally posted 2011-12-12 20:03:15.
by Jim Karanas | Mar 10, 2021 | Master Instructor Blog
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas
My thanks to everyone for the numerous responses to my post last week on the Commoditization of Indoor Cycling. As captured by those responses (Chuck’s in particular), differentiation is the strategy necessary for dealing with the commoditized product of indoor cycling.
Through differentiation — or the possibility of it — boutique studios may provide the example for the industry to start caring more about, and again raising the standards of, indoor cycling. Commoditization can thus be seen not as negative, but as a good push, giving the indoor cycling industry a second beginning.
ICG® Academy has just opened at the OMpower Cycle/Yoga Studio in San Francisco (www.ompowersf.com). OMpower, a boutique studio, will be the North American headquarters of the Indoorcycling Group (ICG®) and its premiere showcase facility and training hub on the West Coast of the U.S.
With the opening of ICG® Academy and its newest product, Myride®+, ICG® is differentiating itself in the indoor cycling market. The OMpower studio features an impressive cinematic stage to display ICG’s exciting video-cycling product, designed for use in live and virtual classes. All cycling instructors at OMpower are Team ICG®, certified by ICG, despite other certifications they may have. They are all trained in the use of Myride®+ and teaching classes with video.
The Myride®+ training modules are currently available, free of charge, on the ICG® website. This is an opportunity for any indoor-cycling instructor to differentiate him-/herself from the commoditized market. If Myride®+ successfully integrates into clubs, there will be a demand for instructors who can operate a Myride®+ console and teach with video.
In earlier posts, I’ve written about technological advancements that will happen in 2012, regarding the use of video in indoor-cycling classes: specialized filming, post-production editing, high-def displays, big-screen projection, media consoles that make video flexible and easy to use, compelling “virtual rides” with voiceovers by top instructors. That technology is here and needs to be seriously considered by all indoor-cycling instructors.
View a sample of this breathtaking new technology at: Watch Movie
The two elements that I believe will have the greatest impact on indoor cycling today are power and video. With the steady development of power-based computers, the indoor-cycling community has been buzzing about the benefits of training with watts. I have been a “watts advocate” for many years. However, I think few understand the benefit of this type of training.
Video, on the other hand, is understood by many. Video is slick and exciting, markets well, and offers stronger differentiation in the eyes of the general public than watts. If we want to get the big-box club operators excited about something, I feel they will “get” movies more than power. I also think club members will feel the same way.
Teaching next to the Myride®+ console
What if you could…
- create a video playlist of any length from the most extensive cycling-video library in the world?
- move forward or back seamlessly from any point in a video to another with just a touch?
- organize your video library by terrain type (flat, mixed, climb, descent) and have instant access to any type of terrain with just a touch?
- use cutting-edge technology to make any video fit any piece of music, and vice versa?
- program any type of virtual-cycling class and effortlessly run a 24/7 virtual-cycling class schedule?
- run an indoor-cycling program that keeps people talking, keeps them coming back, and differentiates you from your competition?
So differentiation may apply to us, not just to clubs and products. To stay competitive, we may need to differentiate ourselves by learning the skills that cover the greatest number of possibilities and can adapt to the greatest number of situations.
Teaching with video takes just as much training as teaching with watts, maybe more. As an instructor who can teach with video, you’ll differentiate yourself from the commoditized market. The cool thing is you can even add power-based training to a video class once the video technology is in place. That gives video more possibilities.
If you haven’t considered it, I strongly encourage you to learn to teach with video. In a choice between science only and Hollywood dazzle with infinite potential, Hollywood seems to win. That dazzle and potential are what virtual cycling and Myride®+ represent.
Originally posted 2012-03-05 14:50:27.
by Jim Karanas | Jan 8, 2021 | Engage Your Students, Instructor Training, Master Instructor Blog
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas –
The experience of flow remains one of the least-understood phenomena in training. Yet it’s one of the richest, most memorable experiences we can help deliver to our students. Creating the circumstances though which students can experience flow in a training session is the topic of this article.
When I mention flow, people sometimes confuse it with being “in the zone”. That often relates to a brain release of beta-endorphin as a result of the activity. It’s a different phenomenon and not what I mean here. When you’re able to collapse what you’re doing down to a single moment and experience total immersion in it, you will feel flow. You’re completely involved in the ride for its own sake. There’s no ego, no awareness of time or distance. Every action follows seamlessly from the previous one.
You might be tired or in pain, but those things don’t distract you. You might not even notice them at times.
Recently, I led a five-hour ride at ICG® Academy in San Francisco. We rode an indoor 100 miles as a fall, base-building ride. The ten 30-minute segments were each built around a different 30-minute “Challenge” video on Myride®+. The plan was not to take any scheduled breaks or rest stops, and to roll from one world destination to the next. To be quick and efficient if anyone needed to get off the bike, but we were going to ride 100 miles. I calculated that, if the riders could average 85 rpm for the 5 hours, they would total 100 miles on their odometers.
I wanted to make this more challenging than an outdoor century.
There were 30-minute segments of pure hill climbing, where we would average 65-70 rpm. We had to compensate on the flat segments by turning fairly high rpm. That doesn’t sound hard until you understand that we were on belt-drive bikes with little or no momentum from the flywheel. 90+ rpm on a belt-drive bike takes a much bigger hit on your legs. We also had a heart-rate challenge. Early on, I had the participants commit to an average training heart rate that they would not go below.
I wasn’t making it hard for training purposes. I wanted to take everyone to a place where they could experience flow. This isn’t always possible in a 45- to 60-minute class.
After four hours, I looked around the room. Not one person was not experiencing flow. How did I know? I asked them if, at that time and for the first time that day, they felt as if they could ride for 10 hours. Everyone smiled and nodded. The discipline and fatigue created a state where they had to go beyond what they normally felt they could do. That’s when you experience flow: a state of non-reaction to fatigue and discomfort; a feeling of serenity; a loss of self-consciousness; a heightened awareness; a feeling of control over the situation and the outcome.
Once you’ve experienced true flow, you can feel it any time.
And that’s when you realize that flow is more than a beta-endorphin rush. You can sense it while walking on a busy street, winding your bike through traffic and stalled cars, in a conversation, in a business negotiation, in the supermarket shopping for food. Flow is working with what’s happening, as opposed to against it (see my previous post on Timing). On my road bike, I often notice that the farther away from home I go, the greater the feeling of flow. I simply stop thinking about things I have to do.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the mental state of flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.”
Csikszentmihalyi spent time in an Italian prison camp in World War II. At age 16, he traveled to Switzerland, where he had the opportunity to listen to Carl Jung speak. The experience influenced him. He later explained, “As a child in the war, I'd seen something drastically wrong with how adults — the grown-ups I trusted — organized their thinking. I was trying to find a better system to order my life. Jung seemed to be trying to cope with some of the more positive aspects of human experience.”
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow has influenced people in a wide range of fields. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were reportedly influenced by his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Jimmy Johnson, former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, utilized Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas to prepare for the 1993 Super Bowl. His ideas have also influenced people in business, government, education and the arts.
Flow can occur in such diverse situations because it simply requires full immersion and involvement, energized focus, and enjoyment of the process. Clearly, that can apply to many activities.
Csikszentmihalyi calls flow “focused motivation”, deep focus on nothing but the activity. It works particularly well for cycling, brings consciousness to it, and can be created through the right combination of factors.
Originally posted 2014-12-24 06:24:37.
by Jim Karanas | Dec 30, 2020 | Instructor Training, Master Instructor Blog, Zone based Heart Rate Training
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas
Now that more of your students wear heart-rate monitors (HRM) (see previous post “How To Get Your Students To Wear a HRM”), you must teach them how to use one.
An important first step is sometimes lost when introducing HRMs. Instructors immediately start estimating maximum heart rate and discussing zones. But the first measurement of intensity, how hard the students are exercising, must always be perception.
Relating perceived exertion to heart rate is a fascinating personal discovery for the indoor-cycling student. If it’s done correctly, the student will immediately ask at what heart rate he/she should be training. Then a discussion of training zone estimates makes perfect sense.
The following protocol, developed by Team ICG®, provides a template for a “first HRM experience” that the student won’t forget. Initially, you want the HRM to help the student link a given heart rate with a perception, which enhances awareness. The student feels his/her body go through changes in perceived exertion, along with a visible numerical progression.
Resting HR — 2 minutes
Once the students are wearing their HRMs, have them sit quietly on the bike. No pedaling, no talking, just sitting still. Tell them to breathe deeply, relax and see how low they can drop their HRs. This is not a true resting value, but shows them how relaxation and breathing affect their HR. It also gives them a numeric indication of how prepared the body is to receive training. It may well dictate an alteration of their plan for the day.
Warm-Up — 15 minutes
Roll the legs with no resistance on the bike. Feel the ease of motion, the momentum. Get into a rhythm with it: no effort, just smooth, continuous, even circles. Before taking the HR up, we want to accomplish two things. First, we must shunt blood to the leg muscles. Fifteen minutes of easy spinning will do that. Second, we want the students to sense what’s happening in the body as they get warm.
For the first 5 minutes, set the cadence at 90-100 rpm. Have the students increase the resistance just enough to feel as if their legs are working, without changing cadence. This isn’t much effort. Just bring the HR up slightly.
The first change in perceived exertion is an increase in body temperature. Assuming the room is appropriately cooled, the air temperature initially felt cool or cold. Ask them to notice the change — the air no longer feels cold — and note at what heart rate that occurred. Was it 5 beats up from resting? 10 beats?
For the second 5 minutes, have them make another small increase in the resistance. The second sensation in perceived exertion is awareness of breath. Their breathing pattern has not really changed. Their breathing is not hard or labored. They’ve just become aware that they’re breathing, something we’re unconscious of most of the time. At what HR did they become aware of their breathing?
For the third 5 minutes, bring on a little more resistance without changing cadence and raise the HR again slightly. Two things must happen here. They must notice that all momentum is gone from their pedaling. There’s a distinct point, especially on chain-driven bikes, where the sensation of momentum is replaced by effort. This is very visible to the instructor — the “looseness” is gone from the pedaling — however, it’s still not hard.
The other thing they need to notice is a sudden spike in body temperature. They now feel hot. We experience discomfort just before we begin to sweat because the cooling of evaporation hasn’t begun. What’s the heart rate when this happens?
Settle the cadence down to 90 rpm as they continue to work and begin to sweat. This is the next level of perceived exertion. At what HR did they begin to sweat? They’ll notice the hot feeling leave, then a cool sensation against their skin. They might feel perspiration on the brow, under the arms, or elsewhere.
Their warm-up is done.
As you can see, this isn’t an elaborate or complicated warm-up, just a gradual awareness process for the students. The next step is a heart rate ladder, again to connect the students with their perception of the effort.
Heart-Rate Ladder — 20 minutes
Now that the students are warmed-up, it’s time to take them through levels of greater exertion, while connecting their perception of the effort with the HR at which it occurs. Most of this work takes place seated, so give them periodic breaks from the saddle.
Level 1
Level 1 continues the intensity that they reached by the end of the warm-up. All feeling of momentum has been replaced by a feeling of effort. They’re aware of their breathing and have cracked a sweat.
Their HRs should be consistent. Tell them the first lesson of heart-rate training is stabilization. They should be at a HR that they could maintain for hours. Forget about mechanical difficulties, how the saddle feels, whether they need water, fuel, etc. Ask them to settle into a HR that — in terms of the effort level — they could hold for hours.
Maintain that intensity for 5 minutes.
It’s not uncommon for them to be unsure about whether they’re at the right level of effort. Tell them to check their HR, sense their effort level and ask themselves, “Could I maintain this for 1 hour? 2 hours? 3 hours?” If the effort is too high, they’ll have an internal reaction to the question and should adjust as necessary.
Keep the cadence at 90 rpm; this is important. Let them know that the HR they’re training at is called a target HR. Their job is to maintain that target at 90 rpm.
At this point, it’s helpful to explain what’s going on metabolically. Discuss aerobic vs. anaerobic metabolism and changes in the use of fat and carbohydrate as fuel.
As mentioned above, Level 1 is of the same intensity as the final part of the warm-up. From here, the progression builds to greater levels of effort, which will be covered in the next post.
Originally posted 2012-09-24 05:39:49.
by Jim Karanas | Dec 9, 2020 | Class DVDS & Videos, Master Instructor Blog
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas
Video is taking over the world. Over 4 billion hours of video are viewed each month, and YouTube is the most-used search engine, after Google. Video is also changing indoor cycling classes everywhere. Like music, video engages our emotions. To reach a cycling audience with imagery and music creates a synergy that lifts indoor cycling to new levels.
Club owners seek something innovative. Cycling with video is enjoyable, entertaining, and a dramatic differentiation from the current indoor-cycling market. The number of emerging businesses that produce video attests to the impact it will have on indoor cycling.
As entertaining as video can be, however, the key reason people join clubs is to achieve their fitness goals and be educated in how to do that, not for entertainment.
Before writing the check, anyone investing in video programming must investigate the quality of education or coaching that accompanies the video product. This applies equally to live-instructor group classes and virtual group classes.
At ICG®, we believe it’s important to remember that video is JUST video. It’s an asset that can add to the indoor-cycling experience but will never dominate it. Even with the world’s best video, without proper coaching for the live instructor or excellent voiceover coaching in the virtual product, you’ll have:
- Instructors continuing to teach to music only, or turning on the projector but never integrating video into their classes.
- Virtually instructed classes projected to empty classrooms, and/or DVDs sitting unused in a box or drawer in the studio.
Quality instruction has always been the key to any successful indoor-cycling program. That won’t change with the addition of video. As long as facilities offer live-instructor classes, the instructors must first appreciate, and be energized by, what video brings to their classes. Once they support video’s benefits, they will sincerely recommend virtual programming — so long as that virtual class stands up to the quality of live coaching.
Bringing video to your cycling program is not a stand-alone purchase. Whether it’s to enhance live instruction, provide virtual classes, or both, it must be supported by online learning, as well as live education and training offered by your video provider.
Empowering instructors to use video in their classes demands technology that allows them to control the video as easily as they control their music. (DVDs just don’t make the grade in that regard.) It also requires an education platform that teaches them to integrate video readily into what they’re already doing — while producing a significantly enhanced experience for the members.
If a club offers both live classes with video and virtual classes, then the instructors must stand behind the virtual-class program and see it as complimentary to, not competitive with, their positions. Participants will typically follow the instructor’s lead. However, that alone will not motivate the members to participate in virtual classes.
For a workout video to compel people to train in a cycling studio with no instructor, the content can’t be good. It must be great. There’s no motivating instructor who knows your name, maybe no social interaction with other members. What works for a solo participant on a bike in front of a small screen may fail miserably in the group-cycling studio. This is even truer if the facility doesn’t employ instructors.
So the question is: What makes a virtual class compelling?
There are four dimensions to a successful virtual cycling class — Sensation, Flow, Challenge and Convenience.
Does the visual sensation grab attention? A compelling member experience must elicit strong, positive emotions. Is forward-motion video of beautiful destinations around the world more visually engaging than the world’s top master presenters sitting on bikes?
Does the workout flow? To be effective, a virtual class must be better designed than a live class. Members will come in and take an average class from a live instructor, but they won’t come in to take an average virtual class. Sound levels, content, matching voice and tone to the content, pacing — the sense of flow delivered through the interaction of voiceover cues and video must be better than with live instruction to be as effective.
Was the workout successful? The members will want to be physically challenged by the workout and mentally engaged by the information delivered. With no instructor and possibly no other members, what encourages the member to work hard? It comes down to quality recorded instruction, selection and use of music, music/video synergy, and editing.
Were the virtual classes offered at convenient times? Does the technology offer “auto” scheduling, where the virtual class and projector turn on and off at scheduled times? Dynamic club schedules that allow virtual classes to be easily added to, or taken off, the schedule based on participation will have a big impact on virtual programming success.
At ICG, we consider ourselves the leading authority in cycling with video. We believe indoor cycling is driven by instructor communication and motivation, plus social interaction. We believe instructors need education and training to integrate video skillfully and professionally into their classes.
We believe that virtual classes can rock and that instructors must support the classes.
Virtual classes must be visually stimulating. They must flow, provide a challenge, be offered at convenient times, and be better produced than a live class. We’re committed to developing better techniques and technologies to make future indoor cycling experiences more “real” as classes with video and virtual classes go mainstream.
Originally posted 2013-01-28 10:29:20.
