With over 1800 articles in our archives there's a good chance that our ICI/PRO members may have missed some of our best stuff. So every Wednesday we are republishing some of our favorite articles and podcasts – enjoy!
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas
I love looking for music for my class. I’ll spend hours searching. When I find a good song, I’m ecstatic. I’ve always loved listening to, hearing and feeling certain rhythms. There’s even a hierarchy in my appreciation of a song: first, listening to it; second, riding my bike to it. But the absolute best is leading a class to it. It’s an awesome feeling.
I’m not the only one. Many indoor-cycling instructors feel the same way.
If you teach indoor cycling, you’re an Exercise to Music (ETM) instructor. ETM instructors work in fitness centers, health clubs, community centers, church halls, schools — in fact, wherever there's a suitable space and some sort of sound system. Most of us work freelance, delivering several classes a week and enjoying the flexibility of working around our existing lifestyle. Some teach full-time and often become involved in running a club as studio coordinators. Wherever ETM instructors go career-wise, however, they share a love of teaching to music.
Music influences us so deeply that the body reacts. Our pupils dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin drops, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes more active. Blood is even re-directed to the leg muscles. Some speculate that this is why we tap our feet (or ride harder). It’s obvious that music evokes emotion, but it’s still not clearly understood why.
Recently, a team of Montreal researchers screened 217 respondents to ads seeking people who experience “chills to instrumental music.” The researchers asked the subjects to bring in a playlist of favorite songs and monitored their brain activity while the music played.
The music triggered the release of dopamine in the dorsal and ventral striatum. No surprise. Those regions have long been associated with response to pleasurable stimuli. The more interesting finding emerged from a close study of the timing of this response, what happened seconds before the subjects got the chills.
Just before the participants’ favorite moments in the music, dopamine activity increased in a different portion of the brain called the caudate. Researchers called this the “anticipatory phase” and suggested that it signals the coming of a pleasurable auditory sequence, triggering expectation of euphoria, a “reward prediction.” The reward was the sense of resolution — hearing what they expected to hear.
We typically associate surges of dopamine with the processing of actual rewards. And yet, in the caudate, while listening to music, dopamine release is most active when the chills have yet to arrive, when the melodic pattern is still unresolved.
This is why musicians sometimes introduce a theme or note in the beginning of a song and then avoid it. The longer we’re denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns. That’s when we get the chills.
But that’s just listening to music. Why is teaching to it even more pleasurable? When we know a song really well, it becomes more predictable. Yet, when we teach to it, that doesn’t seem to matter. Or maybe we like teaching to music we love because it’s familiar, not despite that. We’re anticipating our favorite parts and getting the reward when we ride as they play.
There’s no research that explains this phenomenon in ETM instructors, so I tried to think of a similar situation.
Teaching indoor-cycling to music is not unlike a musician’s performance. I’m not creating the music, but I’m channeling my feelings for it into classes. I build and repeat patterns. They’re biomechanical, but they’re still patterns.
So I checked the forums and found statements on why musicians like to play and perform. These were some of the accounts I found:
I play simply because it brings me a kind of enjoyment that I can’t find anywhere else.
There’s no better feeling than creating something that cannot be recreated.
Because I have ideas and feelings that I can't express any other way.
To bring an audience into the moment is satisfying.
It's like a body part. I was just born with it. I can try to ignore it, but it will always be there. I can enjoy myself and do what I was born to do and love to do, or I can stop doing it and be miserable.
By the pure manipulation of sound, you can bring out emotion in yourself and others and express yourself when words fail. Well, that, and chicks.
For me, playing music reaffirms that there is magic and wonder in this world.
To end war and poverty, to align the planets and bring universal harmony and contact with all life forms from aliens to household pets.
Every one of the above statements describes my feeling about teaching indoor cycling to music. The last one is my favorite because the musician can’t identify why he/she loves to play. People ask me why I’ve taught exercise to music for over 30 years, why I spend hours looking for the right song to create what I hope will be a good ride. I can’t quite explain it, either.
Becoming a good indoor-cycling instructor requires an incredible amount of work, and having a passion for music helps to motivate us to put in the many required hours. Studying music, staying open to sources of new music (e.g., a movie soundtrack), learning to play an instrument, or just listening to musicians perform are powerful ways to improve our craft.
With 1800 articles in our archives, there's a good chance you may have missed some of our best posts. So we will be reposting a few that we feel are not only very special, but timeless in their value to ICI/PRO members.
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas
Organized systems of physical movement have the potential to progress toward artistry, yet most indoor cycling instructors wouldn’t call themselves artists. Still, any instructor who wants to create a compelling class experience could benefit from thinking that way.
Certain activities fall under the term “art”. A dancer of any level could reasonably be called an artist, even though many dancers are not particularly artistic. But indoor-cycling instructors are seen as fitness instructors, people who teach indoor cycling.
Are we artists? We’ll get to that in a moment. Is there any benefit in considering yourself an artist? I would definitely say yes. Being an artist implies that you transcend the ordinary and do something creative in your trade.
There are those who cook, garden, design home interiors, or cut hair and have elevated what they do to an art. Isn’t “transcending the ordinary” what many of us strive for as instructors? I don’t teach simply to be a competent exercise instructor. My class is my craft, but it’s more because I create each ride with an approach that feels, at this point, like artistry.
The assets I use to create the experience include music, lighting, voice, words and, most recently, video. I also incorporate concepts and philosophy and combine all of these elements in the cycling studio environment to create art. (I covered some of this in a previous post on The Art of Cueing.)
So can you consider your class art?
It’s an important distinction to make because art enriches our lives, sometimes more than work. When we approach something as art, it stimulates different parts of our brains, makes us laugh or cry, with the gamut of emotions in between. Art gives us a way to create and express ourselves. There are days that creating my next ride is the main reason I get out of bed in the morning.
We’re hard-wired for creativity and hone it to our specific abilities. Giving life to something original from within to share with the world purely for its intrinsic value is perhaps one of the most rewarding feelings we can have.
Originality may be a key concept in art. We’ve all heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but is the imitation art? I’d say often not, even if it’s imitating something that is.
That’s where the distinction occurs for many instructors. Approaching your class as art may be joyous and provide great return, but it takes authenticity — a willingness to share what’s really you. A copycat workout, even skillfully run, isn’t authentic.
I believe the ability to make art is inherently human, but it TAKES WORK. When I began teaching, my class wasn’t art. I was no more skilled in teaching indoor cycling than anyone else at the beginning, but I’ve poured arduous hours, days, weeks, months and years of my life into it.
My point is “art” is more than a label; “my class is art” isn’t something just anyone can claim, even a good instructor. The difference between art and craft lies in the intent behind it. If your intent is merely to design a great workout, to emulate that amazing instructor at the last conference, or to impress the class with your skill, I’m not sure you can claim to be an artist.
I make my class art because I love creating. There’s nothing more gratifying to me than working on a playlist for days, selecting just the right videos, and planning what I’ll talk about — leaving enough room to improvise that I never know how a class will turn out until it’s over. The process itself is enjoyable: I express my interests and empower my students to enjoy training and go beyond what they thought they could do.
Sometimes class participants dismiss artistic attempts, saying, “I just want to work out”. Such a statement speaks to the loss of creativity in our world and only magnifies the need for us to consider our classes as art. Fitness can be so much more than a workout.
Is your class art? Why should you consider turning your class into art? Are you willing to do the work to make it art?
Art is natural and instinctive, like language and laughter. Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist,” and every culture has art. Expressing something artistically makes us feel more complete.
Art is also a medium for expressing ideas. While a class could be just a workout, treating our class as art gives us greater range of expression and helps us share thoughts, ideas and visions that may not be easily articulated in words.
It’s also healing. Creating your class from an artistic perspective will enliven and stimulate you. The process of creating engages both body and mind and provides us with time to look inward and reflect.
Finally, it’s a shared experience. When you look at your class as art, you recognize it as collaboration with the participants. It uses your skills as exercise specialist, cyclist and public speaker, which combine with the musician’s artistry in the songs you play and the cinematographer’s artistry in the videos you select. Art offers us a reason to share talents in a collective manner.
Approaching my cycling class as art has been good for my soul. It’s been good for my brain and my body. I’m a better cyclist now than I would have been if I hadn’t brought artistry to the practice of teaching indoors. I’ve been a mediocre dancer and a horrible musician, but teaching indoor cycling as art has allowed me to bring my bike to life.
I woke up on August 19 to read that indoor cycling enthusiast and specialized mechanic Jeff Wimmer was dead. Some of us have been in the business a long time and should expect that people around us will die; it’s part of growing old. Still, when someone as notable as Jeff Wimmer leaves us early, the enormous gap can’t be filled.
Jeff was what the cycling world calls a “wrench”. He fixed bikes, specifically indoor cycles. He taught for a while but, like a few other talented instructors, gravitated toward cycle construction, design and repair.
Jeff performed work for ICG and for me on several occasions, and I encouraged his employment in years-long contracts when I worked for Club One and Frog’s Fitness. Anyone who has taught indoor cycling classes long-term knows that the industry had much to learn in the early years about maintenance of a group fitness product. Until we rode indoor cycles, no group exercise equipment beyond the stereo and the microphone ever had to be maintained. Suddenly, we had bikes that needed servicing and quickly deteriorated if your club didn’t employ a wrench.
Jeff made a lot of us happy with well-tuned bikes that felt great — not to mention the many member complaints from which he spared us. If Jeff worked on the bikes, we knew every day we taught that the ride would be as smooth as new blacktop.
Jeff did far more than repair bikes; he refurbished them. I guess that’s called “green” these days. He created a business, Studio Cycles, for restoring and reselling indoor cycles, which enabled many customers to purchase top brands at a discount. Unlike top manufacturers, though, Jeff did all his own installations. He never shipped a bike and let someone else put it together. Those of us on the product side of the business know the importance of a quality installation. No matter how good the manufacturing is, if someone who doesn’t care about the bikes puts them together, there’s a good chance they’ll break down prematurely.
I feel the greatest contribution Jeff made to indoor cycling was what he did online. In all our industry, there’s no more prolific a blogger than Jeff was. The Internet features dozens of videos of Jeff discussing bike design and maintenance. He had a reputation for being merciless — but fair — in his evaluation of indoor cycles, and his positive endorsement could always be counted on to help promote bike sales.
The last contract I hired Jeff for involved an evaluation of a customer’s bikes that were in disrepair. True to his nature, Jeff was so upset with the obvious lack of maintenance that he sounded off to the customer onsite, creating a difficult situation for my colleagues, the customer and me. The thing is Jeff was right. The customer did need to be set straight about taking care of the equipment.
Jeff was passionate about bikes.
Riding the road can be dangerous, particularly if the equipment isn’t properly tuned. Obviously, danger is considerably reduced with indoor cycles. But the good feel of an indoor cycle is the main factor that enables us to share our passion for riding bikes with our students.
Jeff embodied the point I made in last week’s post. He was an artist. The maintenance and refurbishment of indoor cycles was more than his craft. You could tell from the way he spoke about Studio Cycles and his work. He approached every bike he fixed as a work of art. View his videos on YouTube; you’ll find them educational. Even more, they’re the legacy he created.
On a personal level, I didn’t know Jeff Wimmer well, but I will miss him. I’ll miss having him pop up at tradeshows to give me his opinion about… well, everything. I’ll miss hearing him tell me that we should have him review every one of our new bike designs before we ever bring a bike to market.
All of us at ICG® honor and respect what Jeff did for indoor cycling and will miss his passion, his blogs, his videos — and, mostly, his drive to help us create the perfect ride for our students.
Rest in peace, Jeff Wimmer. You were as authentic as it gets.
John's Note: sadly, this will be Jim's last post here at ICI/PRO. I heard from Joan Kent that Jim died Sunday of a heart attack. I'm not sure how to respond other than give everyone the chance to hear Jim Karanas one last time. What follows is my very first interview with Jim.
In the early days of indoor cycling, there was a problem. When bike resistance was low, the weighted flywheel connected to a fixed gear with a chain produced an unnatural degree of momentum. It permitted riders’ legs to spin at cadences far above their natural ability.
This resulted in the infamous “bouncing” in the saddle, as well as potentially catapulting them over the handlebars if they were to suddenly stop pedaling. Then there were the as-yet-unknown, uninvestigated forces working on knees and hips.
So a ceiling was put on cadence. Everyone believed 120 rpm was fast enough. Some education bodies restricted it to 110 rpm. The reasons were obvious at the time. One look around a cycling class filled with “jumping beans”, or the surprised look on Superman’s face as he went over the handlebars made it clear that we instructors needed to control cadence.
As IC evolved, cadence became less of a worry. Better control was taught from the start, and IC became safer. The 110-120 rpm ceiling has been challenged on occasion, but usually sticks. People don’t typically ride at higher cadences, the logic goes, so why use them in cycling classes?
Is high cadence still unsafe? Do higher cadences offer training benefits in an authentic class, or general exercise benefits in a non-authentic class?
My opinion on safety is that high cadence is unsafe in some situations, but not in others. Cycling coaches are documented as recommending max-effort cadence drills up to 140-160 rpm. Arnie Baker’s Smart Cycling is an example.
Arnie Baker’s not alone. Cycling coaches don't have the same concerns IC instructors do about cadences above 110-120 rpm. They train athletes who are on road bikes on a track stand or a Computrainer. There’s no weighted flywheel. There’s no help on a real bike. It's all you. To spin at 140-160 rpm, you have to develop the necessary muscular composition and/or neuromuscular recruitment, or you can’t do it.
Not so on a chain-driven indoor cycle. The weighted flywheel creates substantial inertia, which we’ve spent decades teaching our students to control with technique and proper resistance. Chain-driven bikes create excess momentum and allow you to cheat on cadence training.
But belt-driven bikes can allow high-cadence training to become part of indoor cycling. The reduced momentum on a belt-driven bike makes it more like a real bike in terms of how hard you have to work to spin fast. I wrote about this in a previous post (“From Chain Junkie to Belt Convert”).
Should we create high-cadence trainings for our students if they’re riding belt-driven bikes? The statement that we don't typically ride at those cadences and shouldn’t train at them makes little sense to me.
High-cadence training, called spinning, can be defined as any cadence that exceeds a rider’s preferred cadence, usually 120-160 rpm. These cadences are performed in lower gears, applying lighter pressure to the pedals with each stroke. Neuromuscular adaptation increases pedal stroke fluidity and reduces the force the leg muscles and joints must transmit for a given workload.
Higher cadences also allow the muscles to work aerobically. Less activation of type II muscle fibers delays the burning of carbohydrate stores. In a study by Ahlquist et al., a higher cadence resulted in less stimulation of fast-twitch muscle fibers. As fast fibers deplete their glycogen stores from slower, high-strength pedaling, they become less forceful. Additional muscle fibers must then be activated to maintain a given speed. The activation of a larger number of muscle cells leads to higher oxygen consumption rates and reduced economy.
With proper high-cadence training, pedaling rates of 80-100 rpm become easy for slow-twitch muscle fibers to handle. High-cadence training may also make type I muscle fibers faster and more fatigue-resistant. Then, even less glycogen is used within type II fibers because slow-twitch, type I fibers can handle the fast, low-force contractions.
To take advantage of these adaptations, cyclists use cadence drills. They train the neuromuscular system to increase coordination and efficiency at high pedaling rates and promote fatigue resistance in type I fibers at the same time. In the end, higher cadences preserve glycogen, leading to faster and more powerful finishes over a day of riding.
None of this makes a difference unless you believe in the effectiveness of high rpm. We do at ICG because the cycling world does. We train at much higher rpm than we promote in the industry because of the traditional 110-120 rpm ceiling and the stigma of going above it.
Also, some cyclists do pedal fast. Track cyclists do, as do riders on fixed-gear bikes going downhill — unless they’re braking to slow their legs.
So high cadences have been validated in real cycling. What about non-authentic indoor cycling?
SoulCycle uses cadences over 120 rpm. They now produce their own bike, a chain drive. Is this safe? Maybe not. That's one reason we suggested that ACE research SoulCycle's training program. Would exceeding 120 rpm be safe on a belt-driven bike? We think so.
Still, the benefits I list above relate to cyclists. How does high-cadence benefit general membership? For one thing, it burns a ton of calories.
My view, and that of ICG, is it’s time to allow faster spinning in certain situations. We’ve advocated a belt drive for years, and I frequently train at cadences far in excess of 120 rpm on our bikes. Although our education still limits cadence to 120 rpm as a general rule, we’re in discussion regarding high-intensity spinning.
When is high cadence okay? When the bike's momentum can be controlled and the instructor’s training is of sufficient caliber to instruct correct pedaling efficiency.
At the beginning of every class we teach is an activity called “warming up”. Since the warm-up seems inadequate in many indoor cycling classes, I felt a review of the process would be beneficial to have on record.
During warm-up, we try to bring the expected working muscles to a state of readiness. To many, this means an easy roll of the legs while gently increasing resistance and/or cadence.
As an aging cyclist, I have made warming up a practice unto itself. Each warm-up is specific to the workout I have planned. It varies depending on what we do, and lengthens in accordance with the difficulty of the training.
Warming up properly on the bike should accomplish the following things:
Increase blood flow (thus oxygen and fuel) to the working muscles.
Increase aerobic metabolism in the working muscles.
Stabilize breathing and heart rate.
Decrease the viscosity of the working muscles.
Increase the speed of contraction of the working muscles.
Improve coordination among muscle groups.
Prepare the students mentally before initiating difficult training.
Increased Blood Flow
The average person does not have enough blood in the body to support a maximal level of effort in all the muscles at the same time. The body must “shunt” blood to where it's needed to provide the oxygen and fuel necessary for increased activity.
Have you ever noticed when you press intensity early in the training that the muscles feel as if they’re anaerobic, even though your heart rate is not yet high? The body hasn't had enough time to shunt blood to that area to increase the oxygen available for the increasing rate of metabolism.
Increased Aerobic Metabolism
When the muscles are not engaged in exercise, ATP derived from glycolysis and ATP from oxidation are in a specific balance. Although anaerobic production of ATP yields waste products, it's done at a rate that allows the body to clear them from the muscles so there's no feeling of discomfort.
As the level of activity begins to rise, it's our anaerobic metabolism that initially increases to satisfy the greater demand for energy. Once the muscles begin to work with greater efficiency and more blood is providing increased oxygen, the body shifts to producing more ATP via aerobic metabolism. This is when we feel a sudden sensation of greater balance and muscular efficiency, despite a significantly higher heart rate.
Stabilization of Breathing and Heart Rate
Once the body has shifted as described above, a notable regulation of breathing and heart rate occurs. Rhythmic breathing increases the oxygen that can be delivered to the working muscles. To a certain degree, this happens naturally. It also stabilizes the heart rate as long as the intensity remains constant.
Decreased Muscle Viscosity
Viscosity refers to the degree of “stickiness” in the muscles. The body lubricates muscle fibers during warm-up, reducing viscosity and preparing them for the force we’re about to apply. Insufficient warm-up may not allow time for this lubrication of the muscles. When stimulated through exercise, inactive muscles initially perform small, irregular contractions with incomplete relaxation. Once viscosity has been reduced, the contractions become stronger and relaxation more complete.
Increased Speed of Muscular Contraction
Warming up properly increases the speed of neural impulses. That enables the muscles to contract more quickly in response to the work effort and improves efficiency and ease of movement.
Improved Coordination
Coordination basically refers to firing the right muscle fibers at the right time for a given physical task. Correct timing and sequencing from large muscles to smaller ones lead to optimal force.Cycling-specific exercises that engage muscles in the same movement patterns that they will later perform will improve technique and prepare the body for the unique demands of a particular indoor-cycling workout.
Prepare the Student Mentally
I’m often surprised when someone — instructor or student — considers warming up to be only physical. A similar approach should be taken regarding mental preparation. Instructors can guide students through specific thoughts, words, images, and feelings and prepare their minds for the upcoming workout. This mental preparation occurs in conjunction with physical preparation, so the students warm up body and mind together.
So, in five minutes or so, we have to shunt blood, ramp up aerobic metabolism, stabilize our breathing, lubricate the muscles, fire the muscles more quickly, practice technique, and prepare everyone mentally for what we are about to do for the rest of the class. Five minutes is the standard length of warm-up in the average indoor cycling class.
A five-minute warm-up is often considered the minimum necessary before activity. Note that I did not say “performance”. A proper warm-up can take as much as 20 minutes out of a class, depending on your ride profile.
My point is to consider the warm-up as important as the training. Plan it as intricately as you do the training. The right sequence of movement, music, cues and intensity can prepare students and instructors alike to train as they've never trained before.
