Cyclebeat is a beautiful Indoor Cycle Studio located in what was an old English pub in the commercial district of London. I couldn't decide which of these pictures to use, so here's the view as you walk in – fantastic… unless you're actually after a pint đ
Cyclebeat studio owner Greg Allon joins me to celebrate their first completed year in business! During the interview we discuss their “mixed membership model” (combination of monthly and per-ride payments) and the problems that occur when monthly members book a bike, but then don't show for the scheduled class – which prevents them from selling the reserved seat to someone else.
There's typically a “surprise” in every interview – something that catches me and gets my fully attention. When Greg describes the age demographic he sees in his classes (21 to 30), it's easy to understand why Performance IQ has been so helpful to making his studio a success. So successful that they're planning a Cyclebeat #2 for the near future!
Greg is also having success promoting a corporate discount rate… not by soliciting local business directly, but by encouraging the employees of those businesses to bring the information back to where they work. Effectively creating a little army of sales people to promote his studio – very clever!
Listen to the interview below – or you'll find this episode in our.
It's a fact of teaching Indoor Cycling classes using power… not every meter shows consistent – repeatable watts indication, no matter which brand you're riding. Faced with this (often times frustrating) inconsistency you have two choices:
Throw your hands up as if to say; “what's the use?” and ignore the power meter.
Accept the problem and offer your class a simple solution.
My hope is that you choose the later đ
As far as I know, there's only one solution you can offer the athletes riding in front of you to understand their power, today, on that cycle. Conduct a short PTP (Personal Threshold Power) assessment as part of every class you teach. If you have a different/better solution I'm all ears – please share it below.Â
These PTP assessments work great as the first real effort, after you've taken everyone through you initial warmup and a series of openers. Every class of mine begins the same:
5 minute warmup where we gradually increase intensity @ 90-100 RPM
3-4 30 second opener accelerations. We begin in a climbing gear @ 70 RPM, accelerate to and maintain 100 ish RPM for 30 seconds. Recover for 30 sec, rinse and repeat.
2 minute recovery (now we're calling this a “reset”)
3 or 4 minute “Best Effort” where we learn our PTP for this day, on this cycle. I tend to vary how I conduct these; some days are high cadence tempo flats @Â 90-100 RPMÂ and others are fast climbs @ 70 RPM
No matter what you decide, you need a great song for your “Best Effort” PTP assessment. For our free track this week I thought I would share one of my current favorites, the Lie To Me opening theme song Brand New Day from Ryan Star. This 93 RPM track is a little short at 3:14 – so you need everyone to quickly ramp up their effort, punch the STAGE button in unison and attack this 3 min Best Effort from GO!
The resulting average watts becomes the PTP for this class, on this bike.
Dr Jay Alberts discovered the value of cycling as a relief of symptoms for people who suffer with Parkinson's disease, while riding a tandem bicycle in Iowa during the RAGBRAI – the ride across the state of Iowa. Based on his observations of the reduction in symptoms he saw in his tandem partner Cathy Frazier, he began clinical trials to study the affects of what he describes as “forced exercise” on someone suffering from a neurological diseases like Parkinson's.
UPDATE September 2014:
We are now offering an ACE approved ParkinsonââŹâ˘s Cycling Coach training program. To learn if you qualify click here.
Jay Alberts is a native of Sanborn, Iowa and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Exercise Science from Iowa State University in 1994. He completed his neuroscience doctoral training in 2000 at Arizona State University where he worked under Drs. George E. Stelmach and James R. Bloedel in his studies investigating the effects of ParkinsonââŹâ˘s disease on motor performance and learning.
Dr. Alberts is currently an Assistant Staff in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, within the Lerner Research Institute and the Center for Neurological Restoration , Cleveland Clinic , in Cleveland, OH. For more information on his research visit: http://www.lerner.ccf.org/bme/alberts/ . He has more than 25 peer-reviewed scientific publications in journals such as Brain, Experimental Brain Research and other prominent medical journals. Dr. Alberts serves as a reviewer for a number of scientific journals and funding agencies and his professional affiliations include, American Academy of Neurology, Society of Neuroscience and International Graphonomics Society. Dr. Alberts has had continual extramural funding for his research since 1997 in the form of grants from the National Institutes of Health, American ParkinsonââŹâ˘s disease Association and Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation.
Dr. Alberts is married to Janelle and they have two children. Dr. Alberts and his wife are tandem enthusiasts.
Listen to our discussion below to get a more complete understanding of this fascinating topic – or subscribe to our free Podcast in iTunes.
Interested in offering Parkinson's Cycling Classes at your location?
Click here for more information about our ACE approved training for Coaches.
Not practicing the hand-off – but what comes next…
One of the many benefits of riding and training indoors, is not worrying about crashing and ending up on your head. So we practice our; pedaling technique, or Sprint form or whatever, without thinking about balancing or where we're going.
Now if we were riding our road bikes on trainers we could also practice reaching down, grabbing a bottle, taking a drink and then returning it safely into the cage. Not an easy task for many new (and a few old) outdoor cyclists.
Bicycle Safety Tip
2012 Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins pictured above/right may be an awesome cyclist with phenomenal bike handling skills. But he's not demonstrating proper hand position with one hand off the bars. The correct (safe) position for his left hand is on the cross bar, very close to the center / stem. Why not out at the end where he has it in the picture?
It's a matter of leverage. The further you hand is, away from the center/pivot, the easier it is to turn the bars. Without your other hand to counteract the force, riders with just one hand, on the outer end of the bars, tend to ride erratically = not in a straight line = dangerous.
Speaking of proper hand positions > I discovered this video while researching this article. Nothing to do with cycling, but it will get your heart rate up when you watch it đ
In celebration of today being the Super Bowl (the biggest sporting event in North America) we played drinking games. Not the typical; take a shot whenever an announcer uses some predictable cliche – that comes later today.
In class we played a different type of drinking game.
Although we're not on real bicycles, there's still a valuable technique we can safely practice during class; drinking at a high level of effort > @ or over FTP/Threshold/AT/Lt whatever you call it. More specifically; learning to regulate your breathing so you don't choke, launch into a coughing fit, swerve over and ultimately take down your riding buddy – or end up in the ditch.
NOT drinking enough during a long ride is the sure path to early fatigue. During a hard group ride there may not be a lot of breaks where you can recover and hydrate easily. So today we only drank during hard efforts, not during the recoveries when you would normally towel off and take a sip.
The first Sunday of each month is an FTP Assessment. Here's my class.
Class length 75 minutes + Cool Down
Warm Up â 10 minutes. 5 minutes of gradual increases in wattage. During the second 5 mins. weââŹâ˘re finding the wattage where everyone is first noticing a change in breathing; VT1 / Aerobic Threshold = the top of the Recover Zone. This establishes a rough understanding of a base wattage that we use throughout the rest of class.
3 x 30 sec. Hard / 30 sec. Easy – Openers to AT/LT. I cue these by first having everyone find the amount of load @ 70 RPM that has them feeling they should (not just could) come out of the saddle. The 30 sec. Hard is then simply accelerating to 90+ RPM which results in some pretty impressive power numbers. The 30 sec. Easy is back to 70 RPM â many will stand during the Easy portion.
1 minute rest – I encourage riders to focus on their recovery. Once they feel calm in their breathing, bring back the Base level work wattage.
3 min. Hard Effort â HereââŹâ˘s a âBest Effortâ to establish a benchmark PTP Personal Threshold Power (top of the Perform Zone) or ride at 110% of FTP if known. ItââŹâ˘s very helpful to riders to have that understanding of their personal upper wattage number. The âBest Effortâ Threshold # + the Base Threshold # we found earlier form the three Power working zones I use in class.
2 min. Rest
3 x 1 min. Hard Effort x 1 min. Rest. These should be above the 3 minute average wattage.
3 min. Rest
20 min. TT / FTP Assessment effort – Quickly establish the average wattage at or near the 3 min. Interval. > Stage Button and then maintain. You may want to offer slight changes in cadence & load, while keeping wattage = to the initially established watts #. I was off the bike at the 10 min. to go, coaching, encouraging and then just watching them with a big smile on my face. This is a great group and they looked incredible â IââŹâ˘m so in my element with these classesÂ
5 min. Rest
Base Wattage (aerobic) flat road to finish â use these time to congratulate everyone and give tell them a bit about what you have planned for them next week.
UPDATE: 1/29 8:49 CST – I've got my fingers crossed. Hopefully the preventative measures we've undertaken has this current attack thwarted and future attacks prevented!
Log-in access to ICI/PRO was locked down today, in response to a “Brute Force” attack đ
The unsuccessful attack had attempted to guess user names and passwords of members here. It looks like they tried over 6,000 times!
Please be assured that the attack was unsuccessful and was limited to just this website and NOT the secure shopping cart service to process financial transactions.
ICI/PRO is run on a very secure (and expensive) hosting platform, that features numerous security measures to protect everyone's accounts.
We'll continue to monitor the situation and respond as needed.
