ICI/PRO Contributor Krista Leopold provides our latest Audio Class Profile – I like the way you move.
Objective and Intensity
To focus on movement first and simply observe how intensity is affected. My I like the way you move profile is derived in part from what Jeff Krabiel presented at WSSC this year in his session, “Four Variables of Intensity.” In that session, Jeff reminded us that there are only 4 ways to increase intensity in Indoor Cycling: resistance, cadence, position, and timing or opportunities. This profile doesn’t ask riders to work within a particular heart rate zone, but rather, by using 3 of the 4 variables, attempts to make a game of finding out just how much of any one of these elements can increase before riders lose control.
Listen to Krista's presentation of I like the way you move below.
No Spotify playlist – instead here is the link to the Steady 130 MP3 where you can download the suggested music. It's a big file so you'll need to wait for it.
NOTE: If clicking that link causes it to play – not download; Right Click > Save As to download. If it opens in iTunes it should be on your computer and ready to transfer to your device, if you have the setting correct that I explain in this post.
Here's the countdown timer Krista built to guide her through this class.
The Senior Group Fitness Instructor and I spent a weekend in Door County WI last month. Lots of quaint little towns to explore along the shores of Lake Michigan. We did what most tourists do as we walked along all the shops and restaurants… we stopped to check out the menus posted along the sidewalk, with the intent of finding the place where we would have dinner that evening.
I hadn't considered it at the time, but if one of the restaurants we passed didn't have a menu posted near the sidewalk, we wouldn't have considered eating there. Without some of the basic information (type of food, pricing, ambiance, entertainment, etc…) we'd never know if they had the best food in town or not.
We weren't looking for anything specific in a place to eat – the best I can tell you we were just looking for some place that fit us. Does that make sense? I guess it follows the; “I don't know what I want… but I'll know it, once I find it!”
So, is your class “menu” displayed somewhere prospective participants can find/learn more about you and your class? Or classes if you're a studio owner/manager?
I'm thinking this menu needs to be more than; “Indoor Cycling with John” which really doesn't tell you anything about me or my class. Maybe I could improve my menu by adding a picture of me and something all flowery and word-smithy like; “Experience outdoor cycling… indoors. Take a virtual training ride with John. Blah, blah, blah” which may or may not be effective. What else could you include?
Beyond your; charming / energetic personality, comprehensive knowledge of exercise physiology and dazzling smile, what else (if they could know more in advance) would be of interest to potential participants to our classes? Or your regulars for that matter?
How about your music!
Consider what primarily gets shared between members about your class:
How hard/easy is her class?She killed us this morning!
Was his music good?We rocked this morning! or What was he thinking with that playlist?
Technology from Spotify and Deezer now gives us the ability to easily share our playlists. Surge Cycle is a studio near me. On their Meet our Instructors page (Internet menu of sorts) studio owner Zion Anderson has posted a sample Spotify playlist of each instructor's class music. Here is Zion's playlist.
Now I think that's an awesome idea… now if I could get Life Time to do something similar.
One of the benefits to teaching with OPM (other people's music) is that it forces you out of the safe/comfortable/familiar box you've drawn around yourself. In the past, my musical “box” has limited me to selecting my class music a bit like this:
Interesting little Spotify playlist you have here…
Love it…
Going to use this exactly as you've constructed it…
Well except this Britney Spears track, no way I'd play that in my class…
Pitbull? Eh, no thanks… Not quite my style.
And that cheezie “Tabata” track you've got there near the end? What's up with that? I don't think so… that wouldn't be me… I think I'll just copy most of your tracks into a playlist of my own and add in a few more “appropriate” tracks to replace those that just don't quite fit into my safe/comfortable/familiar box.
We see that our PRO/Playlists are viewed thousands of times in Spotify and Deezer, but a relatively small number are actually followed. What's the difference? You can't alter a playlist you've Followed. You have to use it As Is. You can't meddle or mess with it. You can only hit play and follow where it takes you and your class.
In case you missed it, we discussed what I called; The Great Spotify Enigma back in February. It included a survey where ICI/PRO members communicated they did pretty much what I describe above; Instructors tend to pick and choose songs, rather than Follow and use the playlist as originally constructed. Which is fine, if you're content with staying in your Box.
But I've found that people in my class didn't express much appreciation for the music in my Box.
They do when I use music from Chris, Amy, Julz, Krista, Cameron and other's who I follow on Spotify.
So if you Followed (and used) Chris Hawthorne's latest profile High Intensity Supersets PRO/Playlist you lead your class through two Tabata rounds. Maybe I should have said; the voice in the music lead you and your class through two Tabata rounds. I used this playlist last night and got the inevitable; “that was really cool tonight, John” that reinforces my transition to using OPM 🙂
Both Spotify and Deezer offer large selections of Tabata tracks.
For your free track I found a Tabata track without any voice-over, and yet the timing of each interval/recovery is unmistakable.
Please let me know if you're willing to give it a try.
ICI/PRO contributor Chris Hawthorne contributes our latest Audio Class PROfile –
High Intensity Supersets and Active Recovery
This profile is based on a 12 week strength training program that I have been following for the past few months. The program, which can be found on BodyBuilding.com is made up of three distinct “Phases”. Phase One is preparing and warming up the muscles for the hard work ahead in the next two phases. Phase Two is the muscle building phase, and Phase Three is the fat burning stage. This ride profile includes the three phases plus a cool down and stretch.
Thankfully it wasn't my wedding anniversary (Amy and my 25th is Sept 23rd) but the 5th anniversary of indoorcycleinstructor.com!
Wow – what a ride this has been. Everything started back on August 2nd 2008 with this post. Well actually all this probably started 6 months before I published that first post. I had become intrigued with the thought of starting an Internet radio show, after listening (and become addicted to) sales and marketing Podcasts while driving between customer locations.
As a travelling sales guy, I spent my days “interviewing” prospective customers. A typical 30 minute meeting would consist of me asking a series of questions of my prospect and then listening to their responses – but rarely was this reversed, where the person would be asking me questions. So I thought; why not create an Internet radio show / Podcast that featured interviews with experts and personalities connected to my real passion, Fitness & Indoor Cycling?
How tough and/or expensive could this be?
Well it wasn't as difficult as it may seem and I think I spent about $50.00 in total to get started. The whole Podcasting thing really came into its own around 2008. iTunes was firmly established as the Podcast feed reader – although there were dozens of similar services competing for this space (most are no-longer) – and at the time the iTunes store was one of the top five places on the Internet where people searched for content specific to their interest. So beyond Google and YouTube, the iTunes music store was the place to be.
Of course we needed a website. The open source, blogging software WordPress was becoming very attractive to Podcasters. It was most importantly free, easy to use and automatically created the special RSS feed that connected indoorcycleinstructor.com to The Indoor Cycle Instructor Podcast in iTunes.
So I bought a $30 headset mic, registered the domain $9.95 and signed up for some cheap hosting @ $5.95 a month. But nobody warned me about how much time I would need to invest in all of this 🙁
I've done some simple studies on how much actual time I invest to produce one 30 minute episode:
2-3 hours recruiting each guest for the show, spread over days, weeks or for a few – months or even year. The folks at RealRyder have the distinction of being the most elusive to date. I'm still working on a few that could eclipse them… stay tuned.
One+ hour consisting of a dozen emails and one (sometimes two) 30 minute pre-calls to sort out the topic and questions.
One hour for a late cancellation & rescheduling
60-90 minutes for the actual recording session
2 hours post production; editing to make each guest sound good (I swear I have removed at least a million “uhms”, “you knows”, lip smacks, sniffs, etc…), creating and uploading the MP3 files, creating the post and then promoting the episode.
272 episodes x apx 9 hours = around 2,400 hours!
But they've been totally worth every minute as long as you've enjoyed them!
When I started all of this I had a concern that we'd run out of things to discuss. After all this is just Indoor Cycling… what's there to talk about?
As it turns out a lot. As I look forward I see that we've just scratched the surface.
There's lots more coming during year 6 here at the Indoor Cycle Instructor Podcast
*Note to self – add calendar reminder for 9/23 so you don't miss that anniversary… and don't forget to find something special for Amy.
