This is the view from the Cycling Studio at Couples Tower Isle in Jamaica! It's one of 65 tropical resorts where our Grand Prize Winner can spend a romantic week 🙂
Today begins the start of the Ultimate Instructor Class Profile Contest part deux!
The Grand Prize winner will receive All-Inclusive accommodations on a working fitness vacation, at any of the 65 Caribbean Resorts available at FitnessProTravel.com + $500 cash from Master Trainer Jim Karanas with Team ICG®  that you can apply toward your plane tickets!
To help our PRO members get excited about entering and creating their own ultimate class profile, I invited Krista Leopold – of Welcome to the Jungle Audio PROfile fame – to help us learn how she creates:
Unforgettable Rides:Â 3 Steps to Creating the Ultimate Instructor Class Profile that Riders Remember
Many of us already do things like plan for holidays or use events to theme our rides, such as the Tour de France or the Olympics.  But you don't have to wait for something on the calendar to impact your students. Today, we are going to take a basic profile and give it a makeover. In the end we will be left with something that makes our students say “WOW. That was incredible!” My goal is to provide you with a game plan to bring some bling to your old profiles. I am going to walk you through the steps I take to transform a basic profile into an experience your riders will want more of!
You'll need to excuse me as I wrap myself in some favorite drug music of my youth today. I've been building a playlist to use with the new Pensacola Stage Race video.
The first half was easy. Basic stuff; a warmup + a few openers for the 10 minute Road Race. Then a steady, 90ish ten minute track for the Time Trial. Easy.
But where I'm struggling is deciding on the perfect music for the 30 minute Criterium…
“Dad, how am I going to learn to drive this?” was the question asked by my older daughter Abby, while I was negotiating the purchase of a well-cared-for Mazda 626. She would soon become know as “Murph” as in “Murphys Law” after the brakes failed – with Abby skillfully guiding her into the ditch to avoid rear-ending the car ahead of her.
But that was weeks after our initial lessons on driving a manual transmission car. Day-one ended at a stop sign with Abby jumping out and slamming the car door. After expressing some expletives that translated to; “Dad, I'm not ever going to be able to figure this out.” Abby had flat refused to learn anymore.
But au contraire young daughter. You can (and will) learn to drive and shift… or Murph will sit in the driveway and you'll walk, or (worse for her) ride your long neglected bicycle to your job.
So Abby relented and soon she was shifting like a NASCAR PRO.
Her sister Carly followed a few years later, and with some gentle instruction, she too became proficient driving a car that required her to both steer and shift to get where she needed. Both my girls began to enjoy driving Murph, especially after learning how few of their friends could even get out of the driveway with a manual transmission car. Beyond enjoyment, it actually became a source of pride in them, reinforced through frequent episodes (and the hilarious stories that followed) of trying to teach their friends (boy and girl alike) how to drive a car with a manual transmission. It continues today. Just last Sunday night Carly was the designated driver back to school in Fargo, because the girl who was driving still isn't comfortable driving her own car (a manual) on the highway back to school.
What prompted this post was a comment I received to an earlier post;
In the last year, the 2 clubs I teach cycling at have switched over to the Keiser M3′s, and, as you said, that was where it ended. A few of us, because of how we approached our instruction, understood what could be done with those computers. Those same few of us have, at our own expense, sought out information and training. It feels like when my dad bought me a manual transmission car when I turned 16, and said “there you go, Punkin!” without a bit of instruction regarding the gears. Except my only victim was a hunk of metal, not 30 people trusting me not to steer them wrong.
When instructors don’t know how to use the equipment, it makes us all look bad, and it’s very confusing to the members. Unfortunately, it’s all about money when you work for a chain.
We've devoted a lot of posts and Audio PROfiles toward teaching with Power here at ICI/PRO, and for good reason. Like Abby and Carly, we believe that those of you teaching on any of the brands with power, are capable of teaching with Power!
I have to admit that it was with a considerable amount of pride that I would listen to one of my daughters tell me a story that began with; “he thought he was so cool driving his dad's Mercedes and yet he turned out to be such a dork.” “He was talking smack; driving a stick is no big deal…” and so I said; “here you go… give it a try.” After he stalled Murph five times I said; “get out of the way and let a girl show you how it's done!”
It's no secret that teaching with Power or Heart Rate takes skill, an understanding of the training concepts and some dogged determination. There's a very good chance that you will be alone, or among a very few, in your club willing to make the effort.
Our goal here at ICI/PRO is to provide you with the knowledge and confidence you need to effectively teach an Indoor Cycling 2.0 based class – incorporating Power and/or Heart Rate – that truly demonstrates your competency as an Instructor.
There's no guarantee that your classes will ever be the fullest or the most talked about, but as a Professional you aren't looking for guarantees. If you're anything like me you are only looking for ONE student to come to you and say “I really appreciate your class… it must be hard, feeling like you have to compete with all the other nonsense… Thank You.”
Parenting suggestion for all of you with soon to be teenage drivers. Both our girls reported to us that driving a manual transmission required more of their attention, which kept them much more focused on driving, than when they drove an automatic. Then there's the natural deterrent to texting while driving that comes from needing both hands to get anywhere 🙂   Â
Keith Burnage from IndoorCyclingMusic.com joins me to discuss solving the problem using MixMeister Express with the new Mac Mountain Lion OS.
We are also using this Podcast to announce that IndoorCyclingMusic.com is now offering custom mixed playlists created specifically for our Audio PROfiles.
We realize that many of you have neither the time or interest needed to create seamless class music… but would still enjoy teaching with mixed music.
Also Spotify isn't available where many of our International ICI/PRO members teach and call home, so it's not an option.
This new service is very inexpensive and maybe just what you are looking for if time is the one thing you have too little of 🙂
Schwinn is promoting an improved version of the Schwinn AC Performance Indoor Cycle, calling it the “Plus”. The biggest changes are to the saddle and handlebar Fore & Aft adjustment mechanism. Earlier versions of the AC Performance limited both adjustments to three set position that were labeled “+” / “0” / “-“, with “0” being Neutral and the others ahead and behind. I heard a number of concerns that because people don't come in only three sizes, only offering three positions were too coarse, not allowing for the finer level of fitting we prefer to bring to our students.
The new AC Plus solves that with a new method that they say offers an “Infinite” level of adjustability. Here's a link to the new brochure you can download.
While we are on the subject of saddle adjustments, now is the time to go in review this video about ensuring all your Indoor Cycles are setup correctly. It's very important that once a student is setup correctly, that position is the same on every cycle in your studio.
You'll need to excuse me as I wrap myself in some favorite drug music of my youth today. I've been building a playlist to use with the new 
