Want to use your iPhone or Android based device to schedule your next Indoor Cycling class?
There's an App for that® 🙂
I added the ® because Apple has trademarked that phrase.
Studio owner Bill Pryor has created an App for his customers at Spynergy Wellesley, Bill's Indoor Cycling Studio outside of Boston Mass. Spynergy customers can download the App for free, quickly review the class schedule and easily signup for a future class. The part I love most is how it adds the event your calendar, so there's no excuse for missing the class.
The App is made by TempoXSports and they can build a custom App for your Club or Studio if you're using MINDBODY Online to manage registrations – which is about everyone as far as I can tell.
Here's more about it:
The app your clients see will be similar in feel to what they are used to from booking through their browser-based systems. Your app will let clients easily perform the following critical tasks from their phones
Sign-in to their MINDBODY existing account
Set up an account if they are new
View your schedule
Sign-up / reserve spots (reservations auto-posted to calendar / ical)
Read teacher and class descriptions
Check their account (visits, schedule, attendance, purchases)
Purchase any packages you are selling through MINDBODY
I love getting emails like this and wanted to share it with you!
Hi John,
I just wanted to say “hi” and also a big “thank you”. I teach cycle classes in Melbourne, Australia. I was looking at some inspiration for my Cycle classes and found myself totally hooked to your podcasts, which opened a whole new world to me. I've been teaching cycle classes as a part time job. I also teach other classes (Les Mills Bodypump/Combat and boxing). I lost my full time job a few weeks ago and group fitness classes have been my daily job since. I have to say it's been quite a challenge to keep all the workout fresh but most of all to keep up the passion, enthusiasm and fun about teaching classes. I had moments of self doubt whereby I thought I wasn't made for this industry.
I find it very inspiring to listen to all your high profile athletes/master instructor guests talking about their experience and passion about indoor cycling, how they got to indoor cycling and what make them so unique. I have to say having knowledge of this could be intimidating for someone like me who's just a part-time cycle instructor teaching 2 hrs cycling classes a week but at the same time, everyone comes from different backgrounds and that's what make a class experience unique at the end of the day. I guess that's what I'm taking with me before teaching a class.
Seasonal affective disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year. If you're like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms start in the fall and may continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. Less often, seasonal affective disorder causes depression in the spring or early summer.
Treatment for seasonal affective disorder includes light therapy (phototherapy), psychotherapy and medications. Don't brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the “winter blues” or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own. Take steps to keep your mood and motivation steady throughout the year.
I don't mean to make light of depression – my mother struggled with it for much of her life. But this morning a number of us decided that even jokes about how bad the weather is here, are depressing. Worst one I've heard was this morning; “John, I'm not sure I'm ready for winter to start again…” Not sure if it was intended as a joke, but it got a few chuckles from the other's who heard it.
There is treatment available.Bright light therapy is supposed to be effective. I'm all about finding solutions to problems. This morning I may have come up with a way we could introduce this much needed therapy, as part of a special class we could offer.
An Indoor Tanning Triathlon!
We could run it just like a regular indoor Tri, except participants would recover between each leg with a few minutes enjoying some rays in a tanning bed. Our club is always forming marketing partnerships with local business. Why not have the local tanning salon roll a bunch of beds in for an afternoon?
You'd come out of the pool, dry off and then spend 5 minutes in a turbo tan – we could even have special UV protective swim goggles made so you wouldn't need to change them. Then into the cycling class, which ends with another blast of vitamin D, before a short run on the treadmill.
Our Cycling Studio Owners will want to check this out ASAP…
For years we've promoted Working Fitness Vacations – where you, the Instructor, teache a few fitness classes in exchange for a very low cost, Caribbean vacation. Hundreds of Instructors have followed our recommendations and have really enjoyed their all inclusive vacations.
Now there's TripTribe.com. They specialize in assisting fitness professionals who want to take a group of clients (your tribe) on a fitness retreat. For leading these trips you, the Instructor, will be paid as the Trip Tribe Ambassador!
To learn the actual scoop on these trips, I asked the marketing representative at Trip Tribe if she'd connect me with an Ambassador that I could interview…
Coach Kelly McCormack owns Club Inhale Exhale in Billerica, Massachusetts. This past May she traveled with a group of her clients to a ranch in the mountains of Costa Rica. It sounds like everyone had a great time and best of all, the check TripTribe.com sent her at the conclusion of the trip paid all of her expenses🙂
Listen to my interview with Kelly to learn if this would be something you could do with your tribe.
TripTribe.com offers dozens of exotic locations across the world, in a wide range of pricing, including;
Go here and create a free profile. Spend some time working with their retreat planning wizard to get an understanding of the possibilities. Then I'd encourage you to call and discuss your ideas for a group trip with one of their advisors.
Hi John,
I hear you talk about your ninety minute endurance class and I would like to work up to a 90 minute class at our gym. Could you give me the details of how your class is structured for the 90 minutes? I have done some steady state rides in my class but this has been a difficult concept for my group to accept as some of them still feel that you have to “cough up a lung” to get a workout. Thanks for all that you do.
Teaching 90 minute Endurance classes can be tough for many Instructors, dare I say impossible for those of you who don't understand what I'm calling an “Endurance State of Mind” (with apologies to Billy Joel).
So you have some background, I've been teaching winter endurance classes since 1999. My Instructor job with Life Time Fitness resulted from one of my students (who was also a Lifetime member) complaining to the department head about the lack of “cycling specific” classes offered at their Athletic Level clubs. His recommendation lead to my 90 minute Sunday endurance class being the first regularly scheduled class of it's type. Along they way I've developed a class that seems to play well to those who desire this type of class.
NOTE: My class typically transitions to a full 2 hours in mid March. This year we will be starting March 11th – feel free to join us if you're in Minneapolis some weekend 🙂
So, what do I mean by an Endurance State of Mind?
Endurance is all about being able to endure something over time – and it's something you experience independently from others.
I can endure something along with you… but I can't endure something for you – that's for you alone to experience.
I talk frequently in class about the four components of Endurance:
Muscular Endurance
Cardiovascular Endurance
Saddle Endurance – we spend a long time seated
Mental Endurance
In a normal class your students are conditioned to look to you for direction, for the full time of the class. This isn't the case in my endurance classes; I'm trying to remove as much of me as possible from the class and teach everyone to look to themselves for direction, focus and motivation = Mental Endurance. It's very normal to find me riding in with the class and I may not speak for long periods of time, after laying out the basic profile. I see my role as creating the Place where we are all riding virtually. I find it helps to use structured video that includes a terrain profile.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still offering encouragement and cuing, it's just that it comes from a “we're in this together” rather than the “do this…now do this” typical teaching mode many of us follow in a normal class.
Here's where this maybe difficult for you – having an Endurance Frame of Mind requires you to trust in the capabilities of your students…. and then let them run with it. By capability I mean viewing every student as a self-directed endurance athlete. I actually tell them; I came here this morning believing each of you has the capability to successfully complete this class… now it's up to you to show that I was wrong.
How can you tell if you do or don't believe your students are capable? So many of us have spent our Instructing careers feeling as if we need to direct every minute of the class; every surge, hill, jump and recovery, or our class will become bored or lost.
Could you give them some short (yet specific) instructions and then let them do their own thing? Or create a place for them to be accountable for the time they are spending in your class… and then get out of their way?
Try this sometime: Lay out your plan in the introduction and explain that today everyone is doing what they feel they need. Then find a bike in the middle of the room, keep your cuing/coaching to the absolute minimum – and ride 🙂
