I was in Rochester MN yesterday and took an awesome class at the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center. It's a beautiful club, with a stadium style studio, full of FreeMotion S11.9 Indoor Cycles. If you're ever find yourself in Rochester It would be worth your time to pop in and take a class at the DAHLC – that's what they call it.
I've made it a habit to take other Instructor's classes as often as possible. My objective is to learn from as many different people as possible – it doesn't matter who they are or their experience level. I find I can always pick up something of value, not to mention it's just fun take someone else's class!
The Instructor's name was Julie and she had a great playlist that included two tracks that worked very well together as a 70 rpm steep climb that transitioned into a 94ish flat. I'm never in class without my iPhone these days and Shazam identified and saved them so I could add them to my Spotify library and also share them with you.
They have a SoundEar Sound Meter hanging on the back wall of the studio to help the Instructor understand how loud her music is playing. I see this as a valuable tool (although very pricey @ $700.00) that solves the “YOUR MUSIC IS TOO LOUD” problem. With the studios speakers mounted to either side of the Instructor and pointed at the class, Julie isn't hearing her music at the same level as her class. It was interesting to watch her make adjustments to her iPod when she saw the SoundEar's red light flashing – which indicates a volume above the preset level of 85 dBs. In case you are wondering 85 decibels is pretty loud, at least it sounded loud enough for me 🙂
So you've got a room full of brand new indoor cycles with Power. Now what?
How do you effectively introduce the concept of adding measurement (Power/Speed/Distance) to a class that has been taught without metrics for 15+ years?
And do so in a way that doesn't overwhelm the participants?
Or you (the Instructor) for that matter?
I posed the question to Jay Blahnik, Master Trainer with Schwinn Indoor Cycling. Jay joins me to discuss a number of steps you can follow to successfully introduce measurement in your classes.
ICI/PRO members can access Part 2 here, where Jay breaks down how to communicate with the three groups of people (participants and Instructors) you will likely encounter and how to address their specific needs/concerns.
I've been a loyal Carbonite customer since 2008 and see having a system for regular, daily backups of your computer as a Best Practice. They've saved me from multiple Hard Drive failures where I would have lost everything. All my music, all my files and thousands of pictures remain safe and recovering every single file, after you drop your laptop on the kitchen floor, takes just a few clicks 🙂
And I mean every thing. Carbonite runs every evening, backing up every new or changed file, so when you're a little blurry at 5:00am and you hear a very loud crash, followed by a strange grinding noise, you don't have to freak out. You've got a secure backup that you can access from another computer until your's is fixed.
I just got an email from them with what has to be the best deal they've ever offered. Carbonite is running a refer a friend program. Sign up today ($59.00 a year) and you and your friend (that's me) receive a $20.00 gift card from Amazon.com
Once you are a customer you can become the “friend” and get a $20.00 gift card for everyone you refer. Play it right and you could actually make money on the deal!
More and more I'm hearing and seeing how Instructors are experimenting with riding in with the class, rather than presenting up-front-and-center on the traditional “Instructor Bike”.
It's fun to mix it up and IMO, an imperative when teaching to a structured Virtual Ride DVD.
But riding away from the music controls creates a technical difficulty; how do you make adjustments to the sound volume?
I witness this firsthand, while riding in an unnamed (but very attractive) Instructor's class this morning.
Her playlist included a bunch of very interesting mashups of popular tunes. Which made for a great class… except that a number of tracks had been mixed at varying sound levels. After hitting play, our unnamed Instructor took her position with the rest of class in the front row, leaving her iPod up on the sound equipment cabinet. Everything was going as planned until one of the mashups came on REALLY LOUD! She hopped off her cycle, walked up to her iPod, quickly turn down the volume and returned to her bike. Problem solved.
Solved that is until the next song which was very quiet. Not wanting to disrupt the class any further she left it where it was, leaving me wanting to yell out “turn up your music!” Out of respect for another Instructor, I didn't say anything during her class.
But I will offer you two possible solutions, Amy:
I can order you a very long cord for your iPod.
I can lend you my Bluetooth receiver and show you how you can connect wirelessly using your Android phone.
I'm here to help and you know where to find me.
Actually there's another reason I've found to go wireless – many accessory cases prevent the 1/8″ plug on the connection cord from being fully inserted into your phone. So it doesn't work with the case installed 🙁
In my case I was forever taking off my iPhone's case so I could plug in the cord. When I got tired of the hassle, I quit using the case altogether. And then promptly dropped my iPhone, breaking the back glass panel – not good. So a Best Practice for any Instructor is to invest in a $25.00 (with free shipping) for this Bluetooth receiver and not need to invest in a $549.00 replacement iPhone.
Speaking of riding along with your class… I Shazam'd this track last night, Come Along from Vicci Martinez. It conveys the essence of exactly what I'm trying to communicate to my students as we push through a tempo Threshold effort together. There's a wonderful refrain the you can add to your cuing at the 2:27 mark; Time Fly's, Make a Statement, Take a Stand… and finishes with; Take… Your… Shot!
LifeTime Instructor's have a super secret community at LTPulse.com. I've been trying to help my fellow LTF Indoor Cycling Instructors there get up to speed with Spotify. In the process they've alerted me to some additional problems that you maybe having as well.
One Instructor, who I believe had reviewed some of our past How To articles about Spotify, expressed some frustration that I'm seeing now was completely my fault 🙁
In the latest version of Spotify (0.5x) the little pencil edit icon appears to have disappeared. All my earlier tutorials showed version (0.4x) which I'm still running on my 3g Spotiphone so I can show you the difference with these screen shots.
Here's the old version:
And here's the latest version – note the change:
Click the three dots icon and you'll find the edit option to change the order or delete songs. When changing the order of tracks, be sure to double check that you don't end up with duplicates. I'm not sure why it happens, but duplicates seem to appear everytime I try to reorder my playlists on my device.
Here's the Playlist I used if you're interested Thursday.
This obviously is not OK – spend some time with Yelp to correct it.
Teaching a great class is important to building your attendance numbers, but new students need to first find your studio. Mobile search has become very important with 10's of millions of smart phone users and we've talked here before about the need to claim and update your Google Maps/Places listings.
But everything changed with Apple's iOS 6 update for iPhones and iPads. Apple no longer uses Google Maps data, replacing it with their own mapping system that appears to rely heavily on Yelp for business listings.
A Best Practice for studio owners and managers is to confirm that your facility is correctly listed and displays properly on both iPhone and Android devices. The easiest way to do this is grab one of both types, stand in the parking lot and search for your studio using the Maps function.
My recommendation is to search by:
Your business name
Your speciality; Spinning Studio, Indoor Cycling studio, Fitness Club, etc…
Common Keywords; Spin, Cycle, Fitness, weight loss, etc…
If you aren't showing up on an iPhone running the new iOS 6.x (Apple's new Map App shows a “3D” tab in the bottom LH corner) it's time to add or update your Yelp Business Listing. Follow that link to create a free profile and then search for and claim your listing, if you haven't already.
If you've spent time with Google Maps you may be frustrated by how limited Yelp is, when it comes to categorizing your business. My suggestion is to fully develop the Bio's of each Instructor and manager. It's in these descriptions where you can reinforce specific keywords that will hopefully help searchers find you and your class 🙂
