I attended Club Industry last week. The show was pretty small this year, compared with my last visit in 2011. There were no rides being conducted this year and only Star Trac, Schwinn, Keiser and Matrix had Indoor Cycles on display – only a few each.
Here's what I saw that was new, dumb or otherwise note worthy.
“The 1990's called and wants it's Maximum Heart Rate chart back.” I was in too good a mood to confront explain to this vendor as to why the promotion of discredited myths, like age predicted maximum heart rate charts, is a real detriment to our industry.
I’m not sure peddling this nonsense is in any way creative 🙁
Tae Yoo from Performance IQ was exhibiting with Schwinn. His system connects wirelessly via Ant+ with the AC Performance's M-Power console and displays it on the screen.
You wouldn't have noticed it walking by, but this AC Performance Plus has a Gates carbon drive belt. Not sure when it will be available – you'll need to check with your distributor if you're planning a purchase. In case you're wondering, this belt system (same as on the FreeMotion S11.9) would be my choice if I was considering either brand of Indoor Cycles.
Matrix was displaying the new version of the ICG Indoor Cycle. It was kind of sad not to have Jim Karanas there to ask him about it. There's a bunch of changes, but I couldn't get anyone's attention to explain them to me…
And last, but not least… how about taking a class lead by a Holographic Instructor? I took some pictures of a scaled down display of a company called HolograFit, but they didn't turn out. Keying off the “Virtual Instructor” craze (which I'm not seeing as being overly successful so far for anyone) HolograFit's display system projects a holographic 3D image in the front of the room, for everyone to follow. Like multiple other virtual Instructor systems, they provide a catalog of classes that can be shown between live classes or some enterprising studio owner could purchase the $80,000 system and eschew Instructors all together.
Now showing total time + hours and minutes beyond one hour!
Hi John! Have you heard the news? Apparently the Spotify timer is back. I have yet to receive the update but many instructors are already enjoying it!
Chris
Sent from my iPhone
It's about time 🙂
If you joined Spotify recently, you've had to live without any playlist timer. A major inconvenience when you want an accurate listing of total time.
Those of us joined a bit earlier enjoyed the playlist timer and were pretty frustrated when they removed it for no understandable reason. It wasn't perfect. A playlist of over 60 minutes displayed: Over One Hour, which wasn't much help when you were constructing a 90 minute endurance ride. I was creating two separate playlists; Part 1 & Part 2 so I could see the time, then combined them before class.
This new Spotify playlist timer showing both hours and minutes is a very welcome update.
To control the load on their servers, Spotify rolls out update notifications sequentially. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if they update their premium users first. If you're not seeing the new timer, I would first try closing Spotify if it's sitting open for a while. If that doesn't help you'll need to sit tight and wait until you see the update notification that will show on the top of Spotify page.
Comprehensive Training Exclusively for ICI/PRO Members.
ICI/PRO member Karin contacted me via email:
John, I still haven't gotten around to learning how to use Spotify so I'm not using the profiles yet. Is there any chance you will have a short training call to teach those like me?
Wishes for healthy & compassionate living,
Karin
Yes Karin, we will 🙂
Last fall we helped a bunch of Instructors skip the frustration of learning another new software program and quickly get comfortable using Spotify – which has become the choice of thousands of Instructors for delivering their class music.
I few will even tell you that Spotify has changed their lives!
Now that we have so many Instructors using Deezer, we'll be covering that service as well in separate training sessions.
We've created a special email list where you can receive notifications about upcoming live online training sessions.
Peloton Cycle recently raised $307,332 through a Kickstarter project to help fund the design and manufacture their new Peloton Indoor Cycle. Awesome on its own, but they also have plans to live-stream digital classes directly to the user's home from the new Peloton Cycling Studio they're building in New York City.
And not just your garden variety Indoor Cycling classes. Nope. Their plans are to employee the very best Instructors on the planet and to recruit them, they're willing to pay these Rock Star Instructors up to $500.00 for each class they teach.
Sound interesting? You can visit their Instructor's Wanted page to learn more.
Here's the promo video they did for their Kickstarter project that explains everything.
Listen to my interview with Peloton's COO & Co founder Tom Cortese below and if you haven't yet, please .
Will this $250 computer do everything I need as an Instructor?
At only $250.00 – I've been very tempted to tryout and live with a Google Chromebook. Now I have my chance!
“It looks like you need another new hard drive.” That was the opinion from Dr. Bookem (brother Dan who's the smartest person in our family) after giving my two year old Dell a through examination. Which would be the third hard drive, beyond the original, that this laptop will have needed.
The first sign of trouble was at the San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight back from Jim Karana's memorial service. The thing would freeze as soon as I tried to boot it up. After six tries it finally caught. The next day the same thing. So off to see the doctor. “It will probably run fine forever… if you never turn it off.” Better to replace the drive and have me move (he called it ghost) all my files from the old drive to the new. A new drive is about $100.00 and the typical cost for this service would be $150 ish depending on who's doing it.
That $250.00 also happens to be exactly what Amazon charges for a new Samsung Chromebook. So I hit the buy it now button, along with agreeing to pay the additional $3.95 for next day shipping for Amazon prime members. Next day was really important for me. I'm leaving for LA and the MINDBODY FitPro conference on Thursday and simply can't go without a functional laptop.
I have very little understanding of what I'm agreeing to. Chromebooks don't run any of the normal programs that I'm used to using. No Word, no Excel, no iTunes, no Spotify – but it does of course run the Google Chrome browser. And no DVD drive.
To replace all that software normally found on you computer, Chromebooks run a bunch of free Apps that are based in the cloud.
I have a sort of easy peace about all of this, combined with a slight tingle of fear… do something everyday that scares you 🙂
Stay tuned for this weekend when I report on my early experiences.
I was talking with one of my Thursday night regulars who's aware of our efforts here at ICI/PRO. He manages the website for the company where he works and we're always trading ideas for improving our sites. He asked me a question that I should have known off the top of my head, but I sheepishly had to tell him that I hadn't checked my traffic stats in quite a while.
So this morning I logged into my Google Analytics account for indoorcycleinstructor.com and got a pleasant supprise… for the period between January 1st and August 31st, the total number of people visiting here are up 28.81% 🙂
After being online for over 5 years, it amazes me that over this time period ~30% of visitors are finding us for the first time.
About 40% of you are Mac users (maybe I should switch?)
I see a huge 72% increase in Chrome users @ 25% of total users
There are still way too many Instructors using IE / Internet Explorer, but thankfully the number is down 13% from last year.
If you ever have have trouble downloading PDFs, Free Music Friday MP3s, open a Spotify / Deezer playlist from a link or most any other issues here or anywhere else online, 99% of the time it's due to using Internet Explorer. Stop the madness! Click here to download Google Chrome – it's free and it's wonderful.
And while they're here, they're consuming more of our educational information.
That's awesome – I really appreciate you stopping by and it makes me smile to know that we're able to help so many Instructors!
