Hope you didn't just purchase a studio full of Spinner Blade Ions® at the regular price and then paid for Instructor training 🙁
I'd been hearing some rumors about Mad Dogg Athletics ending their long partnership* with manufacturer Star Trac. And then yesterday I received this email above, that frankly, looked to me like a “Going out of business!” fire sale.
Well today it is official… Precor will be the new manufacturer of Spinner® Indoor Cycles.
I traded some emails yesterday with Justin Kleber who's the Product Manager for group cycling for Core Health and Fitness.
Hi John,
Here's what I can tell you. Our contract terminated in June and we have chosen not to renew the agreement. They have been great partners but we've agreed to pursue new opportunities and are winding down our relationship with them. More details will be coming in the next few months.
And I will make sure I keep you updated on all new developments. I'm the Product Manager for group cycling for Core Health and Fitness. That includes Schwinn Cycling and the new Star Trac bikes. I'm your go to guy for everything cycling within Core Health and Fitness.
Did you catch that bit about the new Star Trac bikes? Justin wasn't at liberty to give me any additional details, so we'll have to see exactly what will be “new” about these Indoor Cycles.
It's my understanding that certain design elements of the Spinner Blade Ion were based on being different from the Schwinn AC Performance. IMO it was a mistake to continue with the friction resistance system vs. Magnetic and don't get me started on weird feel of a tensioned belts vs. the bicycle like feel of the Gates Carbon found on the AC and new Stages SC3.
My question is; If Star Trac will continue to offer rebranded versions of the PRO/NXT/Ion do we really need another brand of Indoor Cycle from Precor that will be the new Spinners®?
When it comes to food, no doubt you’ve heard, read, or even said something along these lines: Everything’s fine in moderation.
Many famous people have said that they’ve never been successful at achieving moderation.
Professionally, I never recommend moderation in sugar intake.
Instead, I favor this quotation by Saint Augustine: “To many, complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”
Clinical experience has taught me that some people simply can’t achieve moderation around certain foods.
Sugar addiction is real. Encouraging a sugar addict to eat sugar “moderately” makes no sense. It makes as much sense to tell a recovering alcoholic to drink in moderation — or a smoker who’s just quit to smoke in moderation.
In fact, when you’re talking about addiction of any type, moderation makes no sense at all.
Many Of Us Should Abstain From Moderation
In cases of addiction, moderation may be an impossible goal. For some of my clients, a small amount of any addictive substance — alcohol, sugar, whatever — simply leads to more. In addiction literature, the phenomenon is known as “priming.”
When I’ve brought up priming and sugar, self-styled censors have chastened me online. Apparently, researchers have not yet tested such a thing on sugar.
My dissertation study, however, showed priming among women with binge eating disorder who were also sugar-sensitive. Sugar was a primary food trigger for their binges.
Yet lab research is often behind the curve — which seems exactly the opposite of the way things should be. Scientific research happens when a need, a problem, is perceived. It’s my strong hope that researchers will soon realize that we need to acknowledge and start testing priming and sugar.
The research delay isn’t surprising. I’ve been speaking and writing about sugar addiction for almost 25 years — and only now is it becoming mainstream thinking.
Better late than never, of course. A lack of abundant scientific study in the past didn’t make the notion false, though — just ahead of its time. Research existed back then but was limited. Much was done on animals, but not all. Chocolate studies, for example, were always conducted with human participants. But I digress.
The Moderation Myth Makes Clients Feel Crummy
The main reason I dislike the myth of moderation is it makes my sugar-sensitive clients feel as if something’s wrong with them. That bothers me.
When sugar addicts can’t eat certain foods in moderation, no one’s to blame. Certainly not the sugar addicts — it’s a brain chemistry thing.
Brain chem is largely genetic. You got what you got. I’m old enough to recall the public service announcements that used frying eggs to show us “This Is Your Brain On Drugs.”
‘Your Brain On Sugar’ isn’t your fault.
People now agree that sugar is addictive, yet the implications remain a mystery to some. Who cares who says what about moderation? Do what works for you.
If it’s easier for you to abstain completely than to try moderation … then fail … and then feel crummy about yourself, I strongly encourage you to abstain.
My coach, Jim Karanas, used to say that athletic performance triggers the ego. It brings forward conflict, discomfort, anxiety, self-defeating thoughts, and doubts about what’s possible and what’s not.
In athletics, you do what’s necessary. You have the above thoughts without reacting to them — and stay with the event. The athletic objective is to learn to be nonreactive to distractions, including pain.
Giving up sugar can also bring forward discomforts — withdrawal symptoms, cravings — plus the anxiety, doubts, and self-defeating thoughts that may go with them. Like the athletic distractions, none of them is permanent.
You do what’s necessary to eliminate them and stay with the plan.
One difference is that, in athletics, it helps not to derive an identity from your performance. That identity, my coach said, is just ego.
In contrast, I say, what’s good about going through the process of quitting sugar is the sense of identity you develop when you do it. Your identity shifts.
You become The Person Who Doesn’t Eat Sugar, and things change.
– You stop finding sugary foods tempting. They’re Not Food.
– You consciously stop putting junk into your healthy body.
– People stop trying to persuade you to eat what you’d rather avoid.
– People stop giving you gifts of tempting sugary treats.
It’s not that the foods don’t look or smell appetizing. But they don’t bother us because we view them as something we simply don’t eat.
They’re no longer who we are.
Brain Chemistry Puts a Space Around Sugar
Eckhart Tolle, who wrote The Power of Now, talks about putting a space around pain, thoughts and memories — especially negative ones — by staying present in the moment.
Basically, that’s becoming nonreactive.
Once addictive foods — like sugar — have been removed from your diet, the right foods you’ve added along the way can, and will, enhance dopamine and improve your focus.
Meanwhile, serotonin will put a space around what’s happening — and make you less reactive — by literally increasing the time between thought and action.
The non-reactivity holds true whether the trigger is external — seeing chocolate cake, smelling freshly baked cinnamon buns — or internal — having a taste that triggers the desire for lots more.
I talk to my clients about stability, which applies to both brain chemistry and glucose.
When both are stable and even, my clients are able to make decisions about food, instead of reacting to every treat.
They make decisions, instead of succumbing to junk they know won’t do them good, just because they can’t resist or think they have “decision-making fatigue.”
Once my clients are stable, I know they’re on the ‘Zen path’ — as described in my last post — to making clear decisions about food and sugar.
The music industry is figuring out that a great Indoor Cycling class is built on a fabulous playlist. Now they're making noises that they feel they should be charging fitness studios a higher rate for their commercial performance licenses…
By Andrew Sparkler, Vice President, Business Affairs & Operations
At this year’s SXSW, SoulCycle teamed up with Spotify and some of their favorite DJs at what was dubbed as “an epic music and movement experience.” While the popular fitness club’s trip to Austin underscores the importance of music to its business, it is unclear if the music business is spinning to the same beat.
SoulCycle, launched in 2006, is now filing for an IPO. Its business is primarily based on offering a high intensity spin class led by an instructor who also serves as a DJ. Take a class, glance at their website or read their S-1 filing and it is clear that music is perhaps as essential to their business as the bikes themselves.
SoulCycle’s SEC filing characterizes its product as a “carefully curated ‘cardio party’ [that] is fueled by the personalities of our instructors, their uniquely crafted musical playlists and the energy of the room” and says that “[w]ith inspirational coaching and high-energy music, SoulCycle was created to strengthen both the mind and the body.” Their instructors go as far as to claim that music “is the most important part of what we do at SoulCycle.”
Performing rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI are on constant lookout for ways to generate royalties for their songwriters and rights holders, but one publishing exec (and former ASCAP vp) argues they need to look harder — maybe even break a sweat — when dealing with your favorite fitness center.
In an op-ed for Medium, Downtown Publishing vp of business affairs Andrew Sparkler said PROs are dropping the proverbial medicine ball by classifying certain gyms under “general” licenses — the same umbrella as restaurants, bars and concert/sports venues — when music has become such an ubiquitous and personalized part of the workout experience.
To make his point, Sparkler cites the popular SoulCycle chain of spin classes, who in a recent SEC filing for an IPO called their product a “carefully curated ‘cardio party' [that] is fueled by the personalities of our instructors, their uniquely crafted musical playlists and the energy of the room.”
In its SEC filing, SoulCycle projects 2015 revenue to be around $140 million and said it hopes to expand to 250 locations (up from 36 in 2014) in the near future.
Sparkler figures each SoulCycle is currently bringing in about $3.1 million apiece for the company, but is only paying a tiny fraction of that to PROs under the “general” licenses for the music it plays. BMI, for example, charges fitness clubs a maximum of $2,123 per year per location — which would amount to .01 percent of what Sparkler estimates each SoulCycle makes. ASCAP also has a flat fee per location, but it slides depending on inflation.
According to his calculations, fitness center revenue increased over 104 percent in the U.S. between 2000 and 2014, and SoulCycle jumped 108 percent from 2012 to 2013 alone.
While noting that SoulCycle is doing nothing wrong — they’re simply paying the bills sent by PROs — it’s those rights groups that should tap into “this cultural phenomenon and increase their rates accordingly.”
So where does this lead? My guess is that ASCAP and BMI will be looking for ways to monetize (make more money) off the excitement surrounding SoulCycle/Indoor Cycling and the ease of music delivery from Spotify/iTunes Music = they'll be contacting clubs and studios with “revised” (read more expensive) license agreements.
As someone who prefers to maintain a level of fair exchange, I can't begrudge them for asking a higher rate than a sports bar or restaurant would pay. My only hope is that club/studio owners/managers recognise the value great music brings to our classes and not follow the LA Fitness path that pretends to save money by enforcing canned Muzac use by their Instructors 🙁
I just became aware of a new Indiegogo campaign for an innovative* method of pedaling a bicycle. Similar in functionality to a KrankCycle, the Caron Bicycle uses independent left/right crankarms that create 6 different pedalling movements.
They have their crankset installed on a conventional IC in this video. Watch and then tell me if you feel these added exercises would improve your class… or is it just a solution in search of a problem that doesn't really exist?
This animated video shows the various muscle activation from the different pedalling techniques.
*I'd be curious to know if Matrix has patents on the KrankCycle that would extend to a leg powered bicycle?
In case you haven't seen the KrankCycle in action:
Caron claims this on their campaign page:
Technology for CARON Bicycle is protected by patents worldwide, including US Pat. No. 7,544,139.
It might be cool to observe power output – especially during one legged work 🙂
During an office-clearing project, I found an article I wrote years ago about a book by Hirschman and Munter. They advocate 3 rules for approaching food whenever you feel like eating.[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Rule 1: Ask yourself if you’re hungry.
The purpose of food is to fuel us when our bodies need it. That’s signaled by physical hunger. Asking this question over and over reinforces the critical connection between hunger and eating.
Rule 2: Ask yourself what you’re hungry for, what you feel like eating.
The idea is to tune in to what your body is telling you. This assumes that the body will know what it needs nutritionally. You can then choose in accordance with that.
Rule 3: Stop eating when you’ve had enough.
This also involves tuning in to what your body is telling you and recognizing the feeling of “comfortable fullness” as the right amount of food.
Take it from a sugar addiction expert: these 3 rules could easily backfire when it comes to sugar.
Why Don’t They Work When Sugar’s Involved?
First, clients who eat sugar frequently may not get hungry. As explained in a previous post, my research hasn’t yet uncovered a solid explanation for exactly why that is. Still, too many clients have described this phenomenon for me to think it’s not real.
These clients may even get symptoms (headaches, queasiness, and so on) instead of physical hunger. The symptoms can typically be traced back to low glucose.
Second, it’s not surprising that someone who’s hooked on sugar feels like eating sugar. Frequently.
How can it be helpful to tell someone who’s going through sugar withdrawal — which may include cravings — to tune in to the body and eat what she/he wants?
Third, the comfort stopping point works well only for those who tend to eat to fuel.
It’s not always easy to stop eating sugar at the comfort point if (and when) the client’s “relationship” with sugary foods is based on satisfying a craving or an addictive urge.
Athletic Training Theories Apply To Sugar Addiction?
From my coach, I learned that the purpose of training is to bring consciousness to the process.
When athletes talked about the pain of athletic training, the coach would say that pain stimulates resistance. But through continued training — and by adding consciousness to it — our response to pain changes. We become nonreactive to it.
It doesn’t feel any better, he’d say. It just doesn’t bother us as much.
Once you remove an addictive substance, like sugar, from the diet, the body may start to display different signals. Hunger pangs may return — or show up for the first time — reflecting the body’s needs. Control over food may increase. Appetite may decrease. Awareness may increase and unconscious reactions decrease.
Significantly, over time, we become less and less reactive to external sugar triggers.
The triggers might include the sight of appetizing foods, the delicious smell of baking cookies — or even sounds that bring on cravings. For example, someone fond of candy might have been triggered in the past by the sound of someone unwrapping a candy bar. Once they’ve been “off” sugar for a while, that sound could become less automatic in triggering the desire to eat candy.
It’s not that the foods lose their appeal; it’s just that they bother us less.
These changes may take time, but staying off sugar long-term could be considered continued, long-term training.[/wlm_private]
[Part 2 will cover athletics and sugar addiction.]
