I thought I would break from the routine just a bit, and rather that share a “story” this week, I would share some of the fun metaphors I use during my sprints with class.
SPRINT DRILL #1
Many years ago I saw a T-shirt for a Track and field team and on the back of it it had the words “If you can read this, then I'm winning.” I always loved that quote and so I made a fun game of it. Since almost all of my sprint songs (and most songs for that matter) have 3 choruses in them, I find two other quotes and run the drill this way.
*Describe the race any way you like (A marathon, a Cycling race, even a car race) and tell them they are behind someone and as they get closer, they see on the back of their shirt (insert your favorite quote) and in an explosive voice tell them to pass. Do it again with a second quote, and then use the “If you can read this……” quote last. Works every time.
SPRINT DRILL #2
Tell them they are either in a car or on a bike on a two lane highway. THIS Highway is the “Highway of Life.” They are in the right lane and in the left lane is fast moving on coming traffic wizzing by. Again, using a typical 3 chorus sprint song. At first chorus tell them the left lane oipens up and they have to take the left lane and sprint like hell before the left lane fills back up with on coming traffic. Do the same thing for the second on. But on the third one tell them it doesn't look like “life” is gonna open up that lane and that when “Life” throws you this challenge, you do what winners do and create your OWN opening by using the breakdown lane and sprint like hell.
RUN DRILL
Play a typical Run song with a steady temp. Tell them they are on a log like the old time loggers wearing those spiked shoes and they are competing against someone else. Remember when those lumber jack games used to play on TV ?? So they have to run without bouncing imagining they are on this log, trying to knock off the opponent.
HILL DRILL
One of my favorite things to say during a hill climb is to imagine they are walking in waste deep snow, climbing a hill. Increasing the resistance means the hill incline is getting steeper and steeper. And then when you think you have them close to their limit, Tell them you just hooked a sled to the back of their belt and on that sled is everyone and everything that means anything to them and that they MUST get them to the top of the hill !!
This might be a perfect space for a 25 bike cycling studio – except the HVAC system was designed to supply air for a three person travel agency.
I'm learning that many small/boutique fitness studios are located in spaces designed as offices or small retailers. Businesses with a handful of sedentary people, sitting at a desk. The building's HVAC system isn't typically optimised for all the CO2 and moisture created by a room full of heavy breathing participants = poor air quality, especially at the end of class 🙁
Does this describe your studio? Should we be looking for solutions to improve your studio's air quality, while keeping energy costs to a minimum?
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 🙁
