Now I'm not talking about lying to you in a malicious/manipulative way, I have this awesome bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you really cheap – or – she's a real peach, only driven to church and back by the gentlest 80 year old grandmother you've ever met.
What I'm talking about is how people will/do lie to you… if they think telling you the truth could or would hurt your feelings.
Friends can be the worst. And I count a lot of long time members at our club, as friends.
“The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyones comfort” – Arturo Binewski.”
― Katherine Dunn
Here's a recent example.
Two weeks ago I took over a class for another Instructor. 6:00 am Thursday mornings. The previous Instructor is very solid and she teaches a cycling specific class – I've taken and subbed it multiple times, so I was a good choice to take over her class. Everyone there knows me by name and most I've known for years.
The first week was Spring break = only about 1/2 the normal attendance. It was an endurance day and I thought; “why not run them though some Effortless Exercise intervals?” I lead everyone through a series of ladders where the challenge was to keep your mouth closed (staying aerobic) – while maximising power output. I had them experimenting with different cadences to observe where they each were most efficient.
After class I asked a few participants their thoughts (I try to always ask for questions/comments) and each was positive. But as it turned out, they were lying to me 🙁
This past week was an ugly snowstorm, so again a small class. Wanting to build on the theme we did a bunch of climbing, but stayed down around VT1 = aerobic. I needed to get on the road quickly that morning, so I didn't hang around very long.
Walking to to Amy's class Saturday morning, a member approached me with; “John, you've really got to step it up!” And she proceeded to tell me how such and such's class on Tuesday is really hard and how a number of other members were disappointed by how “easy” my class was.
Finally someone willing to tell me the truth!
I can do hard and these members know it. In fact I'll bet I disappointed most of them. Beyond their (misguided) belief that a hard class always equals a good class, my reputation is that John teaches hard classes. When I didn't meet their “expectations” for hard, they probably felt cheated at some level.
In Krista Leopold's Dear Instructor post, she shared the honest disappointment of Patrick, a frustrated member. He had an expectation that wasn't met that was based on his perspective; the scheduled Instructor is totally capable of coming come to class prepared. I found the very specific honesty refreshing and I'm hoping that this Instructor will appreciate Patrick. He could very well be the only participant in his class that believes enough in him, to tell him the truth.
As a think back through this, I'm realizing that my mistake was not considering that these members would have an expectation based on their previous experiences with me and my class. I had walked in thinking; “these folks need aerobic base training… so that's what I'm going to give them.” When I should have thought; “these folks are probably thinking I'm going to walk in and crush them… so I need to meet that expectation first and then slowly work in the base training I feel they need.” As I type this I'm also realizing that ME, deciding what THEY need, was about ME and not THEM 🙁
This week I'm planning a class that will bracket a long aerobic climb, with two very long/intense FTPish intervals. I'm also going to have everyone fill out this Instructor Evaluation Form that Dr. Haley Perlus had created for us for us a while back.
Do any of your students struggle with motivation? Have any of them missed classes, perhaps several in a row, because they “just didn’t feel motivated”? For a number of years, I’ve been an instructor/nutritionist for a weight-management program that includes indoor cycling. Motivation has often been an issue.
Which comes first — motivation or results? My immediate response to that question was “motivation.” How can you get results if you’re not motivated to do anything?
Still, in another life, I had the fitness job of showing people how to use the equipment, getting their health histories, and starting them on programs. Some came in excited, but others were resigned: “My doctor said I need to exercise to lower my blood pressure.” “My wife told me I have to join the club and lose weight.” Some even seemed resentful that they “had to” be there.
So, clearly, fitness programs don’t all start with motivation. Once these new members started to lose a little weight, though, feel more energetic, sleep better, get a few compliments, that’s when they didn’t want to miss a day. That’s when they put cross-trainers in the trunk because it messed up their plans when they forgot them one evening. That’s when they began scheduling activities around their workouts instead of the reverse.
Apparently, for some people, results precede motivation.
This brings up another question. What’s motivation? Several years ago, in the same weight-management program, we had a behavioral psychologist on staff, who defined motivation in terms of excitement. He’d ask participants if they were still motivated, still excited, as if those were one and the same.
Are they? I feel sure the readers of ICI-PRO are highly motivated. Do you jump out of bed every morning, gleefully anticipating the class you’ll soon be teaching, or your own workout, whatever it may be? Or every single ride? I imagine many of us feel excitement on something of a sliding scale.
The early A.M. gym crowd tends to be quite consistent. As I worked with a client one morning, a man who’s at the gym most days approached us to say hello and added, “I really didn’t want to be here today, but I told myself, ‘Gotta do it.’” It was exactly what my client needed to hear; he usually dragged in, complaining about lack of motivation.
So back to the question of what motivation is. Is it enthusiasm? On any given morning, many consistent exercisers probably feel much the same way as the man who got himself to the club with, “Gotta do it.”
What can we do to help students who struggle to stay motivated? I suggest we start by telling them to accept their love-it/hate-it feelings about the workout. One day, your class will be their favorite thing to do all day. The next, they’ll hate it — and you for being the Cycling Nazi. Embrace the dichotomy.
A Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi holds one (rather esoteric) key. The way of the warrior is death. In a life or death situation, the warrior chooses death, accepts and embodies it so there’s no fear, no desire to back away. Jim Karanas — NO surprise — trained this way for a 24-hour rowing event. Substituting pain for death, he embraced the pain and actually sought it out, rather than trying to avoid or lessen it.
Why not apply this to cycling classes? Accept, embrace and seek out all of the frustrations: discomfort, tedium, sleep deprivation, inconvenience, and more.
Mark Twain said, “Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do.” He claimed it led to the habit of doing one’s duty without pain. I see it as the warrior’s way — saying yes, rather than no, to the pain. Do something each day that you don’t want to do simply to stay on the warrior’s path, to move through and past those who think there’s something wrong with feeling the pain in the first place.
Tell students it’s okay to come in with scowling faces. No matter how much they didn’t want to be there at first, they’ll almost always be glad they showed up.
I’ve pushed through workouts, competitions and stage performances despite injuries, fatigue, boredom, lack of prep time, or simple lack of desire. My decades as a fitness pro have taught me that anyone who wonders why someone would do something unpleasant won’t adhere to a fitness program for any length of time.
Help your students redefine motivation. I read somewhere that a key to happiness is to learn to recognize a neutral state as happiness. The same can be said for motivation — it’s not necessarily enthusiasm, let alone excitement.
Sometimes motivation is nothing more than planning, then getting where you have to be to do what you need to do, so you can get the results you say you want … pushing through obstacles, pain and discouragement, all the way to the goal.
You could call it the dark side of joy.
“Forget about likes and dislikes; they are of no consequence.
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.”
— George Bernard Shaw
How many of you have sung along to a favorite tune for years, in the safety of your car/shower or (God forbid) over the Instructor Mic, only to learn that you have some of the lyrics completely wrong?
Or looked at from the other direction; how many of you have felt a sense of contentment – once you've discovered the correct lyrics for a song – and your brain no longer needs to create sounds to fill the space where the newly discovered word fits?
I'll bet nearly every person in your class has a similar experience. That's why I'm thinking what follows could be something they would enjoy 🙂
If you're using Spotify, you may have seen all of the different desk top Apps that are available. Most of them are designed around discovering new music. When I fired up Spotify this morning I saw this new musiXmatch App that displays the lyrics Karaoke style for tracks playing on Spotify, along with rotating cover art.
This could be something cool you could add to your class if you have video and a method of connecting your computer or device.
WARNING – Many songs you may search for may have the lyrics, but haven't been timed to the actual song. MUSIXMATCH will then ask if you would like to be the first to sync the lyrics to the song, as you listen along. THIS IS VERY ADDICTIVE! I burned an hour this morning working my way through the whole David Bowie — The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (40th Anniversary Edition) [Remastered] both to see if my 40 year memory was correct and to add the sync if needed.
I'm going to experiment with this next week. I'm starting a new 6:00 AM class on Thursdays and my experience is that these early AM “A” types appreciate being mentally stimulated early in the morning.
Here's a fun video about MUSIXMATCH.
We've made some substantial changes to the back end of indoorcycleinstructor.com to accommodate our growth in members and site traffic.
Depending on where you live, we were back up last night around 6:00PM Central Time – the Internet is the most complex thing on the planet and it takes quite a long time for the changes we made to work their way around the world.
Can you see a difference in the time needed to load/access the site?
We were specifically focused on improving the experience for our Mac users running Safari browsers. If you're on a Mac please let me know if you see our pages loading faster.
Along the way I learned that the speed of your Internet browser (IE, Chrome, FireFox, Safari) has a huge impact on your online experience. Some browsers tend to display bit's and pieces quite quickly as the different parts of the page download and display. Others tend to wait until they have a large percentage of the data and then POW – you see everything at once.
Best I can tell, Google's Chrome is the over-all fastest. My experience with Chrome has me recommending it as a replacement for the two standard browsers found on computers; Internet Explorer on PC's or Safari on Mac's.
Las Vegas IHRSA was exhausting, consuming and exhilarating, all at the same time. With the exception of enjoying some adult beverages outdoors with Bill Pryor and Barbara Hoots on Wednesday night, between Tuesday night and Friday morning I never stepped outside the convention hotel.
There's an unbelievable amount of both time and money being invested specifically toward Indoor Cycling. The shear amount of new models, new technology and new education that I saw tells me that major & minor manufacturers see Indoor Cycling as a huge growth opportunity.
A very exciting time to be an Indoor Cycling Instructor for sure 🙂
I'm working on a number of articles/reviews about my experiences this past week at IHRSA and first wanted to give you these quick, random bits from the show.
Sales are good! Every major manufacturer's representative I spoke to had positive things to sale about the health of the market.
Lots-O-Watts: Club/studio purchasing agents had their pick of Indoor Cycles with power indication from; FreeMotion, Keiser, Schwinn, Spinning and Wattbike. There were also a few that were brand new to me or prototypes on display including; POWERbahn, EVO and Monark from Switzerland that uses Rotor bicycle power cranks.
My favorite quote from the show: “Indoor Cycling is a completely different sport from outdoor cycling. It's frustrating to me when people pull ideas from some outdoor cycling coach or training program and try to apply them to indoor cycling.” Angie Sturtevant – Spinpowerâ„¢ Program Director / Power Specialist Master Instructor.
Attendance: The place was packed. Every vendor I asked said they were impressed by the attendance – and they weren't just North Americans. I heard a lot of; “no speak English” when I approached participants.
Most talked about subject: Soul Cycle's /Flywheel's influence on our industry. I was asking every participant I could find their thoughts on the state of our industry. At some part of many conversations one of those two brands was mentioned. Not always in a positive tense, but there's no doubt that the successes of Soul Cycle and Flywheel are well understood and on the minds of many.
Get ready for an avalanche of new Indoor Cycling technology: FreeMotion launched the new commercial / club quality Tour de France Indoor Cycle where the Instructor can control the pitch of everyone in the class 🙂
No batteries required: It's a simple thing and it may sound insignificant, but the self-charging power meter on the new Spinner Blade Ion was really impressive. I'm going to bet they will close sales with big clubs based on this feature alone.
I had a chance to walk through the show as exhibitors were putting the last minute touches on their booths and shot a few pictures.
I'll be updating this post as I get each file uploaded this morning – Internet is very slow here.
I felt like Charlie walking through Willy Wonka's chocolate factory – everywhere I looked it seemed there was something new I had to take a picture of.
This fitness model could have been Jillian Michaels' younger sister – I didn't ask if she was.
Yes those are gear shifters like on a real road bike. This new Tour de France bike has 30 “gears” and I thought they were awesome.
iPod stand for Cameron's FreeMotion S11-9 Instructor Bike
New handle bars for the Schwinn AC Performance +
Cool blue light that glows on the new Spinner Blade Ion – Barbara will love that.
FreeMotion Aero-Bar extension – I know that the Instructors at LTF have been asking for those.
Keiser M3 with Trixter handle bars
MyRide+ ready for Chuck Cali 🙂
Speed Play Cleat Insert for Spinning or Schwinn pedals offering a LOOK cleat option.
Real Ryder Computer – no power/watts yet.
I guess this would be the natural progression – although I'm not seeing it at a Life Time Fitness anytime soon.
Las Vegas IHRSA was exhausting, consuming and exhilarating, all at the same time. With the exception of enjoying some adult beverages outdoors with Bill Pryor and Barbara Hoots on Wednesday night, between Tuesday night and Friday morning I never stepped outside the convention hotel.
Updated 3/23
