Amy and I went down to this year's Life Time Fitness Ride of a LifeTime big group ride at the Saint Paul River Center. You will see how much fun we have seeing our students and friends at this event. At the end of the video Amy challenges all of us to do whatever you can to promote Indoor Cycling.
Amy and I met Kenji Freedman when we were in Keystone Colorado for the Cycling Fusion Summit. Kenji is a USA Cycling Coach with Stage 5 Cycling (one of Tom Scotto's stable of talent I mentioned) and a very accomplished Indoor Cycling Master Trainer. He has a captivating presentation style when he's leading a class that I feel we all could learn from. I have him scheduled for an interview next week so stay tuned 🙂
Kenji is a Personal Trainer and get this, he is also a Personal Chef who has appeared in a number of infomercials.
I'm experiencing some issues with the company who host www.indoorcycleinstructor.com that aren't being resolved to my satisfaction. You may have noticed some error messages or notices that this site isn't available. I have a number of smart people working on it this weekend 3/5 and there maybe so extended outages while we get everything fixed.
Anyone remember this comic?
In the past, the prevailing attitude was that we should allow anonymous comments here at www.indoorcycleinstructor.com. Anyone could comment and no log-in was required. This was based on a belief that the quantity of comments was much more important than the quality of the comments or who it was making the comment. Visitors and ICI/PRO members were treated alike.
I never liked that policy and feel that it was misguided. Commenting is a privilege that should be reserved for registered users at the very least. I can't post a reply on Pedal-On without first logging in, why would here be any different?
Not requiring a log-in to post a comment also makes it easy for Spammers to post advertisements for Viagra and links to malicious software. We employ the best anti-spam software available and it blocks hundreds of spam comments every day. But, like the spam filters on your email, sometimes a legitimate message is blocked. That's when I get the “why did you delete my comment?” emails.
We are a community of passionate Indoor Cycling Instructors. We should know who we are talking to because it leads to a feeling of safety which = more and better discussions that will benefit all of us.
After a number of discussions with ICI/PRO members and members of the ICI/PRO team we have decided that comments will be restricted to ICI/PRO members only.
Do you feel this is a mistake? ICI/PRO members can leave a comment below 🙂
After more than 6 years operating a 46-bike cycling studio in the suburbs of Boston, I have seen a ton of instructors come and go. We’re not a big health club, we are a dedicated indoor cycling studio, so the survival of our business depends on our instructors abilities to fill up classes. Because we have no other source of income for the studio, our definition of a “good” instructor has to be quite pragmatic: If you fill up classes (and don’t do anything unsafe or stupid), you are by definition “good”.
This may sound mercenary, but in fact the instructors that are able to fill classes are the ones who are adept at a) engaging their students and b) providing expert guidance towards a fitness objective. They use a wide range of tools including music, imagery, language and cuing and
all the best ones have a natural ability to vary their workouts. Variety is indeed the spice of life (and of indoor cycling classes)
At our studio, the great instructors are not all alike. In fact many have vastly different styles, and while there is no sure formula for creating an experience that keeps indoor cyclists returning, I have noticed one thing all our best instructors do intuitively: they believe in variety: Variety within a class and variety from class to class.
Everyone knows the benefits of exercise, so what is the one reason we hear again and again why people won’t commit to regular workouts? “It’s boring”. What is the single biggest complaint we here about an instructor that is not drawing in our studio? “They’re boring”. A great instructor’s class is not boring, and one of the primary reasons is because they know intuitively to commit to variety.
Easier said than done of course, but here are some examples of variety from the top-drawing instructors at our studio:
Variety is simply more interesting, and more fun. It is an antidote to the worst enemies of working out: drudgery and boredom. What are some other examples of variety you use? I’m hungry for ideas!
Try to engage everyone
John and I had the opportunity to take a Saturday cycle class at the Scottsdale Life Time Fitness this past weekend. I always learn so much when I take another instructor's class and this was no exception. It was a super high energy class with a very interesting playlist- consisting of YouTube videos…David Bowie (one of John's favorites), Pat Benatar, Poison, Brittney Spears, Usher, you name it. What a great idea! I also picked up some great cueing verbage along the way.
But what really hit me came after class was over. We liked the class, and the instructor, so much that we wanted to talk with her when it was over and possibly interview her for ICI/PRO (we haven't been turned down yet!) She was busy talking with people after class and had others waiting, so we (along with two members) just hung out and waited….and waited….and waited…you get the picture. The two members left and then finally we did to when we saw she wasn't going to disengaged herself from the original people she was talking to.
The “take away” from this is that we need to be very aware of who is waiting to talk with us after class and manage our time so that we can acknowledge each of them. We never know what opportunities await!