But the class loved it and you will too, especially at a 50% discount if you purchase it today.
You can use coupon code DEAL at checkout today and receive a 50% off the DVD, digital download or both.
But this isn't just for Black Friday – we are planning to feature a special PRO/Deal of the Week every Friday! Much like Groupon for Indoor Cycling Instructor's, our PRO/Deal of the Week will feature a different product or service, at a substantial discount, every Friday!
Look for more later this weekend…
Epic Red Wing
The Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the neighboring Wisconsin countryside is nationally known for its cycling-friendliness. Now, you can take a virtual tandem training ride in this beautiful area with John and Amy Macgowan and friends, of the internationally renowned Indoor Cycle Instructor Podcast and Indoor Cycle Instructor Pro Website.
Take a 50-mile ride along the scenic banks of the Mississippi River and Lake Pepin, separating Minnesota and Wisconsin, on a warm July morning. What better remedy for those cold-weather blues!
This ride has it all–two climbing segments, one endurance segment and one rolling country segment–and offers a balanced workout for indoor cycling classes and home trainers.
Includes our new “Just the Ride” menu option which gives indoor trainers, coaches and instructors a choice of 60 minute and 45 minute versions of the ride to fit their training or class requirements.
Details: Can not be combined with other coupons, discounts or offers. Hurry, there's only 50 copies available at this price.
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas and ICG® Marketing & Product Director Gary Warren
Forward Motion Video was first produced for, and used in, Indoor Cycling classes in the form of DVDs. DVDs paved the way for production companies like Virtual Active to bring Hollywood-level filming to the fitness industry.
We would never detract from the contribution these DVDs and their producers made to the indoor-cycling industry. Going forward, however, there’s a point of contention that we consider critical: continuing to use DVD as the medium for providing forward motion video.
In response to Jim’s last post, “Video Done Right”, Gino Nacey, one of the pioneers of Forward Motion Video, offered his “1% disagreement” and commented, “as long as the DVD is played on a big screen, I don’t really see why we should knock it — if all a site can afford is a projector, screen and some DVDs then if the video is well done, they should have a great experience.” We appreciate Gino’s feedback.
DVDs are seen by some in the industry as a good option for clubs, a way to provide a quality visual experience in an indoor cycling class. ICG® believes that, at this time, DVDs will do more to inhibit the development of both indoor-cycling programs that offer video and the instructors who teach with it.
DVD is being superseded as technology progresses. Despite DVD’s low initial purchase cost for club owners, is it really forward-thinking and fit-for-purpose with respect to the skills instructors need to develop to enhance their classes with video, as they do with music? We believe DVD limitations are one reason more instructors don’t teach with forward motion video.
What can an instructor truly do with a DVD? The instructor can’t alter the programming or investigate the synergies that exist between music and video. The profile is unchangeable. DVD length can’t be altered to fit the music. That limits the music that can be used with the DVD. The instructor can’t swap out portions of the DVDs, which makes it impossible to alter the profiles to create endless class variations.
DVDs lack the essential tools the instructor needs, such as selecting and changing footage at any given point in a profile, repeating parts of a video, skipping parts of a video, or switching to panoramic footage for water breaks or to shift the experience. Even more importantly, DVDs don’t permit the instructor to keep the footage running to match the music track length, or vice versa. Any of the above can be done — with one touch — with a system like Myride®+.
DVD offers the same ride time and again, and the ability to use different music is limited.
The use of DVDs for virtual classes may seem to make sense initially, particularly if the voiceover coaching and the music are good. Again, the number of different rides is limited because DVD footage is fixed and can’t be reprogrammed. Also, quality of filming comes into play because Standard Definition on a large screen looks unrealistic.
But it’s more than that. Virtual classes have to be highly advanced in coaching, graphics, filming techniques, post-production techniques, and exhibit extremely compelling locations because they now do what instructors do — lead the class. We also have to push the limits of technology to enable consoles to provide “virtual class” schedules, where console and projector turn on and off at selected times to enable the club owner to offer classes without an instructor present.
It takes a platform of technology that can continue to grow to make the experience (and the buyer’s investment) stronger over the years without fading. Sustainability is key, and DVDs can’t make the cut.
Are DVDs passable? For the retail market, yes. But for sustainable commercial operations where the consumer is savvier and more demanding as competition rises, perhaps not.
Finally, our tree-hugging moment. DVDs are not green and create an enormous amount of waste product that is eliminated with the use of advanced digital technology. CDs and DVDs don’t decompose. Their composition is too complex to make large-scale recycling possible, unlike aluminum, glass or paper. So old CDs and DVDs must be shipped to a special center for recycling.
Then there’s packaging. 85% of under-24s believe that downloading music can help save the planet by reducing the packaging, waste, and carbon emissions involved in producing and transporting CDs and DVDs to shops.
Here’s what video in indoor cycling needs:
1. Improved content-delivery tools for video that offer increased programming features, designed to enable instructors to utilize this new asset fully and owners to embrace the ROI they can get from video done right.
2. Increased availability of high-quality video through network delivery that will enable us to bring new video to our customers as easily as we bring new songs.
3. Improved filming and post-production techniques to enhance immersion and raise the member experience and the demand for video.
4. A shift away from a retail product that’s not green and that experts say won’t be around much longer.
We believe Myride®+ fulfills these needs, except item 2, which it will in the immediate future.
As always with new technology, there’s a higher initial cost — in this case, for the digital media console and the HD projector. But let’s not confuse initial cost with “total cost of ownership” (TCO). The cost of a DVD media system may be low, but it wastes money if it’s not sustainable and/or doesn’t fully meet the market’s needs. As demand increases and more companies play a role in development, digital video costs will decrease. Continuing to advocate DVDs, which give the club owner a cheaper option without a complete understanding of its limitations, will hinder forward progress.
The end result seems inevitable, and DVD may delay the transition but won’t prevent it.
ICG® respects Gino and his organizations for all they’ve done to pave the way. But ICG® can’t recommend adherence to an outdated form of presenting video to the Indoor Cycling industry.
Great music, incredible feats of strength and concentration plus some very funny physical comedy. What more could you want to entertain your class during a long endurance ride? Cirque du Soleil are by far my favorite for a long ride indoors.
What I like best about the music is most of it falls in the E – C Training Rate Ranges. (86 – 94 RPM) Perfect for the cyclists in your class learning to maintain an effective cadence, while developing their aerobic engine.
The crew at epicplanet.tv have produced a new DVD you can show in your Indoor Cycling classes. The Virtual Race Across America is a 60 minute (there's also a 45 minute option) DVD or Video that was created using footage shot during the 2013 RAAM Race Across America.
Ride the entire length of the U.S. in one training ride with the Virtual Race Across America (RAAM)!
Based on the actual RAAM race route, The Virtual Race Across America gives you a broad sample of this amazing race with 7 selected segments of the course including:
– Start and San Diego Mountains
– The “Glass Elevator” mammoth descent
– The hot, low desert of Southern California
– The climb into Sedona, Arizona
– Monument Valley in Utah
– Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado – the race's highest point!
– The plains of Kansas
– The killer hills of West Virginia
Both DVD and now Download customers will have three versions of the ride to use: A full version, and Just the Ride 60 minute and 45 minute versions.
PLUS BONUS CONTENT! – This purchase includes our 30 minute documentary “EPIC – One Team's Story of the Race Across America,” A $9.95!
Judging from the ride profile shown above, this video appears to be my kind of class – close to 30 minutes of climbing in the red zone!
I've watched the bonus video you get for free – the cyclists in your class will appreciate seeing how much effort goes into participating in the most grueling bike race in North America.
Two things prompted this post. One was John’s post showing video as one more distraction in a distraction-filled studio (see “Virtual Engagement or Virtual Distraction?”, 7/22/12). The other was my concern about what might happen if instructors and students learned about cycling with video under such poor circumstances — and the entire cycling-with-video concept ended before it even began.
Cycling with video has too much potential to allow it to fall victim to that fate. The obvious question is how to prevent that and present video in a way that showcases it as the amazing asset it is, with great potential for increasing ROI. The cycling-with-video concept hinges on immersion, the sense that the scene is real. It just doesn’t work without it. Here’s what needs to happen to create immersion.
First, there’s lighting. If you want the students engaged in the video, the image must be as bright as possible and dominate the room. If distracting sources of light can be minimized or eliminated, so much the better.
There’s also screen size. Bigger is definitely better for purposes of creating immersion and making it seem real. If the screen can’t be big (say, if a TV monitor is used), there are specific ways to maximize presentation of the footage.
Positioning of the screen is critical. It’s important not to place the front row of bikes too close to the screen. It’s important not to place the screen too high or too low on the wall. The actual distances will change, depending on the size of the screen, but precise guidelines should be followed. Finally, the screen should be centered, taking into account the width of the studio and where the instructor will be.
Managing the mirrors is also critical. The photo in John’s post shows mirror reflections coming from several directions and sources. Those reflections will distort, even destroy, the illusion of forward motion and the possibility of immersion. The solution is either to use a non-mirrored wall in that studio — preferably one painted black, gray or white — or to use a large pull-down screen to cover the mirrors on the forward wall completely.
There’s also the matter of where to place the instructor and the A-V equipment. We’re used to being center-stage. ICI-Pro posts have mentioned our enjoyment of that. With video, though, we need to move to one side and let the video get most of the attention.
Last, and maybe most importantly, the video, the projector (or TV), and the screen (or video wall) need to be of high quality.
When all of these things are put together in a professional studio prep, the result is completely different from the chaos John showed us in the photo with his post last week. But it’s not always that easy.
So what’s standing in the way? In a word, expectations.
Understandably, the club owner hopes to make the studio video-ready for the lowest initial cost possible. What’s true is that the above preparations can cost thousands of dollars, if done right. But the inexpensive way leads to what John showed us. If the equipment costs relatively little, that leads to an expectation that the entire set-up should also cost relatively little.
It’s a profound understatement to say that a poorly prepared studio limits the students’ experience — and that it clearly limits future ROI.
Here’s where I’ll stir up trouble and state that, in this regard, DVD is actually pushing things in the wrong direction. It’s a halfway measure that’s not impactful enough to create immersion. This “halfway” aspect of it is why club owners resist spending the money necessary to make cycling-to-video happen on an impressive scale.
To get club owners to make the leap to spectacular video, they need to be exposed to a true immersion experience. Then it becomes obvious that there’s no substitute.
Seriously, if you bought a fake “jewel” for a few dollars at a street fair, would you buy an expensive platinum ring setting for it? For a beautifully cut diamond, your willingness to invest in platinum would increase. Please note that I’m talking here not about budget per se, but about the willingness to invest big money to showcase something mediocre versus something spectacular.
DVD is a mediocre medium with respect to cycling videos and creating immersion. As such, DVD may be keeping the new concept of cycling-with-video from moving forward and becoming the fullest experience it can be. Again, immersion is key and happens best when video is done right.
I know these are controversial statements, but they’re true even when the instructor leading the class does a great job with it. John is a superior instructor who does a great job with it. But who or what could compete with the distractions in that studio? It’s simply not set up for … well, what could and would happen if the video were done right.
For one example of “done right”, please click here
This 45 minute free video could make a splash in your next endurance class – especially if you have a large number of women participants. With so much of the sport dominated by men, I found this video featuring professional cyclist Liz Hatch refreshing. Yes guys, that Liz Hatch 🙂
This video is a production of Cyclefilm and they have a number of full length videos, that feature some of the best professional women cyclists in the world.
Liz Hatch – Come Ride with Me includes this awesome track; Recorder 2:09 (83 RPM) from the Gasoline Brothers. It's not on Spotify but you can download it for free here.
Here's a tip for using YouTube in your class without interruptions by the commercials that are inserted. Play the video from this page > click the Full Screen button bottom right corner of the player and enjoy uninterrupted play.
