I woke up to this note from Allen Jones, the executive producer of the Epic Rides series of Indoor Cycling Class Videos and DVDs.
Hi John,
I just wanted to give you heads up on our newest epicRIDES release, Epic Amelia Island AND a special Epic Affiliate Coupon Code for a 20% discount on this title for one week (ending 9/15/13) that you can share with your followers.
COUPON CODE: amelia
Here are the details:
Epic Amelia Island
Join three avid cyclist riding the 62 mile route of the Katie Ride for Life, a major springtime cycling event held in Amelia Island, Florida, north of Jacksonville on the Florida-Georgia border.
With 13-miles of beautiful beaches, abundant native wildlife, and pristine waters, Amelia Island has long been a beloved destination for visitors and locals alike. For the sixth consecutive year, Amelia was voted among Top 10 North American Islands by Conde Nast Traveler's Reader's Choice Awards.
With it's flat terrain and consistent level of intensity, this Epic Amelia Island is an ideal Endurance training ride to build your aerobic base. 

Now, you can preview this route for yourself and get some serious training accomplished at the same time!
And, as an extra incentive, a percentage of the profits from Epic Amelia Island will go to the Katie Ride for Life to further it's mission of organ donor education.
DVD – $29.95, Download – $19.95, Combo Pack – $39.95
Teach to a full house of 50 riders and expect to receive $500.00 for your efforts.This isn't a typo – this outfit is planning to compensate Indoor Cycling Instructors up to $500.00 a class. Teach a regular schedule of 13 packed classes a week and you'll be interviewing stock brokers for ideas where you should invest your $300,000 annual compensation.
Want to work for Peloton Cycling? Check to see if they're hiring here.
To that end, Peloton has borrowed a lot from boutique studios and what riders are addicted to, starting with the charismatic instructor. “Instructors who can command an audience and have great fitness knowledge are arguably like actors, they should be paid as such. We’re tripling what the going rate is to work at a studio,” says Foley, adding that with this platform, Peloton teachers will become “global celebrities, capable of reaching thousands of riders at a time, instead of 50.” (We’re expecting defections any second now.) – I'm assuming they're referring to defections from SoulCycle & Flywheel – John
Peloton's goal here, as I see it, is to recruit the very best 10 Instructors… not just the 10 best Instructors in New York, but the 10 best Instructors from anywhere on the planet. $300k should be enough of an incentive to motivate just about anyone to pack their bags, move to a new gig and start teaching in the Big Apple.
How can they afford to pay Instructors so much?
The financial “Holy Grail” for Peloton is delivering on-demand classes to home users riding their new Peloton Indoor Cycles. This bike looks very cool/well designed and they recently raised over $300,000 using Kick Starter to fund the design and early production.
Created by John Foley, the former president of Barnes & Noble eCommerce, Peloton has built a sexy at-home bike that won’t look out of place in your high-design living room. It comes with a 22-inch tablet-like, touch-screen monitor that allows you to ride along with live classes at Peloton’s 50-bike studio in New York City (opening in Chelsea in the fall), or stream one on-demand.
So your potential class size is limited only by the number of those new cycles they sell.
I'm dying to learn more about all of this; the new Indoor Cycle, the technology, their plans for the Peloton Studio… everything. I'm working on getting a representative on the Podcast ASAP.
RAAM begins in Oceanside, CA and travels 3,000 miles, 170,000 feet of elevation change and the the film crew from epicPLANET.tv will be filming the riders all the way to the end in Annapolis, MD!
For this year's event starting in mid-June, epicPLANET.tv has embedded it's film crew with Team Break the Cycle from Bentonville, Arkansas. This four-person team is riding in support of the Northwest Arkansas Children's Shelter, a private, non-profit organization that provides 24-hour emergency residential care to children who are victims of family violence, neglect and physical and sexual abuse. So far, they've raised over $200,000. WOW!
Team cyclists, Mike Brady, Chip Gibbons, Randy Johnson, and Lori O'Connor will be riding around the clock for approximately seven days supported by a team of 14 dedicated volunteers led by Crew Chief Mark Burson. It's a cyclists dream come true!
Team Break the Cycle
EpicPlanet's producer, Allen Jones, is planning to create short videos from RAMM that we will be displaying here to track their progress.
Later this fall epicPLANET plans to produce a number of Indoor Cycling videos & DVDs that chronicle Team Break the Cycle's journey across the USA. I can't wait to show them to my classes, especially the parts where they climb across the Rocky Mountains 🙂
I've used Cirque Du Soleil DVDs in classes in the past with very good results. Participant's seem to really enjoy them and the original soundtrack is often perfect for a “and now for something completely different” class.
Amy saw Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away on RedBox and brought it home Sunday night. The visuals are amazing and I could easily see using this in a class.
From its Wikipedia page:
Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away is a 2012 3D film directed by Andrew Adamson. The film premiered on October 20, 2012 at the Tokyo International Film Festival,[1] and it was released theatrically in the United States on December 21, 2012, the same day Jack Reacher was released.[4] It was released in 2D and 3D. It stars Erica Linz and Igor Zaripov as the main characters and incorporates acts from the seven Cirque du Soleil shows running in Las Vegas in 2011: O, Mystère, Kà , Love, Zumanity, Viva Elvis and Criss Angel Believe.
If you're not familiar with Cirque Du Soleil check out this video trailer.
Not only are they beautiful to watch live (or on video), but the sound tracks are performed live, incredibly well done and many are perfectly suitable for use in a class.
Cirque du Soleil — Alegria is probably the most popular. Amy and I have used it after first hearing it at a show they performed here in Minneapolis in the late 90's.
Finding music that encourages faster pedal speeds for endurance classes, can be a real challenge 🙁
Spend some time in Spotify Cirque du Soleil and you'll find a gold mine of potential tracks you could string together – or just click play on one of their albums and add some occasional cues for a quick, entertaining class!
Or better, click play on a Cirque video and turn up the soundtrack – I've never have a negative response to using these in a class. Our public library has a number of these DVDs available so that could save you from the expense of buying them – or check RedBox to see there's one near where you live.
If you are a group fitness instructor my discovery could save you some money.
My ACE cert is due for renewal this Summer and I need .6 ACE continuing ed credits, and quick. I looked at the ACEfitness.com site for some online CECs and found two courses that I thought would be interesting; Nutrition Strategies for Fitness and Performance $59.95 (.3 ACE CECs) and Flexibility Training Specialist$69.95 (.4 ACE CECs) $130.00 total.
The weather is supposed to be crappy this weekend. I figured I would hunker down and go through these two programs so I could have the privilege of sending ACE more of my money and keep teaching for two more years.
I asked John for our business credit card so we could expense my training. He looked over his readers and asked; “why would you pay for CEC's when ICG has them available for free?”
Good question. I wasn't aware that ICG had free CEC's and it turned out that they offer 12 different online courses that are approved by ACE. I found two similar courses that would get me my .6 CECs. Total cost will be ZERO.
Do you know about Spotify's Collaborative Playlist feature? It's a great way to share playlists with friends, fellow instructors and even members at your gym or club. When you use this Spotify feature, others can share, edit and add to your original playlist.
Sound interesting? It's really pretty simple. Just create a playlist in Spotify as you normally would. Then, right click (control+click if you're a Mac user like me) and you'll see a drop down box like this:
Choose Collaborative Playlist.
You can now find your collaborative playlist on the left sidebar of your profile screen with a green music note next to it. The playlist will not, however appear on your Spotify profile page. As far as I can see, there is no way to add a collaborative playlist to your profile. I believe this is because these playlists are always changing and therefore never really complete. If you figure out a way to publish them and still allow them to be collaborative, please share with us! Because the playlist does not appear on your profile, you need to invite others to see it.
Inviting others to join your collaborative playlist is as simple as sharing the link. You can do this by right clicking (control+click on a Mac) and choosing any of the options shown here:
Now you can share your playlists by email or social media sites. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating collaborative playlists in Spotify:
Anyone that subscribes to your playlist can add songs, delete songs and change the order of the songs in the playlist.
Everyone that subscribes to your playlist will see these changes.
You can turn off the collaborativity of the playlist the same way you turned it on.
Anyone that gets the link to your playlist can share the link with friends.
ICI/PRO has several collaborative playlists that you can access here.
I've recently created my own collaborative Spotify playlist: St. Patrick's Day for Indoor Cycling. I hope you find some inspiration here for your St. Patrick's Day ride this week! Please subscribe and share your favorites!!
