You don't find opportunities to ride and learn from the experts everyday, let alone for FREE!
Join Stages Indoor Cycling, Director of Education, Cameron Chinatti and Master Educator, Dennis Mellon and learn…
Best Power Practices
Video Rides to remember
Stages Special Edition of Performance IQ
Power zone training
and more!
Here are the descriptions and form links to register for each:
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8:30-10:00 – Oh no! Not the Power Police – Led by Cameron Chinatti: It’s official: consoles and power measurement for indoor cycling are here to stay. But with every new piece of equipment comes ‘creative’ misuses and abuses. Avoid getting caught by never committing a crime in the first place! You’ll learn the most common crimes against consoles, then get ready to ride as we explore our top-ten best power practices. These Simple Setsâ„¢ will give you hours of new ride content and provide priceless aha! moments for your participants. Join Stages® Indoor Cycling to see how easy it is to use today’s data to achieve tomorrow’s goals.
11:00-12:00 -Head Up to Get Down! – Led by Cameron + Dennis Do you want to know that you’re doing exactly the right amount of effort? Join Stages® Indoor Cycling for a ride with our Special Edition version of Performance IQ Heads Up Display, better known as Stages IQ. A quick 3-minute assessment is all you need to determine your Power Rx – the most important piece of ride data you’ll ever need! For the first time ever your entire class is doing exactly what they need to get better and see the results they’ve always wanted.
1:30-2:30 -Show Me – Led by Dennis Mellon:If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million! Since the inception of indoor cycling, instructors have been talking and talking in an attempt to set the scene for their riders' indoor journey. Let’s stop talking and start showing! What is the speed of a sprint finish or the increased pulse of an epic ski run? Let’s dance to the beat of your favorite artist and experience the POWER of your favorite band playing a live concert. Through the use of video and the new Stages SC3 Eco Screen there is no course that cannot be ridden and no metric that cannot be evaluated to take your riders on the most epic fitness journey ever!
3:30-5:00 – Oh No! Not the Power Police + SIQ – Led By Cameron Chinatti:It’s official: consoles and power measurement for indoor cycling are here to stay. But with every new piece of equipment comes ‘creative’ misuses and abuses. Avoid getting caught by never committing a crime in the first place! You’ll learn the most common crimes against consoles, then get ready to ride as we explore our top-ten best power practices. These Simple Setsâ„¢ will give you hours of new ride content and provide priceless aha! moments for your participants. Join Stages® Indoor Cycling to see how easy it is to use today’s data to achieve tomorrow’s goals.
The guys at BikeFit.com do a great job using infographics to communicate the process of proper bicycle fit. Today they sent out these images and I wanted to share them with you. Each details the multiple points of adjustment that can be used to ensure a comfortable setup.
Having been through a three hour, professional fitting like what BikeFit.com offers – I have experienced how many of these adjustments are effected by others… i.e. saddle fore/aft affects height and reach to the bars, cleat position can require a change in saddle position, etc…
A comprehensive fitting is really important for someone who is riding thousands of miles a year and/or is super concerned about efficiency = getting the maximum amount of power to the road.
So how detailed should you be with a new participant? After setting up people for over 15 years, it's my view that you just need to get them close and feeling comfortable. You obviously don't have 3 hours and with the exception of the Keiser M3, the adjustments on Indoor Cycles are too coarse to really fine tune a person anyway.
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.
Most IC instructors have the client’s best interest at heart. We may not all agree on every point, but we do want our participants to do well, get the results they seek, and feel great. That probably goes not just for how they work out, but for what they eat, as well.
It’s a safe guess that most instructors wouldn’t mind at all if their class participants stopped doing the following things — immediately and forever.[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
1. Eating “Good For You” Foods They Hate
The feeling of deprivation can make us do strange things with food. Feeling deprived can result from eating so little food that they’re always hungry, always thinking about food, always ready to gnaw the legs off the furniture.
We know it’s a binge waiting to happen. But there’s more to it.
Several years ago, during an appointment, a frustrated client stomped her foot at me and demanded, “Joan, do you ever enjoy eating?!”
My answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes, of course.” It’s true that we might need to give up certain foods — including some of our favorites — to get the results we want.
But let’s look at the good news. There are always foods we can and do enjoy that will fit into our food plan — even if we stop eating sugar, for example. Plenty of delicious foods are out there that don’t contain sugar.
The main point of this, however, is to get your participants to avoid eating foods they hate. Please. They shouldn’t eat them because they heard how “healthy” they are. They shouldn’t eat them because they read about the antioxidants they contain.
They shouldn’t keep eating them because they’re worried about their health. Chances are you can find a different food for them that contains the same healthful nutrients as that hated food. In a food they won’t hate.
Most importantly, if they don’t like what they’re eating, they’ll feel deprived — as surely as if they were skimping on quantities and semi-starving throughout the day.
Eating foods they hate is just another binge waiting to happen.
2. Using Food As Their Entertainment Or Reward
How do we use food for entertainment or reward? We eat when we’re bored. We eat to procrastinate on that work project we dread starting. We eat to take a break from that work project we started but aren’t enjoying. We eat because we got through a killer cycling class that morning. We eat because we had a great day. We eat to celebrate hitting our weight loss goal that week.
Feel free to fill in other favorite entertainment or reward uses of food.
In the early days of an athletic training program for which I was the nutritionist, a participant refused to follow the nutrition guidelines for the program. Her rationale was simple: She worked out hard and was entitled to eat whatever foods she wanted. Who could argue with that? We all get to make our own decisions.
When her training coach took weight and measurements at the end of the program, though, it was disappointing for her. Hers had all increased. It was a shame, too, because she probably would have performed better athletically if she had followed the food plan.
It seems unusual that we’d eat more food — or eat junk — when things go well. But, to use just one example, endorphins (beta-endorphin) may be released when mood is “up” and positive.
Beta-endorphin affects the brain’s satiety center. It makes us want to eat more. It doesn’t matter whether the original trigger was positive or negative.
When we’re ‘up,’ it’s not surprising that we want more of that up feeling. And we may end up eating foods that trigger the release of more endorphins.
More sugar, please.
3. Using Food As Their Primary Stress Reliever
What does it look like when we eat to relieve stress? We eat when we’re frustrated. We eat at the end of a bad day. We eat in the middle of the bad day. We’re much more likely to go for junk food when we’re stressed.
Eating when we’re stressed might seem like a minor issue, but any stressed-out moment is a bad time to eat. The digestive system basically shuts down — reduced production of saliva, lack of peristaltic contractions throughout the digestive tract, and other stress changes. It all means the body isn’t ready for food.
Because foods change brain chemistry, they can change our mental/emotional state. When our moods are low, it’s almost an instinct to look for something that will lift us out of that low mood state.
Even animals do it. Researchers have said that animals don’t eat for calories or nutrition per se, but for “optimal arousal.”
That’s why food choices when we’re stressed go in the direction of big brain-chem changes. Sugar is often used as a stress reliever because it triggers changes in brain chemicals that are felt readily.
But other comfort foods are used — frequently in large quantities: mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, spaghetti, biscuits, grilled cheese sandwiches, chips.
If your participant’s favorite comfort food isn’t on this list, it’s probably still a state-changer.
State changing is the key. They won’t binge on broccoli when they’re stressed — unless it’s smothered in cheese or sauce. That’s because broccoli doesn’t change brain chem, but those toppings will.
You’d probably prefer that they avoid these stress-driven, high-calorie blowouts.[/wlm_private]
The USA Women won the World Cup finals in soccer yesterday!
The US team coaches are using heart rate training, aka Heart Zones Training, extensively in their preparation for what lead to this victory.
I wanted to share with you an article released yesterday about how that training is accomplished using training load points and player position specificity – and comments that I made in that regard in the article. You can read it here.
While members of the U.S. team will no doubt play their hearts out during the Women's World Cup final against Japan, a coach on the sideline will be receiving real-time data about their actual hearts.
Credit forward-thinking coaches who embraced sport science to improve performance: Each U.S. player wears a heart rate monitor — not unlike one you'd find at your local sporting goods store — when she trains and plays games.
But what makes these special is where the information goes and how it's used. Whereas a commercial monitor (or “wearable”) is designed for information to go to a wrist unit, an iPhone or iPad, and be used by the individual, for the U.S. women, there is a receiver that simultaneously collects the heart rates of 28 athletes to be analyzed by a coach.
[That “receiver” is the same as what's used to connect participants to the Display Training systems in cycling studios – John]
“What evolved [with the technology] was the ability for coaches to not only record the data, but be able to see it live,” says Josh Simonsen, a training specialist for Polar, the company that supplies the U.S. team with its heart rate system.
The data shows how hard a player is working, and can help a fitness coach determine everything from individualized training programs to deciding how much rest a player needs after a tough game. “If you take the women's national team, they're all fit. But it comes down to what type of fitness each player has,” Simonsen says.
What type of position an athlete plays also makes a difference, explains Sally Edwards, a heart rate expert and founder and CEO of Heart Zones, a fitness technology company. “In team sports, each player's position has unique physiological requirements, so the forward on a soccer team has to have different training than a defender,” says Edwards. “Some positions might need quick acceleration. Others might need endurance late in the game.”
With the use of sensor technology, a training program can be tailored to each player to make the fit even fitter.
If you'd like to learn more about this technology and how it could improve your team's performance, Use this contact form to request more information.
Sally
Sally Edwards, Founder and Head Heart
Heart Zones, Inc.
Last month I started this “Keep it Simple and Progress” profile post. In my classes this has been a huge success! Many riders have excitedly shared with me their wattage and/or resistance improvements. It's so rewarding to see and hear how we, as instructors, are changing lives through health and fitness everyday.
I've been using this 3 week progressive training technique, with great success, for many years as a coach, personal trainer, athlete and group exercise instructor. When I'm in a coaching situation I'll have my athletes work through a 3 week progression then take a week for recovery so they can “unload” all the accumulated training stress. In a group exercise setting, where you don't know the exercise consistency of your participants, a recovery week my be frowned upon. To incorporate this sound and proven training techniques in my indoor cycling world I'll set up progressive profiles for 3 weeks and on the 4th week I'll do something completely different. This 4th week is where I'll experiment with new music or video or use an old profile, maybe I'll even have my class cover their consoles and we go “Old School” and ride by perceived exertion only. I tell the riders that have been very consistent with their training the previous 3 weeks that it is time to take it easier and let the body recover and rebound from the straining stress of the previous 3 weeks. This is the time for them to enjoy their fitness level and have fun in class and not to worry about their metrics because we are going to get back to serious training very soon.
In order to provide the members of ICI/Pro with my class recordings, I'm always teaching one week ahead of these posts. This allows me time to experiment and perfect the profiles before I provide them to you. It also lets me hear the feedback and reaction of my class. I'm still amazed at the adaptive ability of the body. In week 1 of most progressions I usually hear how difficult the workout was. This makes sense because the body has not experienced these exact training stresses before. Then in week 2 after the body has had some time to adapt to week 1 the workout is not such a “shock” to the body, but I make some subtile changes to the workout so that the body still needs to adapt as we progress to week 3. Week 3 is, by far, the most difficult of the progression, but since we have taken “baby steps” from week to week this workout is doable. Progression is the only scientifically proven method to safely and effectively improve fitness. There has been a lot of talk in the media about “Muscle Confusion”. To be frank, “Muscle Confusion” is BULLSHIT and I challenge you to find one scientific study the proves it effectiveness. I'm working on another post on “The Myth of Muscle Confusion”, I'll let you all know when it's completed.
As many of you know I am a Master Educator for Stages Indoor Cycling and at our Stages University workshops one of our topics is the creation of “Simple Sets”. Next week I'm going to discuss using the technique of “Lather, Rinse and Repeat” on a micro and macro scale to help make you an even better instructor.
[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Below I have provided a snapshot of this new profile provided by Trainer Road.
Trainer Road Profile (If you're Trainer Road Member join my Team to get this and all profiles)
