by Gino | Aug 7, 2012 | Instructor Training, Master Instructor Blog
Every Adventure Starts A Little Scary
Maybe a better title for this blog would have been “The Devil’s In The Details”. Fortunately I did receive some offers from some real suckers… er… I mean some really nice riders who want to help me out as we take our walk in the enchanted forest of Muscular Endurance. But as any adventure worth taking goes, there is the planning and paperwork that must go along with it.
First there’s the inevitable “If you die it’s not my fault” waiver — every fitness facility and cycling studio has to have one, and if you do metabolic testing or mad scientist stuff like we are want to do, then you have to have a really BIG one.
Next you need some basic instructions to give to your test subjects unless you plan on supervising every minute of every trial. Don’t really have the time for that? I didn’t think so. No one does, but yet it is imperative that we keep everyone on the “same page”. What better way than to copy that page and give it to each one of them — we call that our data collection protocols (see how scientific sounding we make things). It’s really just instructions. it’s not rocket science, but it’s these little things that when missed, is like catching you napping in the poppy fields.
Data Integrity & Consistency
If we want to draw any sort of conclusions at all about our results, we need to make sure that we both execute the drill in a consistent manner, and collect or document each trial (the specific drills assigned to the study participants) accurately. Aside from being detailed in our instructions, we also should provide a spreadsheet or at least a paper form that will somewhat “force” each rider to speak the same language.
This not only helps with the consistency of reporting, but it will also make aggregating the data across each of the subjects easier to complete. I have therefore prepared a spreadsheet that has tables for recording both the Baseline (Pre-research or “before”) test and the Performance (the after-research) test. In addition, I have prepared 1 table for each of the 4 weeks in our study.
Oh My!
Finally, the “Oh My!” part of this adventure is here as I assumed that our subjects would want to print out the spreadsheet to help them record their numbers soon after their workouts since there is that risk of memory leakage (some of us more than others J ). Anyway, I looked at the “print view” and yep — that’s when I said “Oh My!” as I had to scrap 3 of the 4 tables and reformat the first one so it could be more easily printed — and then of course export them for both Mac and Windows versions. So you see, it really was a dark and scary forest with flying monkeys after all.
Any last minute volunteers are still welcome. I still don’t have 10 volunteers, but I must get started. Please comment on this post if you are going to participate, and you can find the forms and spreadsheets at this dropbox link. I have several versions of the spreadsheet so hopefully it will work for most participants: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6bugjlb8wtew1iy/HdspfwB7D_
We start collecting data on Saturday 8/11, so please email me your waivers and any questions you might have. See you in OZ!
by Chuck Cali | Aug 6, 2012 | Master Instructor Blog
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Chuck Cali
Recently, I started a discussion over at Pedal-on.com, a forum for cyclists, many of whom are indoor cycle instructors. The discussion dealt with using current, high-quality, coached video as a substitute for the sub.
Additionally, here on ICI/PRO, Jim Karanas tossed out the possibility of video subs, and John Macgowan did some research on how safe indoor cycling really is. You can access and read these posts, if you haven’t already.
The responses varied but were generally negative. Although many thought it OK to have video on hand “just in case” or “in a pinch”, none thought it a good idea as a general practice.
Much of the commentary included concerns for the safety of unsupervised riders (read John’s post: “How Safe or Unsafe Are Indoor Cycling Classes?”). Others felt the nickel-and-dime approach that clubs have adopted has eroded the member experience, and video subs are just another way to save a buck at the members’ expense. One particularly honest respondent just said, “Hopefully, this won’t be the newest thing to happen. What would we all do?”
What would we all do? It seems to me that’s not the question. The question is, rather, what are we doing to improve our craft?
Indoor cycling and instructors have been around for about 20 years. In that time, many changes have taken place. But the same old eight-hour certification is still the norm. And the same company from “back in the day” is still the leading provider, as well as the one most program directors recognize.
That is changing (maybe too slowly), and for indoor cycling, that’s good.
By far, the most notable changes are in bike technology and design. Today there are far more indoor cycles to choose from, with option packages that parallel those with the purchase of a car. Keiser M3, Schwinn AC, Free Motion S11.9, and the ICG® LIVESTRONG® bike are the major competitors of you-know-who.
For those of us wishing to improve our craft, it’s good news. With each new bike comes a college of education. And they’re sharing with us right here.
Most of the education is centered on how to use the new bike and its unique qualities to teach indoor cycling. These talented people, many of whom I’ve worked with closely, have done some remarkable work.
And it’s not just bike companies. That there’s an internet presence like ICI/PRO, dedicated to the sole purpose of helping us improve our craft, is a shining example of what I mean.
In just the past couple of years, Cycling Fusion® has blended the racing and certification arm of Stage5 Cycling with Sally Edwards Heart Zones Cycling to produce compelling education, especially around training indoors to ride outdoors. Sister company Global Ride® has been, and is, traveling around the world, filming video for DVDs that work equally well for live or virtual coaching.
FreeMotion’s Stages, led by Cameron Chinatti, has shown how much fun it can be to train with power. Please read her stuff here on ICI/PRO. I particularly like the discussion of getting back to RPE. True RPE.
Enter Team ICG®. They own the market share of indoor cycles in Europe. Here in the US, led by Jim Karanas, they teamed with Virtual Active to create MyRide®+. A thousand minutes of stunning Hollywood-caliber HD video in one stand-alone unit are programmed to allow an almost infinite number of forward motion video experiences. All of that is coupled with LIVESTRONG bikes, from which a percentage of the proceeds goes to fund cancer research.
It is not just the Johnny and Jay show anymore.
All of those mentioned above have their own web presence. Most can be accessed from ICI/PRO. There’s a ton of great free education, information and ideas with easy access that can rejuvenate your instruction. In my next post, I’ll talk about how to use these resources to add new dimensions to your teaching.
Have we hit the ceiling as indoor cycle instructors? No way!
So why not improve your craft? Consider it a personal challenge. What’s in it for you? How about renewed vigor for teaching? Or larger classes, more fun, meeting new people as word gets out about how great your classes are?
Will you make more money? Perhaps not right away, but you’ll go a long way toward securing your place on the lead bike, rather than being replace-able by a virtual coach.
We don’t sit up there on the lead bike just for the money. Affirmation from our riders is huge for us. Admit it.
What are you doing to improve your craft?
by Jim Karanas | Jul 23, 2012 | Master Instructor Blog
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Jim Karanas
“Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers (with which) they are graced.” ― Brodi Ashton
It’s hard not to admire the Tour de France riders, or to watch the commercial for the Olympics and Paralympics with challenged athletes alongside able-bodied athletes, without feeling that elite-level athletes are special. They’ve been gifted with physical abilities that never showed up in my gene pool and have the opportunity to create beauty in competition and sport that I’ll never experience.
Even when I think rationally about what many of them have had to overcome or sacrifice to be where they are, I still feel they’re unique and a cut (or two) above me as an athlete. They are my heroes.
Be Your Own Hero® is a registered trademark of ICG®. We registered it because we were inspired by the overwhelming odds some people have overcome through self-belief, drive and determination. To us, the brand represents empowerment.
ICG believes, however, that it’s important to Be Your Own Hero even if you’re not faced with overwhelming odds. You don’t have to be in dire circumstances to benefit from it. Becoming your own hero is a way of liberating yourself and raising your quality of life. When you choose to see yourself as a hero, you wake up and look forward to discovering what excitement the day can bring.
When you’re conflicted, all you have to do is ask yourself, “What would a hero do?”
As a hero, you’d trust yourself. You’d see yourself through the rough times and emerge stronger. You’d do the right thing.
Let’s say you wake up in the morning and feel really sluggish. Your body aches, whether from training, overtraining, or age. You ask yourself, “What would a hero do?” A hero would get up and face the training for the day, even though he/she didn’t want to and would like nothing more than to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep.
One of my favorite cycling legends is John Howard. Born in 1947, Howard was a three-time U.S. Olympic cyclist and the winner of 14 USA national cycling championships. He won the gold medal in the 1971 Pan American Games road-cycling race in Colombia, was a four-time U.S. National Road Cycling champion, and won the 1981 Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Hawaii.
Howard was one of only four competitors in the first Race Across America (RAAM), originally organized in 1982 by John Marino and called The Great American Bike Race. In 1985, Howard set a land-speed record of 152.2 miles per hour (245 km/h) while motor-pacing (behind a truck) on a pedal bicycle on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats.
After all of that, John Howard now teaches indoor cycling in the San Diego area. About doing what you and I do every day, he says, “For me, indoor cycling is no longer a poor substitute for the open roads and trails, (but) an indispensable ingredient for penetrating deeply into the inner world of body/mind integration (and) exploring the deepest power patterns of cycling technique. (I)ndoor cycling can actually bring benefits attainable in no other way.”
In DIRT!, the book he wrote from his hospital bed in 1997 after a disabling crash, Howard denounced the Olympics as being about nothing more than medals, with no heart nor soul. He said he had more respect for the amateur athletes and fitness enthusiasts who get out of bed every day to face their own training than for any top-level athlete blessed with ability.
At ICG, we believe that being a hero involves treating each day as an adventure, having enthusiasm about the day and what you’re going to do with it. As Howard’s quotation above shows, a hero brings a hero’s sensibility to everything he or she does. Self-belief is key.
I haven’t missed watching the Tour de France in over a decade. Lance is still one of my greatest heroes. I love the Olympics. Having heroes inspires me.
But I also believe in myself and put on my Spiderman suit every day. I teach what I love, teach it with passion, and hope it improves someone’s day.
Be Your Own Hero. What would that look like for you?
by Gino | Jul 19, 2012 | Master Instructor Blog
Subject’s Composition
The next facet of preparing to launch our study is the issue of sample size & composition. We need a suitable sample size (the number of test subjects or participants) and composition (the demographics and/or physical attributes or “profile”) of the subjects involved in the test to represent a cross section of the population with which you hope to apply these results.
In academia, the university environment and access to talent can often give them pro or elite athletes to work with as subjects of the study. When this is the case, I must confess to wondering if their results and conclusions are more a factor of “good genetics” or of the principles being studied. In other words, would the same sort of results be rendered, perhaps differing in only the degree or amount of the effect, if it had been conducted with subjects that would fall under the average individual type profile.
Subjects Size
While having 10 subjects is one of those nice round numbers that would also help us achieve a cross section within the “normal people” population, we don’t always have the luxury of that many participants, and so rather than linger in the “no-mans land” of inaction, you take what you can get in order to get the study off the ground. However, that being said, the results will also have to then be taken with a grain of salt. Those scrutinizing the end results or findings will examine not only the assumptions and methodologies the study has employed, but the composition and size of the subject group conducting the trials.
Impact on Interpretation
We not only must be cognizant of the subject’s profile, but also how homogeneous that sample group is within itself. We don’t want to miss this detail since we can expect our conclusions ultimately rendered to be interpreted in the light of who completed our trials. This is the test bed of our study.
Sometimes the emphasis on this fact is disproportionate to its impact on the overall results, and can be offered up to explain away unexpected results. In other instances, this impact is clearer and even profound, and consequently may be the most salient insight gained as a result of the research. When either of these positions are offered as qualifying factors of interpretation, I believe the research group is then compelled to repeat the research with a distinctly different, yet also homogenous group; at least once or even twice. These repeated trials should serve to validate or invalidate the relative impact of the subject’s profile and/or sample size on the final results.
In some cases, this repeating and more detailed analysis of the subject group can lead to more accuracy overall to the concepts and principles involved in the research; which is of course one of the best outcomes any researcher can hope for anyway. Better yet, when this repeating of the research is done by a completely different research group, say at another university, the full picture and analysis of the results can become more and more robust.
Start Recruiting!
Getting back to our own “backyard research” (hey, I like that phrase — what think ye — maybe this is the less pretentious way of saying “Evidence Based Cycling”). But yet again I digress…
In our situation today, we will endeavor to use real, ordinary people in our study, and thus we should ultimately be able to establish real, ordinary comparisons and conclusions. While we can debate the word “ordinary” for more time and paper than the subject is worth, we can also just trust our good judgment to recruit and include those subjects whom seem to make up what most people would consider the “general population”.
Bottom line though at this point is that we must recruit individuals willing to be included in the study, and perform the trials we ask them to do, in the frequency and specificity as we dictate. This is no small task, so we better get busy. Once I wrangle enough participants, I’ll return with the next steps to take.
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by Joan Kent | Jul 16, 2012 | Master Instructor Blog
By Team ICG® Master Trainer Joan Kent
OK, it’s mean for sure. But when researchers want to stress mice, they pinch their tails. The first thing the mice do? Run to their food bowls and eat. It’s a beta-endorphin thing. Beta-endorphin is released in response to either pleasure or pain/distress and beta-endorphin increases appetite.
Have any of your students ever complained that they gain weight when they’re stressed? Did you believe them? Did you think they were just blaming stress to avoid taking responsibility for indulging in high-calorie foods?
Well, when the stressed and overeating mice are given a choice between ordinary mouse chow and crumbled cookies, which do you think they choose? Yes, cookies — another beta-endorphin thing. Released beta-endorphin makes endorphin-triggering foods — like sugar or fat — more appealing. So, since stressed mice do what we do under the same circumstances, maybe we can sympathize with our students who gain weight under stress.
Of course, with people it’s more complex. Those who are highly susceptible to the effects of beta-endorphin may react to stress by eating. For others, though, short-term stress decreases appetite. Having to make an important early morning presentation at work could bring on a stress chemical cascade that leads to skipping breakfast. Once the presentation is done, a different hormone — cortisol — takes over and increases appetite. Lunch that day might make up for the skipped breakfast, and then some.
In long-term stress, cortisol plays a more prominent role. Its appetite-stimulating effect lingers. It decreases serotonin, which can cause anxiety or depression. Those mood states in turn cause cravings — mostly for carbs and, of course, not for healthful ones. Low serotonin also reduces satiety (especially for carbs) and increases impulsivity, making it more likely that we’ll eat the junky carbs we’re craving.
Long-term high cortisol levels also decrease dopamine and norepinephrine. When serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine drop, it leads not only to cravings, but to addictions, impulsive and compulsive behaviors, and a preference for carbs and sugars.
Over time, cortisol can decrease beta-endorphin. Chronically low beta-endorphin increases the risk for addictive or compulsive behaviors, including alcoholism, bulimia, binge eating, and more.
None of this even touches on the metabolic problems caused by cortisol. Fat deposits in the trunk, the more “metabolically harmful” location. Too much cortisol can cause glucose disturbances and even insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can lead to type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol (the good stuff), and high or dense LDL (the bad stuff, which is worse when dense). Insulin resistance also causes plaque formation in the arteries, heart disease, various types of cancer, and more.
Obviously, long-term stress leads to serious consequences in health, metabolism and appetite. So it might not be the student’s fault for running to the food bowl and eating the cookies, but, health-wise, it’s far from ideal.
Fortunately, in addition to meditation, deep breathing, visualization and the like, there are nutrition solutions for stress management. (You knew they were coming.)
It’s understandable that a stressed-out student might want a martini or a dish of chocolate ice cream, but succumbing to that urge will probably backfire. Stress depletes B vitamins, which are critical in the formation of key brain chemicals. Alcohol — the go-to stress-reliever for some — also destroys B vitamins and makes it more difficult to “stabilize” brain chemicals. Avoiding alcohol may feel tough to do under stress but helps far more than drinking will.
In addition, long-term alcohol or sugar consumption will eventually decrease serotonin and beta-endorphin, resulting in rotten moods and major cravings. So staying away from sugar will help, too.
Instead, encourage the student to eat protein foods throughout the day to supply the amino acid precursors for serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.
Also encourage the student to get B vitamins for good brain function. Specific B vitamins that we need for neurochemical balance include thiamin, found in whole grains and meats; B6, found in whole grains, eggs, chicken, fish and liver; and folic acid, found in leafy greens and liver.
Naturally, encourage the student to keep taking your cycling classes as often as possible for the stress relief they provide. Cycling also reduces the likelihood of insulin resistance by making muscles more responsive to insulin, which is always a good thing. If the calories burned help prevent weight gain, that’s another plus.
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by John | Jul 14, 2012 | Instructor Training, Master Instructor Blog, Training With Power
For many (me included), the biggest appeal of spectator sports like motorcycle racing or watching the Tour de France is projecting yourself into the event as one of the participants. Having road raced motorcycles for years, I know intimately the continuous sound of an engine at redline… what it's like to hang off the side of the motorcycle at over 100 miles an hour… the rush of adrenaline as my knee scrapes the asphalt. So it's easy for me to let my mind drift and fantasize that I could make starting grid for a MotoGP race, from the comfort and safety of my couch at home.
Same is true for me when it comes to bicycle racing, especially while watching the tour each July. I can hear commentator Paul Sherwen describe my break from the front as I power up the road, intent on bridging to the breakaway; “Macgowan as made his move, as we knew he would… He's definitely saved just a little bit in his tank for this final climb… this will be an exciting finish Phil!”
Could I really ride with the Tour? Not hardly. I've ridden and raced with people who could simply ride away from me with little or no perceived additional effort. And these people were certainly not able to make the starting roster for a professional cycling team. I'm guessing that few of the cyclists is I've ridden with, the ones who really impressed me with their strength/speed/endurance, could even hang with the professional team on their recovery days.
In the past my comparisons were based on direct experience (typically getting dropped) or simple perception. Now, with the availability of power indication in our classes, I can compare my power output (watts) with that of a professional cyclist and know with certainty how quickly I'll be dropped 🙁
They say that the beauty of using metrics in training is that; if you can measure it – you can improve it. But metric's also provide a tangible point of comparison we can use to compare ourselves to others.
I talk a lot about the 1 watt per pound concept that Gene Nacey uses to decide whether or not you're ready to go out and start climbing hills. Gene says ” One watt per pound is the gateway to outdoor riding.” Where Gene lives in Pittsburgh it's very hilly. Long climbs don't exist here in the flat-lands of Minnesota. So I like to discuss a second metric in my classes; what's your sustainable flat road speed? Or based on your sustainable wattage, what speed would you be riding outdoors?
This website has a fantastic tool for computing sustainable flat road speed, based on your individual (male or female) power output. It also has a fun chart where you can compare yourself to cyclists who race in the various categories; Cat 5 – Cat1 – all the way up to professionals.
You enter your body weight in Lbs and your Threshold Power in Watts. I know I can sustain 250 watts on a FreeMotion Indoor Cycle and I weigh 160 lbs. Here is my result.
I believe ~23.82 mph is quite close. I dug back into my records and saw my average speed for the bike leg of the Apple Duathlon was right at 23 mph. This 33k race course is dead flat. I raced it three times, partnering with my neighbor Mark who did the runs. The comparison chart shows me as a Cat 4, which was the highest I ever raced.
So how would I compare to a time trial ridden by a professional? Because the length and course of the individual time trials in the Tour De France change every year, there's some debate as to who had the fastest average speed. Local boy Greg LeMond (he's from Minnesota) in 1989 and David Zabriskie (2005) both won individual time trial stages averaging ~34 miles an hour.
Here's how much power they needed to not only produce, but sustain for nearly 60 minutes:
Assuming they both weighed 160 Lbs, Greg and David needed to double my wattage to ride 50% faster than me… astounding!
Go over to the calculator and see where your power falls and which category you would race. And if you're brave, add your results below.
