When building a playlist, I spend the most time selecting my BIG FINISH track. At times I'll use a song that's obviously the close of the class – typically one that hammers right from the start. Other times, I like to be a bit sneaky. [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']Today's free track No Way – The Naked and Famous is a great example of a song that will lull everyone into a sense of calm and then BAM!!! The music suddenly changes and there's no possibility of missing how you should respond.
Tune-mapped, No Way has two very intense segments. The first hitting at apx 1:00 for 40 seconds. The second comes at the 2:45 and runs for 1:45. I'll cue the Hit#1 as a kind of practice. Here we'll get our resistance set so a 90RPMish cadence has us above the Best Effort wattage (or HR) we established earlier in the class.
STAND & WALK is my cue to recover, without making any changes to load, during the quiet that follows. Then it's a simple standing acceleration @ Hit #2 and you can decide to keep everyone up – or – return to the saddle. Either way we maintain our cadence/wattage/HR until the end 🙂
Here is the 3rd post of my new “The Power of 3 – Keep it Simple and Progress” profile feature on ICI/Pro. My goal with these profiles is to show how easy it can be to create just one profile every 3 weeks and with some subtle changes in riding position, RPM, interval and recovery duration as well as a new playlist each week theses workouts will “feel” different but the similarity of each ride will help class participants increase their fitness in a scientifically proven way.
This week I reduced the rest in the main sets and added two more 1 minute max efforts.
[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']
Trainer Road Profile (If you're Trainer Road Member join my Team to get this and all profiles)
I'm getting into the habit of creating my new playlists on Tuesday. Why? I can't help myself, listening to the latest new music playlist from Spotify has me feeling very… how would I say it? Hip? Cool? In the know? [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']
This new track playlist never disappoints > Look what we've become from Grace Potter is simply awesome – I love a powerful 93 RPM Tempo Flat with inspirational lyrics. I'll introduce the effort, then shut up and ride along with my class… until the chorus where, looking at the class with a big smile, I'll quietly speak the bolded lines into the mic:
And they always told us we would be nothing
But look what we've done (look what we've done), hey
And they always told us we would be nothing
Now look what we've become (look what we've become)
If you like that, you'll love; The Lion The Beast The Beat – I'm not sure I've ever come across a better 5 minute BIG FINISH song. Listen with your eyes closed and see if you can visualise the build up and then let the beast out!
Can't wait to try both of these in an Evolution Cycle class profile![/wlm_private]
Last week I wrote about how my simplest sets and profiles are most often my most popular. I have also found that if I simply progress profiles from week to week, usually in 3 week blocks, my classes enjoy the familiarity of the workout and see progressive improvement.
To add progression to a block of workouts all you need to do is add time to each interval or reduce recovery or increase intensity to each interval set. This allows the body to adapt from workout to workout. Check out this article from Training Peaks about progression, How to Build Workouts.
I inevitably get the response from instructors that their riders like every class to be different or they'll get bored. My response is, “Even class IS different!” I use different playlists and videos from week to week, I may keep similar yet progressive profiles but I'll change around how each set is ridden, for example, seated vs standing or fast rpm vs slower rpm. This makes each week “feel” completely different but is similar enough that the body can adapt from week to week and a progressive training effect can occur.
If you used my profile from last week with your class, progress with this new one below and let me know how it goes.
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When I fired up Spotify this morning I was taken to a “this is new” screen and I knew I was hosed. Played a track and sure enough the track length timer disappears after a few seconds. Oh, sure, you can touch the album art and the numbers will reappear, only to fade away. Frustrating.
So I checked to see; how did this happen? Did I do something incorrectly in my settings that would have prevented this? Turns out no. Opening the App I see that Spotify is waiting for me to click update, along with all the others. So Spotify updated without my approval 🙁
So what to do?
I'm not seeing any option on my iPhone other than frequently tapping the screen.
Taking one for the ICI/PRO team, I crossed my fingers and updated Spotify on my iPad. That works! The playlist timer remains on. So that's going to be my device until if/when Spotify changes the iPhone version.
Beyond that, I suppose we'll have to wait a few weeks and – I hate to even consider this – and switch to Apple Music 🙁 Then of course there's the issue with the hundreds of playlists many of us have built. Will there be a way to convert a Spotify music playlist to an Apple Music playlist? We have a tool here to convert music playlists from Spotify to Deezer. I'll have to get cracking on that ASAP.
OK, I was wrong when I said last week that Apple doesn't do “Me Too!” products and services. I just sat through the live presentation and didn't see anything that would persuade me to switch from Spotify. They made a bunch of noise about “connecting” with artists, but nothing about sharing or connecting with other users. From what I could see there isn't anything that will improve how you deliver your class music. Even Apple's playlist timer fonts are tiny 🙁
I'll still try it at the end of the month when it's released as an iOS 8.4 update. It sounded like Apple Music will be built into iTunes… or the other way round, so every iPhone/iPad will automatically get it.
Pricing
Apple Music will offer a free 3 month trial, then it's $10.00 a month. There is no free option like Spotify. If you have a bunch of users in your house, the family share plan (up to six users) for $15 a month might be of interest. It could help me and Amy save $60 a year.
