Sprints, speed work, accelerations, cadence building drills-whatever you call them, we all use them in our classes. I love collecting songs that have a natural pick up (usually on the chorus) to use for this purpose. Today I'm sharing two of my favorites along with the timing that I use in my classes. I hope you can work them into your next cycling profile!
Both songs are by Danish metal band Volbeat.
Lola Montez: I use this song for accelerations on the chorus at :25; 1:13; 2:25 and 4:00. Each acceleration is approximately 25-30 seconds. Recoveries get longer as the song progresses.
Work Set Length: 13:44 + 7:17 recovery [21 minutes]
The Sprint Shift on the new Stages SC3 bike is your interval training solution. Left position for easy, Center position for medium, Right position for hard. Make micro-adjustments with the resistance knob during the interval. Could it be any easier?
Now, I am a big believer in training with power, benchmarking your effort, and documenting your progress. All three are important for successful long-term cycling training but people sometimes misunderstand my position as “all science, timed intervals — no fun.” That's not the case at all!
For the 3 songs below, all I would track is total distance traveled. My riders would hit “The Loud Ones” maybe once every 10 rides and see if they went farther. You could also use average wattage or average speed – it is still a benchmark, just not a complicated one.
As for the science, these are aerobic and anaerobic power intervals – near maximum, brief efforts with short rests. This makes you strong during the frantic parts of road races, during time trials on hilly terrain, and when you want to inflict some pain on your group ride mates. The ride gradually slows in cadence as the resistance and length of efforts creep steadily upward.
But don't think too much about all of that. Do a quality warm-up with 2 or 3 very short sprint-type efforts, tell your participants they are in for some HARD WORK, then just turn it up, follow the music's energy, and have some rough, fast, sweaty fun!
[P.S.: You really just have to feel the music to get the transitions. Don't try to follow the time stamps to the letter. But the Sprint Shift makes that possible! Call each position (left, center, right) “gear 1, gear 2, gear 3” if you like. Slam the lever into gear and ride hard!]
[P.P.S.: After “Little Man,” I like to throw in one long, steady effort, usually to “Animus Vox” by The Glitch Mob. You can take your pick of ‘finisher.']
Have you ever watched a commercial and wondered, “What’s that song?”. I’ve seen this Diet Coke commercial dozens of times and every time I see it, I find myself humming this song for hours. I googled it, but could just have easily Shazamed it if I’d had my phone next to me. (If you’re not Shazaming, you should definitely try it! It’s a great way to find and save new music to use later in your classes!)
If you like to use Christian Rock (or even if you don’t) in your classes, this one is perfect. Check out these lyrics:
Brave Fight like a soldier Brave Rise like a warrior Brave Won't stop till the final day Brave I want to be stronger Brave Gonna be bolder Brave
And last, here’s a favorite that I used in this week’s playlist by one of my favorites, Haik Naltchayan. I used it as a long, steady climb in and out of the saddle:
I'm not embarrassed to say that I like country music. Country is a genre that many indoor cycling instructor avoid, but I embrace it. I get more complements about playing country music than any other genre. Country music IS popular and has a HUGE following. I live in Denver and a few weeks ago U2 was playing the Pepsi Center, a 20,000 seat venue and Luke Bryan was playing Mile High Stadium, a 75,000 seat venue, on the same night. Luke Bryan sold out U2 did not!
This week I mixed together 3 new country songs:
Homegrown by Zac Brown Band
Play It Again by Luke Bryan
John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16 by Keith Urban
All 3 songs are about 3 minutes and 30 seconds long. I like to use this music mix for three 3 minute intervals with 30-40 seconds recovery after each. Since the energy and tempo “feel” lower and slower I like to ride at a cadence of 60-80 rpm for this set. Listen below to how I used this set in class.
[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']If you use video I also mixed together the videos of these three songs.
3 song harmonically mixed track, to download Right Click > Save As / Save Target As to download. Open in iTunes and then you'll see this in your Spotify Local File folder.
This AM at around 6:23, I dripped sweat onto my iPhone's screen and accidentally switched on Shuffle. Of course I didn't realize my error until this great new track I'm using for openers comes on, for the second time.
Wait… didn't we already do this song?
Oh, Crap! Now what do I do?
There are few things that scream ROOKIE INSTRUCTOR louder than manually switching between songs during a class.
Unsettling to be sure. Keep your cool John… smile… pretend you planed the class like this 🙂
So instead of freaking out, grabbing my phone and trying to get back to my intended track, I just rolled with it 🙂
I normally use three, 30 second hard efforts as my openers. To mix things up this morning I decided to use just two. The track I used is below which features two 45 sec segments; @ 1:00 and then again at 3:17.
The second time I had everyone repeat their efforts, while paying attention to their perceived effort. The song has an awesome build before you hear the I Don't Got Time For Pain that keys the 45 second big effort! It's about 62 RPM. I cue everyone to add load until they feel the need to stand, wait for I Don't Got Time For Pain and it's accelerating off to the races.
I've taught Indoor Cycling classes for about 15 years and thought I understood all of the Do's and Don'ts of delivering music to my classes. Based on the technique offered in this podcast, I'm realizing I still have a lot to learn…
Dennis Mellon is one of those Instructors who really gets music. His understanding of creating great playlist is probably one reason he was voted the top Instructor where he lives in Colorado. In a past interview Dennis introduced us to the concept of Harmonic Mixing – paying attention to the musical key of each track and combining only those tracks that are in complimentary keys.
My initial interest was learning; when does Dennis creates his class playlist? Is it after he's decided on the specific profile? Or does he build his profile around his playlist? Listen below to learn his method – he actually does it both ways.
Then, during our conversation, Dennis casually explains how his simple technique for transitioning between short intervals. “I just hit next.” I've always believed that forcing a change, before a song has finished, was too disruptive. Dennis's view is that the disruption is exactly what he's looking for 🙂
The 8:50 Blue Man Group song (with the silence in the middle) that I refer to is Exhibit 13 – except it isn't available in Spotify 🙁 You can find it in the iTunes music store and it's in Deezer.
Here's the playlist I built to go with the new Epic Planet RAAM video. I started out looking for a 13 minute song to match the long climb that finishes this video. At 13:47, Peter Frampton — Do You Feel Like We Do – Live is a perfect choice. Past experience has shown me that you can go crazy trying to compile a playlist that matches a structured video exactly – better/easier to match up a few of the important sections in the ride.
