I'm presenting a series of workshops this month for our “Club Athletes”.
Here are the workshop descriptions
Training With Power 101 – Learning the Language of Power Workshop
Now that we're riding Indoor Cycles with computers/monitors, you've got questions and we want to provide the answers. Participants will learn the language of power and how it will explain:
How do I work this computer?
What's all this information mean to me?
Why does it say; “USB” when I first turn it on?
Will it show my Heart Rate & how does HR compare to power/watts?
How many watts should I be making?
Will I see how many actual calories I'm burning in class?
I want to maintain my body weight and/or lose weight… how hard should I be working?
Can I compare my watts to my friend or the person riding next to me?
Training With Power 101 is a 30 endurance ride-workshop where we'll answer all these questions and more. Our goal for the workshop is to help everyone understand the basics of power and establish their personal baseline wattage that you can use as a guide for your future class workouts.
Prerequisites – none, other than a desire to improve your fitness.
Training With Power – FTP Assessment Class Workshop
Endurance athletes wanting to get fitter/stronger and faster are now training with power – a direct indication of the actual work they're creating and a fabulous indicator of changes to your fitness. Similar to training with Heart Rate, training with power is most effective using training zones based on a personal metric – a threshold wattage that's unique to each of us.
In the language of power, that threshold is called FTP or Functional Threshold Power. To accurately assess FTP, you'll need to complete an all-out 20 minute effort. We'll use the bike's computer to record your average wattage over the effort and then use that wattage to design your power training zones.
Our goal for this workshop is to help everyone understand the basics of training with power and establish their FTP (Functional Threshold Power) that you'll use as a guide for your future class workouts + track changes to gauge fitness improvements over the winter.
Prerequisites: Strong desire to improve your training efficiency = the 20 minute FTP effort will be very challenging – this is your all-out effort!
We suggest that for best results, you have one of more rest days before attempting this assessment.
Participants should bring their Heart Rate Monitor and a USB memory stick to record their effort for future comparison.
As I'm researching my presentation it occurred to me that you may be in a similar situation. So I thought it might be helpful to share my source material:
I'll be finishing up my presentation slides tomorrow, on the plane to the ECA Thrive fitness convention in Fort Lauderdale FL. Good thing I'm bugging out, we're supposed to experience our first snow of the year tonight – 3-5 inches. I might just stay there. Either way I'll be sharing what I put together this weekend.
Stripes & Plaid, Pink & Yellow and Brussels sprouts with anything, some things just don't pair well with others.
My short education on Harmonic Mixing has me learning that there are excellent music tracks, that by themselves are awesome. But just like you can look fabulous in pink OR yellow, mixing two tracks (with clashing keys) together may not have the effect you were hoping for.
Some of us hear instinctively when two music tracks clash. Unfortunately some of us are (or were) completely clueless that music even came in “Keys”.
Figuring I can't offer much help any of you in the “hear” group, I started this post with this idea of giving the “clueless” group a few sample playlists of songs in the same key. But I started thinking the “hears” group might not hear as well as they think, so why not make a game out if it – with a prize for the winner?
I've devised a little contest to challenge your ability to hear and identify tracks that can be Harmonically Mixed… and those that shouldn't.
There are six, two song Spotify playlists below. four are mixed in key and 2 are in clashing keys. Click play on each playlist and then use the >>> button to switch between tracks. The prize is shown below.
Good luck 🙂
#1 – Both are in the key of C major
#2 American Band is in the key of C major / Born to run is in E major
#3 Lightning Strike is in F major – Shut your eyes is B flat minor
#4 Both are in the key of D major
#5 Although both of these are flat, they are in D flat major and G flat minor
#6 These are both in F Minor at the end of each track, (where I was checking) but Latch appears to change key a few times through the song 🙁
UPDATE: This contest didn't turn out like I had hoped = it was “dumb” as my kids would say. That said, Instructor Julia A Grady correctly picked two (of what turned out to be three) clashing tracks and will receive the DVD's from Epic Planet!
Can you pick out the 2 playlists with clashing tracks? Leave your guess below and we'll draw from the correct entries to receive the EPIC Planet DVD bundle.
DVDs or Downloads, this epic bundle combines two of our favorite releases, Epic San Diego – Great Western Loop and Epic California – Mt. Baldy.
Value up to $49.95!
Epic San Diego – Great Western Loop is an extremely popular training ride for many hard core and competitive cyclists in this Southern California cycling mecca.
Epic California – Mt. Baldy takes you on a virtual training ride on an extremely challenging and beautiful route out of the Los Angles County city of Glendora. The route for this ride matches the grueling last half of this year’s Stage 7 of the Amgen Tour of California. This route will also be featured by Rapha sportswear as part of their noted Continental Tour.
RateYourBurn.com is a review site for fitness instructors who teach in select US cities. RateYourBurn founder Gillian Casten joins me to discuss her vision for this popular Instructor review site + shares a few of her observations and potential strategies you can use to improve as an Instructor.
In a previous interview, Studio owner Jessica Bashelor @ the Handle Bar explains how she recruited her Instructor team based on the the reviews she found on rateyourburn.com
I'd suggest maximizing your rateyourburn.com Instructor profile and start asking your participants to post reviews.Clearly a recommended Best Practice for you as a fitness professional.
Listen to my interview with Gillian below – and please to either leave us a review or subscribe to our free Podcast.
Click Image to learn more about training for ICI/PRO Members.
We're planning our second live Spotify training for this Sunday 11/3 @ 5:00 central time.
The training will be conducted over Skype.
My preference is to keep the group small so we have time to answer everyone's questions = this is open to the first 8 Instructors who've emailed me a conformation – or you can leave a comment below.
We are planning to repeat these on multiple Sundays this Fall, as long as we have interest, so if you miss this week we'll get to you soon – use this link to join the notification list.
Some homework for you 🙂
Create a free Skype account if you don't already have one.
Sign up for the free trial of Spotify premium – I strongly suggest using FaceBook when you sign up. There is an option to register using just an email, but you'll be missing out on the ability to share music between friends and your class participants.
Spend some time playing with Spotify so we can answer your specific questions during the training.
NOTE: you'll need the latest version of Skype (learned this last week) to see my screen and video. Existing Skype users check by going to: Help > Check for Updates
Happy November! Today's Free Music Friday started out in the normal fashion:
-Hear a tune I like
-Find it in Spotify
-Use it in a class profile; if it works well, check SoundCloud to see if there is a decent free download for you to use in your class. If there is, then the tune goes forward to you all in its original and free re-mixed versions.
Today is different!
The SoundCloud remix mash-up is so darn good, I'm just passing it along straight away.
‘Take Your Mama', originally by Scissor Sisters (4:32 and 78 rpm's) is re-mixed with The Cure by Copy Correct. This remix mash-up is 4:02 – 90 rpm's and is in the key of D minor for those of you experimenting with Harmonic Mixing.
It's just a great funky tune that I've been using to take my class toward T2. It has the two elements I look for: recognition and a driving beat.
Here it is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have (remember to download asap, as the authors often limit downloads and we never know when the limit is reached):
Here's the Spotify link for the original by Scissor Sisters:
As an experiment this morning, I taught Dennis Mellon's ICI/PRO Podcast 287 A little Bit of Everything Audio Class PROfile and used his harmonically mixed playlist. They appeared to like it and two members asked for the playlist after class. I realize that it's a small sample, but it's rare that that happens in my class.
I didn't follow Dennis' profile exactly – I let each song play out to the end, rather than manually transition mid-track. This had a few of the intervals flowing through the song transitions – which actually worked to my advantage. The difference was subtle, and yet I'm now realizing quite profound. Even though there was a song change, it didn't appear (or sound) disruptive. I use the full 12 second cross-fade feature in Spotify and, because most of the transitions were in compatible keys, they flowed together nearly perfectly. Or as they say; “smooth like butta.”
Love to know your experiences with harmonic mixing if you've tried it.
Happy November! Today's Free Music Friday started out in the normal fashion: