Gary Hawkins from Ride Fit contacted me last week about a new virtual cycling training video he had produced. Except this video doesn't feature typical cyclists – it's designed for people who train indoors on an ElliptiGO.
If you've never heard of an ElliptiGO you can join the club – it was completely news to me. But they are supposedly getting popular and they even have their own World Championships.
Now why am I asking if this could be the next big thing?
When I first watch the video I have to admit I thought they looked a little goofy to me. An elliptical for the road? Who would want that?
I called Gary and asked him; “who's buying these ElliptiGO things?”
“Mainly runners.” “They really like how low impact they are to ride.”
The indoor/outdoor cyclist in me started to say something snarky about people who choose to punish their bodies because they aren't smart enough to use the wheel… but I caught myself and asked Gary; do you know how many runners there are, compared with cyclists?
“Not sure, probably a lot more.”
So I checked and after a quick search it looks like committed runners out number committed cyclists by something like and an order of magnitude = 10 times as many runners.
Many of us are trying to build our classes by attracting cyclists. What would happen if we offered a group class that appealed to all those runners?
If you watched the free screening of the documentary; I'm Fine, Thanks, you met Steve Kamb. Steve's journey really spoke to me. He went from thinking; my dad's in sales, my mom's in sales, so I should go into sales… to I hate sales. I'm going to do something I'm passionate about (fitness and being a Nerd) > which lead to nerdfitness.com
Hi. My name is Steve.
I’m the rebel leader here at Nerd Fitness. I help desk jockeys, nerds, and average Joes level up their lives.
Maybe you’re here because you’re overweight and frustrated because you haven’t found success quite yet. Maybe you’re here because your doctor told you that you’re in danger of some serious health issues if you don’t make changes. Maybe you’re here because you just had a kid, and the reality that you being unhealthy could make THEIR lives more difficult just hit you like a ton of bricks.
Maybe you just want to wake up, look in the mirror, and feel better about yourself.
Whatever reason you have for being here, thank you.
My goal is to inspire the Hell out of you to make positive changes and live a better life. I want to educate you on how to work out properly, cook a decent meal, and consistently improve your health and well being.
The tagline for this site is “Level up your life, every single day.” If I do my job right, you’ll wake up every day a little healthier than you were yesterday — eat a little better, get a little stronger, run a little faster, and feel a little better about yourself.
Nothing like flipping the tables on a punishing climb with Crystal Castles goth influenced remake of ‘Not In Love‘ clocking in at just under 4 minutes with a bpm 136 for an RPM of around 70.
It's heavy thumping beat helps to mirror your riders exertion and I've always enjoyed using the image of the riders cadence being so strong and powerful here that they are literally shaking the gravel along the side of the road as they punish the climb for daring to question their ability and resolve to get to the top.
Checkout my ICI/PRO class profile companion mixes.
So there I was, sitting in the front row at OMpower Studio in San Francisco on Monday, taking a MyRide+ virtual ride with ICG Master Trainer Jim Karanas. Jim was leading us up a long climb somewhere in Italy when this song came on to motivate us to the top.
“This is an awesome climbing track, I need to remember to ask Jim what it's cal… wait a second… I can just Shazam it and have on my iPhone when I get home!
You'll probably recognize it as the de beers TV commercial music we start hearing as we get closer to Christmas.
It's a version of Palladio and this track screams climb, with a powerful beat at 70rpm and a big finish at the end. Jim actually strung a number of versions of Palladio together for his 10 minute video segment.
 
If you will be in SanFran this weekend, Jim is leading an Indoor Century (100 miles) on Saturday. That's 5 hours on the bike riding to 5 hours of stunning video from locations around the world – I came home too soon 🙁
When Tom Scotto told me he wanted to lead the opening ride at the conference last year using a live band, I was a bit skeptical. “How exactly will that work?” I asked him. “Don't worry about anything John… I'll take care of all the details… this is going to be awesome” was Tom's response.
And awesome it was and take care of the details he did!
Tom planned this ride to perfection – he even jumps in with the band to play drums at one point as he lead all of us on a journey through a series of towns based on different musical genres. I have to say I was very impressed as we rode from Funkville to Rockville and followed the intensity profile from ClassBuilder on the screen. Be prepaired to take notes as Tom has a bunch of great cues that you can use in your own class.
I knew that the crew from Cycling Fusion was filmed the event, but we never offered it for you to watch and learn from. So Gene's making the video available as a sort of reward for taking this short survey – you'll be taken to the video after completing the survey.
Joining Tom on stage are a very attractive front row made up of ICI/PRO Teammates; Stages Indoor Cycling Master Trainer Cameron Chinatti,The Senior Group Fitness InstructorAmy Macgowan, Spinning Instructor and Studio Design expert Barbara Hoots and of course Gene Nacey from CyclingFusion.com. There's also crowd shots that include many of the participants 🙂
After some poking around and exploring, I think I have discovered the best way to find and follow other people on Spotify. Finding, following and adding people to your ‘favorites’ will in turn give you more music to explore and ultimately use in your cycling profiles.
Spotify has clearly not made the task of finding other people or cycling instructors to follow an easy one. If you were an iTunes Ping user, you remember how simple it was to find other instructors and to see their playlists and what they were purchasing and listening to. In Spotify you can do most of these things. You just have to work a little harder at it. Once you have found some people with similar musical tastes, you’ll find the process of searching for new music much simpler.
There are a few ways to go about searching for and finding people to follow in Spotify:
Since Spotify and Facebook are connected, you can follow friends that are already on Facebook. While this one is simple, it’s my least favorite option. First of all, you actually need to be ON Facebook. I realize that most of you probably are, but I’m sure there are some of you that either don’t have a Facebook account, or, like me, use it very sparingly. Another reason I’m not a fan of the Facebook method is because your Facebook friends may not be listening to the kind of music you want to use in your cycling playlists. You’re looking for other instructors with similar musical tastes. I suppose you could ‘friend’ all of the cycling instructors in the world on Facebook, but then you have a bunch of people you don’t even know looking at your personal Facebook page. If that doesn't bother you, then I guess using Facebook is one way to find friends to follow in Spotify.
The nearly impossible username trick. For some reason, I can rarely get this one to work. Why? Because I don’t know anyone’s user name! And even when I do, I don’t have much luck. (Hint: apparently it’s important to use all lowercase letters. ) Here’s the secret formula: http://open.spotify.com/user/yourusername So my profile code would be: http://open.spotify.com/user/chrispins
While the above mentioned techniques will surely work, I think I’ll stick with my highly un-scientific, yet effective (not to mention easy and fast) way to find people to follow on Spotify:
Find one person that has a playlist you like and head on over to their profile. Let’s use my profile to get you started: http://open.spotify.com/user/chrispins
Once you have arrived on my profile page, take a look at some of my ‘published’ playlists. Not only will you see my original playlists here, but you will also see playlists that I have subscribed to. These are playlists from other members. Here is a picture of part of one of my original playlists, posted on my profile page:
In the upper right corner of these profiles, you can click on the ‘subscribers' and a drop down list will appear with the profiles of all of the people that have subscribed to my playlist. There you go! 23 new people (mostly cycling instructors) to follow! Click on their names to go to their profile pages, and check out what they are publishing and subscribing to. If you like what you see, click ‘add’ in the upper right hand corner of their profile. This will allow you to see what they are listening to and publishing in a scrolling list on the side of your profile. Hint: After you click ‘add’, you will have an option to add them to your ‘favorites’. I recommend doing this because it allows you to access their profile even if they are not actively listening to or using Spotify at the same time that you are. Their latest activity will always be available in the upper right side of your profile.
Now that you have found some other profile pages, you can continue to explore the ‘followers’ of the playlists that they have published or subscribed to. Many people have not published many playlists, but have ‘subscribed’ to other people’s playlists. In this case, you can go directly to the profile of the person that created the original playlist by clicking their user name next to the playlist title as in this example: This is a partial shot of a playlist that I subscribed to by John MacGowan:
Just click on John's name next to the playlist title to go directly to his profile.
Here are some links with some basic tutorials that you might find useful:
So, what are you waiting for? Give yourself a little time and start exploring more music on Spotify. Once you start finding people to follow, you might find it hard to stop!
**Feel free to share your Spotify profile link in the comment section to get the ball rolling!
