Welcome to the The Weekly Ride by Cycling Fusion
This Podcast is originally from September 2, 2008. I have updated it with our new Podcast host information and I am representing it now. I hope you enjoy it. — Joey
September means the end of summer for many. School is starting and schedules are changing. I look at changes like these as a great time to start promoting myself and my class. My goal is to have full classes, for my Sunday 2 hour endurance rides, by Thanksgiving. Yes, I know that's a long way out. The marketing and the promotion of you and your Spinning class takes time. I’m already planning and discussing ideas now, on how I'm going to achieve my goals. Here are the first few bullet points I used for Podcast episode #5.
1) Partner with your club’s owner, management and membership sales person
2) Get a Promotion Card – otherwise known as a Business Card
You can download the whole list here.
Here is the site I found for creating and printing your class “Promotion Card”. Their online tool is easy to use, you can print on the back and they were the only place I found where you could include your picture! Very important!
Business Cards for $9.95 1000's of Free Templates, Design Online, Order Today Ready Tomorrow!
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This Podcast is originally from 2008, I have updated it with our new Podcast host information and I am representing it now. I hope you enjoy it. While the New Leaf systems are not easy to find anymore, KORR Medical Technologies (https://korr.com/) does have Metabolic Testing equipment that is available. Perhaps we will have them on the show soon. – Joey
How effective are you at coaching to specific levels of exertion? Do you use the RPE Scale? Or some percentage of age predicted maximum heart rate? As an old bicycle racer it was common for me to reach my max heart rate at the end of a sprint. How many of your participants have really been to (and know) their true max?
Communicating my intended exertion level was a real struggle for me until I learned how to describe the specific feelings that relate to the five different Heart Rate Training Zones. Zones based on a understanding of Anaerobic Threshold. But we were still guessing.
This past January (2008) I had a Metabolic Assessment and it really opened my eyes. I was no longer guessing. Now I knew my exact Anaerobic Threshold and my heart rates for each heart rate zone. I had some questions about how to best communicate the value of having a Metabolic Assessment to my Spinning class, so I found another expert.
Jessica Christiansen is the Education and Training Manager for New Leaf Fitness.
Listen to the show below or subscribe with iTunes with the link on the right
Leave a comment or question and I will have Jessica respond.
Welcome to the The Weekly Ride by Cycling Fusion
P
eriodization is the backbone of an instructor's success, and it can quickly become the key to your popularity as an instructor and it will become the foundation for your students to reach their goals. Periodization is the process of structuring training into progressive phases or blocks of time that are organized into Macro, Meso and Micro cycles. The outdoor cycling community uses periodization as a method to increase their strength and to peak for their target (or A) race.
One of the most important parts of periodization is the planning process where you will divide your an annual training plan into sensible blocks, where each block has a particular physiological adaptation and accordingly a specific dose of stress to elicit that adaptation. While I realize that you may not use an annual plan in your indoor classes, in a later article I will explain how to use the periodization concept in designing your rides. The planning and the journey is really the important part of this process; it gives you time to consider your goals and get focused.
In short, periodization allows you to organize your training into hard training periods and easier training periods to facilitate recovery. Periodization can also help to expose your riders to different aspects of cycling and it can allow you to work on both your cardiopulmonary system and your musculoskeletal system which will produce stronger riders with greater endurance.
The Macrocycle
The macrocycle is the longest of the three cycles and generally consists of a year or more. The macrocycle should include all of the areas of a complete training program including low zone endurance work, strength building, race ready maintenance and of course recovery. The macrocycle is your long term view of your training plan.
The Mesocycle
The second block of training is called a mesocycle. Your macrocycle will contain several mesocycles. While a macrocycle is a long term view of training, a mesocycle represents a specific block of training that is focused towards a particular physiological adaptation and usually not more than 3-6 weeks long. This could be endurance, strength or perhaps even recovery. Mesocycles are the true working phases of your training plan, and you will use these cycles as careful evaluation points to be sure that you are meeting your training objectives. It is not uncommon for there to be an intermetiate resting or recovery period between mesocycles.
The Microcyle
The smallest block of training is called a microcycle. The microcycle is the point at which you are considering and designing specific drills to meet the required stress to force your adaptation. An example of a microcycle is an endurance block where a you put together several long rides in a week to progressively overload the training volume and force an adaptation. Usually, you will have four or more microcycles within a mesocycle and then four or more mesocycles within a macrocycle.
This organizational approach is valuable in indoor cycling for 3 reasons:
1) It provides balance between the volume, intensity and specificity of training.
2) It provides a method for progressively increasing the amount of training or level of intensity as fitness increases.
3) It provides a connection with how the cycling community trains throughout the year; moving from the General to the Specific.
While an annual plan is not always practical for indoor cycling, in a future article I will discuss an approach to periodize your indoor classes over a much shorter time frame that will provide three main advantages for your classes:
1) Because of the changes in focus, you will provide varying stimulus to your participants, hopefully allowing them to continue without hitting a plateau.
2) Your rides will not just have separate playlists, but also separate focused training which will keep the classes interesting for the students.
3) By varying the classes you will be exposing your students to many different aspects of cycling and hopefully have them embrace the “Fusion” of the outside and inside rides.
I hope this helps……Joey
Welcome to the The Weekly Ride by Cycling Fusion