Whenever I think of recovering faster, I hear my grandfather in the back of my head telling me to sleep faster when I only had four hours until the morning. By no means do I want you to start shortchanging your recovery time nor try to psychologically speed up the process. I do want you to consider how fast your heart rate recovers and learn some valuable information you can provide to educate your riders.Read more…
Billy Coburn, Star 3 Spinning® instructor and occasional contributor to ICA, was moved to put together a fundraiser ride for Nepal earthquake relief. He had a profile he created last year called North, about summiting Mt. Everest, so he resurrected the ride for his event. Thank you, Billy, for sharing this with all instructors!Read more…
Want to organize a ride for victims of the Nepali earthquake? Here is a checklist on how we created a successful fundraiser in three weeks for both the tsunami disaster of 2004 and Katrina in 2005. Whether you plan on a small event for just one class, or want to spearhead a larger more coordinated event several hours long, this checklist will give you some ideas on what to do.Read more…
Over/Under Intervals are some of my favorite training sessions to improve lactate threshold. They are hard but doable with proper training, they take great focus, and they keep riders engaged. In this profile, I put a different “spin” on an old favorite!Read more…
Have you ever known someone who was a “fast responder”—someone who got fit really fast? Then others who did not respond at all to the same training, even though they were consistent and committed? Science can now answer why that happens.Read more…
After I posted my most recent profile, EDM Muscle Madness, a number of instructors said their riders found it difficult to push into Zone 5 during the strength intervals, even though they were riding as hard as they could. Are these riders doing something wrong because they are not able to hit Zone 5?Read more…
In the following video I will give you a tour of my iTunes library to demonstrate how I organize my playlists and music for indoor cycling. Along the way I will show you some tips and tricks for ordering your lists, using the BPM widget, building a playlist, laying out your profile, and calculating the time of multiple songs.Read more…
Alisha Shulter is an indoor cycling instructor who recently taught her first class off the bike. But, she hadn’t planned on doing it that way. The results, however, were magical and taught her a lot about herself and her students. She wrote this blog post about it and gave me permission to share it with you here at ICA.Read more…
Profile objective: To vehemently defy the cycling cardio gods with a dance of strength. Think of performing 1260 single leg squats; this profile requires no imagination.
The mention of “dance of strength” was not just a fun euphemism; get ready to bring your bike and legs on the dance floor with some powerful EDM (electronic dance music).Read more…
Last week I posted a video of my iTunes filing system, a result of years of trial and error to find the best way to organize and categorize songs so that making playlists for profiles will be much easier. Here are some close-up screenshots of my category folders and playlists. In addition to organization, this will give you ideas for naming your profiles as well as many fun theme ride ideas!Read more…