Welcome to the Indoor Cycling Association
The Dramatic Effects of Stress on Your Heart Rate Response to Exercise
In all the heart rate training articles posted at ICA, we always stress the fact that heart rate, while an effective way to monitor your intensity, is subject to many external factors that have nothing to do with the work you are performing. These factors include over-reaching, over-training, lack of sleep, dehydration, caffeine, medications, heat, humidity, stress, and others. It is important to understand the limitations of heart rate training if one is to use it properly as a training tool. One of the factors we may ignore the most is stress. I share with you a personal example of the negative effects of stress on my own heart rate. Please share this article to help others understand the body’s response to stress.Read more…
Class Profiles on ICA
Class profiles on the Indoor Cycling Association Profile: He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not This creative and fun profile explores the sensations that go along with the “He loves me, he loves me not” game—where you pull petals off a daisy andRead more…
Teaching an Olympic Profile? You WANT This Album!
Are you teaching an Olympic Profile? Whether you are teaching one of the unique and inspiring profiles Christine has created or one of your own, then you want this album! The Complete Music of the Olympic Games. Available on eMusic, iTunes, Amazon. It has official themes, numerous clips of nationalRead more…
Power Training Chapter 7: Go Faster or Suffer Less
Chapter 7 of the Power Training e-book discusses the differences between exercise and training. Gene discusses the concept of ‘Practical Power’, or power for ‘the rest of us’ – the everyday cyclist, the recreational and avid cyclist who may want to suffer less rather than go faster. It is this kind of training that has more applications indoors.Read more…
Do You Want to Pack Your Classes?
Would you like to create programming that packs the cycling class? Would you love to have your students rave about your creative, authentic profiles and inspirational coaching style? Learn how here, and see how Cykl of Toronto created a very successful program based on this concept!Read more…
Cupid is Stupid Valentine’s Interval Profile
I’m reviving a Valentine’s profile I created many years ago called Cupid is Stupid. It is sure to get a laugh or two (or perhaps rolling eyes) from your students; that is, if they have any breath left…Read more…
Updated Valentine’s and Anti-Valentine’s Songs!
We’ve done it again. I’ve asked all my contributors for their help in compiling the best Valentine’s and Anti-Valentine’s songs for your entertaining theme rides, and edited and updated last year’s lists. We’ve got 220 love songs and 162 anti-love/heartbreak songs (what I like to call Cupid is Stupid), for a total of 382.Read more…
Teaching With Video: An Interview with Allen Jones of epicRIDES
Allen Jones of epicRIDES tells us what inspired him to enter the world of virtual rides, what makes epicRIDES different, and his latest release—the Race Across America (RAAM).Read more…
Power Training Chapter 6: Stress & Adaptation In Indoor Cycling
This chapter analyzes the physiological response of the body to the process of repeated stress on the muscles, separated by periods of adaptation. Numerous benefits of this process are discussed, including an improvement in fat metabolism with structured training. This is quite vividly proven through actual test results (Gene’s and his daughter’s) following a periodized training program based on power.Read more…
Are We Defacing Tabata?
Leave it to the fitness industry to aggressively destroy yet another sound athletic training concept. Hone in on certain indoor cycling circles and it can be an absolute free-for-all. It is not uncommon to see massive high-speed sprints (with little to no resistance), producing an eye-popping 20 watts (not a typo), upper-body gyrations that appear to be from a scene in the Exorcist, and now Tabata, Tabata, and more Tabata. Read more…