The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games have officially started. It seems strange that they kept the 2020 and didn’t change it to 2021, but alas, we live in strange times!
Indoor cycling participants love classes that are based on the Olympics; these profiles are motivating, inspiring, and often quite challenging. As an instructor, you can pull out your most motivational cues and use songs that you might not typically play.
We have three fabulous Olympics profiles in our archives that you can modify to use for these Tokyo Olympics. You can swap out a few of the songs using ideas from hundreds of song options from three motivational playlists below: our Olympics playlist, one with songs about winning and victory, and another we call “Game Time,” with tracks good for just about any sport.
The first profile is my personal favorite by Christine Nielsen: Faster, Higher, Stronger. I’ve done a modified version of this profile for years, swapping out a few songs every time.
The next one is a profile by Billy Coburn for the PyeongChang Olympics: Legends. It includes a tabata at the end, which would be perfect for the Tokyo Olympics, seeing as the exercise physiologist Izumi Tabata is Japanese!
The third is another one by Christine Nielsen: Olympic Dreams. While it is much more specific to winter sports, you can get some great ideas from the concept. And all of Christine’s profiles contain excellent cueing.
Bill Roach wrote an article almost 10 years ago about how cycling instructors can learn from the powerful words and delivery of the coxswain of a rowing team.
Below is the our updated Olympics bucket playlist, now over 100 tracks. I didn’t find as many songs created for this year’s Olympics in Tokyo as we’ve seen in the past; this is likely due to the pandemic and uncertainty of whether the games would even go on.
I did find this one, which would make for a good recovery song. It’s the only song I found that has a Japanese feel to it.
Please let me know in the comments if you’ve found other songs that would work well for the Tokyo Olympics.
I just wanted to give you some feedback. I taught this profile 6!! Times in the last 2 weeks, that’s how much I/we loved it!! Sometimes I like to do the same profile more than once because I feel like I/they get more out of it the second time. The music was perfect. Because I’m limited to 50 minute classes, I started with faster, higher, stronger and omitted the longer climb. I pushed them to solid zone 4 for the endurance portion (gave the option ranging from a sweet-spot to threshold effort depending on how they were feeling) and it was ???????????????????? I think the power bursts followed by zone 5 to finish was awesome and SO fun! Thanks for creating profiles like this, you are SO appreciated and I think joining ICA is one of the best things I’ve done to improve my coaching/learning as an instructor and cycling enthusiast.
This was in response to your Olympic ride…..
I actually taught most of these and loved them all!
Thank you so very much for your kind words, Meghan! I so appreciate it and I am thrilled how much you enjoyed this profile. Thanks for sharing your modifications as well.
Brand new instructor here…. I am at a loss of what drills got with what songs… can you point me to a resource so I can create a class with this playlist?
Hi Karen, in each of the profiles, it tells you what to do; the cadence, the intensity, the duration and also includes some cues. When you modify a profile, just choose a similar song from the bucket playlists (the longer, general ones) provided with a similar bpm and length.
Instead of thinking so much about doing a “drill” for each song, first find the tempo, or the bpm. That will determine how fast you pedal or whether you describe it as a climb or a flat or a hard fast push. The energy of the song can hep you decide how hard you want to go (but you actually should know how hard you want to go prior to choosing the music; that will help you find the perfect song for the objective of your profile.)
I have added a new profile called “This Is How Legends Are Made.” It’s good for the Olympics but it’s also just a challenging, fun class that focuses on the qualities and skills of athletes, so you can use it any time of the year. Here is the link. https://indoorcyclingassociation.com/this-is-how-legends-are-made/
I am logged Jennifer, but I don’t see the link either.
Thanks for pointing that out Barb, it was really weird because I double checked and they were all there in the dashboard, but it didn’t show up for me either when I logged in as a member. It was some glitch in how it was formatted; try again and let me know if it works for you now.
Thanks, Jennifer! They are all there!
Where do I find the Olympic bucket list of songs thats mentioned above?
Hi Yana,
if you are an ICA member, make sure you are logged in and it will let you past the paywall.
We have hundreds of playlists like these!