My blogiversary is coming up on May 23, 2009. Spinningmusic will be one year old! In the past year, I’ve posted 40 playlists and met fantastic people from all over the world who happen to love Spinning as much as I do. I’ve been anxiously watching my view stats creep upwards. About a month ago it occurred to me that the blog might possibly – just possibly – be able to hit 100,000 views before the one year mark. This amazes and delights me. I love sharing music and I especially love hearing from you. I think I’m most excited about the Reader Playlists page of the blog. I think it has the potential to become a really cool resource for all of us. (I just wish I was tech-savvy enough to make it prettier – and printer-friendly.)
Here’s this week’s new playlist, another collaborative effort with my grasshopper, Nancy, who chose the music and created the profile for the warm up, cool down, and two of the drills (I Know You Want Me and Helena).
Hey Ya! – Outkast (3:56): Here’s a fun song to warm up your legs and get ready for the ride.
I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) – Pitbull (4:04): We’ll start with a climb. Alternate between stair-climb, aggressive stance and seated climb, changing every 20 seconds (4 sets).
Helena – My Chemical Romance (3:35): 3x 30 second sprints – at 0:31 – 1:02, 1:19 – 1:50, 2:54 – 3:26.
Dance 2night – Madonna (5:03): This was the first song I ever used the Shazam app on my iPhone for. (For those who aren’t familiar with it, Shazam is an application that allows you to hold your iPhone up to take a sample of a song and the program will tell you the name of the song and artist.) I heard this song while browsing in a store. I love the bass line. Let’s do some lifts. There’s time for 8/4/2/4/8 counts – one minute of each.
Waking Up in Vegas – Katy Perry (3:19): Perry’s latest single – more frothy pop goodness with a catchy chorus. We’re going to sprint at each chorus – 0:47 – 1:02 (15 seconds), 1:29 – 1:44 (15 seconds), 2:22 – 3:07 (45 seconds). Go!
Fire Burning – Sean Kingston (4:03): A fast, out-of-the-saddle climb.
Fire – Scooter (3:30): Pace line. Split the group into three teams (I have three rows of bikes in my class, so I use front/middle/back row). When you hear, “FIRE!” at 0:20, that’s the cue for the front row to GO LIKE STINK. 20 seconds at the front of the pack, then they fall back, and the second row takes it for 20 seconds, then the back row for 20 seconds. By that point, the front row has recovered and should be ready to do it again. There’s time for 3 sets.
Drowning (Face Down) [Radio Edit] – Saving Abel (3:38): Enough speed for today. Let’s tackle this hill seated. Start your tension around 5/10 and increase it every 45 seconds. These guys remind me of Extreme and the melodic metal era of the mid-90s (check out Hole Hearted). Saving Abel’s other hit, Addicted, is also great for a seated climb, but it may be too risque for some clubs.
Blood in the Tracks – Attack in Black (3:34): I think this was the free song of the week on iTunes recently – great song! Steady tempo here – choose a tension (3 or 4 sounds good) and a pace you can maintain for the entire three and a half minute song. Close your eyes and focus on your legs moving up and down, making smooth circles with the pedals.
The Climb – Miley Cyrus (3:56): Cool down and stretch.
Beautiful – Akon, Colby O’Donis, and Kardinal Offishall (5:13): Some extra cool down and goodbye music.
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Beat the Creep with Small Steps
No, I’m not talking about perverts, the “creep” is slow, steady weight gain. Some studies peg it at about a pound or two a year, nothing major – until 8-10 years go by. I see it in many of my classmates from law school – when I run into them now (15 years later) almost all of us are at least 15lb heavier.
Toronto Globe & Mail food columnist Leslie Beck suggests we fight small with small: combat small changes in weight with small lifestyle changes you implement consciously, but barely notice. (Read her column here.) Beck cites the ASPIRE study of overweight, sedentary adults as proof that small steps really work. In that study, one group of adults were asked to make one small, new change in their diet and one small, new change in their exercise habits each week for three months. The other group was given a traditional weight-loss plan. After three months, the small changes group lost substantially more weight and kept it off after the study ended.
Some of Beck’s ideas:
- walk 1.5km (about 2000 steps) daily instead of driving to burn 100 calories.
- pass on OJ and eat an orange – save 50 calories.
- swap mayo for mustard on your sandwich – save 100 calories.
- instead of rice, have extra veg at dinner – save 100 calories.
- swap a toasted bagel with cream cheese for a toasted english muffin with light cream cheese – save 300 calories.
- instead of a muffin mid-morning, have a piece of fruit – save 370 calories.
- replace the cream in your coffee with milk.
- use a lunch sized plate at dinner time.
- swap a sweetened beverage for plain H2O.
Do you subscribe to the small steps approach? What are your favourite small steps?
Postscript – Thank you, thank you, thank you readers! This little blog hit 100,000 views on May 16, 2009, a week ahead of its one-year blogiversary. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to your comments and song suggestions. Happy Spinning!
S p i n n i n g M u s i c 
Hi Doctor Cathy,
Thanks for dropping by the blog and commenting. I agree with you 100% – the instructor really has to give ‘er every time. One of the things that attracted me to spinning was that it’s much harder to dial in your workout than, say, with cardio machines.
Come by again and post one of your favourite profiles on the reader playlists page.
All the best,
Cynthia
I’ve always found that when I teach, I get a much better work-out because I go all out. I’ve consistently seen members work at about 80% of whatever level the instructor is at, so why not push them higher by pushing yourself higher? As instructors, we cannot allow ourselves bad days because the members are counting on us. Your class may be the only one they can find time for this week. If you don’t give your all, but rather give just 75% of yourself, then they will be working at 60%. You owe it to them – and yourself – to teach at your best level, every class.
Wow you burn more calories! I would have expected it to be less as you are pushing people to work, not getting pushed if you know what I mean!
I agree with you about instructors not breaking a sweat – there’s really no point. If you’re teaching the class then you may as well get something out of it yourself!
I don’t really like instructors teaching the class off the bike. In classes I’ve attended, the instructors stay on the bike at all times unless they are getting water for people. The only time I’ve ever seen a part of the class being taught off the bike is when one of the participants broke his sadle during a sprint (not really sure how it happened but it looked potentially dangerous!) and the instructor gave him her bike, and then proceeded to teach while walking around and cueing the beat with the hands as there was no extra bikes!
I also use a heart rate monitor, which I purchased about 2 months ago. I love it – it makes working out a lot better. My heart rate is usually really high during spinning classes, especially during sprints. But I can’t get it as high during seated climbs as I can during sprinting, no matter what I do. But I suppose this is because there is much less movement involved.
According to my heart rate monitor, I burn about 30-50 more calories when I teach a class, than when I ride as a participant. Maybe this is because I talk throughout the class, or perhaps it has to do with being in full view of everyone, so not slacking off?
Some instructors dial back the tension on their bikes, maybe to look super-fit? I’ve been to classes where the instructor barely broke a sweat. Riders do seem to gravitate to classes where the instructor appears super-fit, so maybe this has something to do with it. To me, that feels like dialling it in.
I don’t think I would like teaching a class without breaking a sweat. I get off the bike as sweaty as my students do. I want to model good form and the right cadence for the drills I use, and also encourage the riders to push themselves because they see me pushing myself, too. I don’t ask them to do anything I am not doing.
I did have one rider approach me to tell me she liked my classes for that reason – that I do the same ride the participants do, at the same level of intensity.
That said, I also agree that it’s THEIR ride, not mine. I can do my own workouts on my own time. I haven’t done any teaching off-the-bike, but I’ve been to classes where instructors did teach parts of the class off the bike, and I quite liked it. It’s something I’d like to explore as I gain more experience.
Wow, an excellent reply!
Well done on the weight loss! I never considered the Atkins diet as I heard doubts about whether it was any good. Obviously you have proven these doubts wrong!!
I’m seriously considering trying your experiment about completely cutting sugar. I don’t add any sugar to things myself anymore but I didn’t really consider added sugar. (I certainly didn’t expect sugar in tomato sauce – I wonder would we miss it if they removed it all?). Not only is sugar fattening, but it’s bad for your teeth and to be honest I hate going to the dentist!
The hard bit is keeping the weight off after the diet. It’s not as hard if you make changes to your diet rather than ‘go on’ a diet (if you know what I mean). Do you find you get as much of a workout teaching spinning as you would attending a spinning class?
Hi Tim,
Thanks! I really like Scooter, too. When I ran the drill in my class, it worked great. Dance2Night also worked really well.
I lost 30lb on the Atkins diet in 2003. I’d never really considered my sugar intake before that, and it was quite a nasty shock to realize I was addicted to sugar. If there was a pack of cookies in the cupboard, they called to me until I ate them. I didn’t binge, but I’d be back at the pack for two or three cookies every single day until they were gone. When I stopped eating sugar, all of those cravings went away. We had some leftover Hallowe’en candy in the house for months before I took it to work, and I wasn’t at all tempted to eat it. I couldn’t believe how sweet apples were when I wasn’t eating sugar. I do eat some sugar now, and if we have cookies, I am back to fighting the urge to have one or two every day. I just avoid having them in the house.
Atkins worked well for me because it was all meat+veg – two types of food that I’m never tempted to overeat.
What finally drove me off the Atkins diet was Spinning – I didn’t have the glycogen stores for 60 minute classes while low carbing. But I’ve kept the weight off, and my bloodwork had never been better than when I was doing Atkins. I’m convinced that dietary fat is not the problem – it’s the combination of fat+refined carbs.
Many of the habits I learned while doing Atkins continue today – I drink no soda, regular or diet, use Splenda in my coffee, scrutinize labels to avoid added sugar (who knew that there is sugar in tomato sauce?), avoid processed foods, and try to minimize my intake of refined carbs, which is hard, because my personal downfall is the unholy combination of carbs+sugar (think cookies, muffins, banana bread – any baked goods). I try to do my own baking so I can modify the recipes to reduce sugar and white flour. I also refuse to buy anything with trans fats in it.
Readers, if you have never tried to eliminate sugar from your diet, I encourage you to try this experiment: for two weeks, consume no sugar in any form. Not even fruit. (Stay with me, it’s only for two weeks. I promise you won’t get scurvy.) You will probably be astounded at (a) how difficult it is, and (b) how much sugar we actually consume in a day.
Excellent mix! Some really good songs there. I like Scooter – Fire for sprints!
I like the bit you posted about small steps to lose weight. A while ago, I lost over 25 lbs of weight (I’m now a healthy weight and size) using small steps. I gave up sugar in cereals, tea, coffee etc. At first it was hard, but you get used to it and discover you actually prefer food without sugar than with sugar! I also increased my exercise – spinning really helped, in addition to other things such as outdoor cycling and running,