In the 90s, mum and I went to fitness classes together, but ever since I qualified as an instructor – I’m Spinning-certified and also have Stages Beat, PT and weight loss certifications – I’ve lived elsewhere in the US and even overseas. It meant mum could never come to my classes.

In 2019, my husband and I were living in Dubai with our five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter and I was missing teaching. I’d given mum my old indoor bike, so I decided to create a workout video for her. The first recording was dreadful, so my husband – who was getting back into videography – filmed it for me and we uploaded it to YouTube. 

“We have 275,000 cycling and 100,000+ strength subscribers, allowing this to be a full-time job for my husband and me”

Mum did the workout, but so did other people, so we decided to create more. We weren’t very consistent at first, uploading just one or two a month, but uptake began to grow organically from people searching YouTube for indoor cycling content. There was one video in particular, a cycling class for beginners, that did really well. Things took off from there. 

We then launched a separate Strength channel two years ago. Cycling is a great stress-reliever and a fun way to sweat it out, but strength is also crucial if you want to change your body.

How has your community grown?

We’ve never really done any marketing, but we now have 275,000 indoor cycling subscribers and over 100,000 strength subscribers, many of whom are unique to strength. 

For over a year now, this has allowed Kaleigh Cohen Fitness to be a full-time job for my husband and me: I do the workouts and Jason does the production and editing.

All our workouts are free for everyone to use, so the majority of our income comes from YouTube AdSense, sponsors and regulars who choose to purchase our US$15/month Kaleigh Cohen Fitness membership. This gives them early access to all workouts posted on YouTube, a monthly Zoom ride, a private Discord session where we can discuss anything from goal-setting to nutrition, and free downloadable bundles of support material for all our Cycle and Strength programmes.

Tell us about your content.

I used to struggle with confidence and self-image and indoor cycling helped me in the most amazing ways, so it’s at the heart of what we do. I want to help others take that crucial first step, because you never know what will happen from there!

That’s why, although I encourage people to challenge themselves – getting stronger on a bike to be stronger in life – I never want anyone to feel a workout is too hard. My role is to uplift and motivate and make you feel glad you pressed ‘play’, and of the 110,000+ clicks we get each week, around half go on to do the whole class.

Most classes are pre-recorded and 20–30 minutes long; each takes around 20 hours to design, film and edit, so we upload one or two a week. We ride to the beat, although it isn’t rhythm cycling: I include sprints, climbs and jumps and every song has its own focus. 

“My role is to make you feel glad you pressed ‘play’. Of the 110,000+ clicks we get each week, around half go on to do the whole class.”

However, we do have a 45- to 60-minute live ride every Saturday, with around 500 participants each week. People join from across the world, including a lady in New Zealand who’s cycling in the middle of her night! There are lots of regulars, so people know each other and interact in the live chat; a US$1.99/month YouTube channel membership gives you a badge by your name and unlocks special emojis to use in our live chats. 

“We’re so grateful to have almost fallen into this and to have so many people coming along for the ride”

Our community really does make what we do so special, and it’s also the community that shapes what we do: we listen to what they tell us in the live chat and on our social platforms and gear our content around this.

What are your USPs?

I use non-mainstream music and really harness the lyrics to mean something in class.

I keep it real. If I mess up in class, I go with it. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable as an instructor – to just be yourself – you’re more approachable.

And I explain why we’re doing things, sharing the knowledge I’ve gathered over 15+ years to ensure there’s purpose in every workout.

What are you most proud of?

What really inspires us are the stories of how we’re changing lives. One lady who’s been with us from the beginning has lost 100lbs. One man broke his back, but he’s worked back up and can now cycle for 45 minutes. We’ve had people going through cancer treatment, telling us we’ve helped them overcome things they didn’t think they could.

We’re just so grateful to have almost fallen into this and to have so many people coming along for the ride.

The post Kaleigh Cohen Fitness appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

Initially, it was just to prove people wrong – to show it could be done. I’d always been active: I was a wheelchair racer from the age of eight to 15 years and even beat Paralympic gold medallist David Weir once, although it was a bit of a fluke!

“I was previously a wheelchair racer and even beat Paralympic gold medallist David Weir once!”

I was working as a personal trainer at Aspire Leisure Centre in the UK when, in 2009, they introduced indoor cycling and asked who’d be interested in teaching it. They weren’t sure if someone in a wheelchair would be able to do it. I was up for the challenge.

That April, I did Schwinn’s Bronze level qualification. It was a two-day course and wasn’t modified at all for wheelchair users, so when it came to teaching a class, a colleague had to get on the bike to demo what I was asking people to do. It worked, though, and I was the first wheelchair user in the world to complete the course.

What’s your role now?

I’m now a Gold level Schwinn coach and have done a few mass participation events, up on-stage alongside able-bodied coaches. I also still work at Aspire as a personal trainer – I’ve been a PT since 1996 – and an indoor cycling coach, teaching classes using a krankcycle.

Aspire is a very inclusive gym. On average across the UK, 1–2 per cent of a gym’s members will be disabled. At Aspire it’s 28 per cent, and that’s reflected in our team too.

My wife comes to my classes – she’s also in a wheelchair and uses a krankcycle – and although most of my participants are able-bodied, many have some sort of health consideration such as overweight, heart conditions, prediabetes and so on. It’s a very inclusive class that attracts a broad array of people. I think they see me and think: ‘If Graham can, I can!’

What’s your coaching style?

I’ve done disability training modules through the YMCA, but above all I believe empathy is key. It’s not about pushing everyone to do 160 RPM. It’s about doing what you can. That’s an ethos I try to bring to every class.

Obviously I can’t get on a bike to demo the moves, so my focus is on verbal cues. Most of my participants have been coming to class for years, so they know exactly what I mean!

“I want to get as many people fit as possible, regardless of their ability. Indoor cycling is a huge part of that”

I also do a lot of going round the room, interacting with people individually. There are only 15 bikes and four krankcycles in the Aspire studio, so there’s plenty of scope to offer a personal touch and tailor the class to the needs of those in the room.

Programming-wise, it’s all about fitness cycling – an authentic approach to indoor cycling where you don’t do any moves you wouldn’t do on an outdoor bike.

How accessible is the fitness sector?

It’s better than it used to be, but there’s still a long way to go. I’ve tried to instruct at other clubs but they simply haven’t been accessible.

Krankcycles are also hard to come by in the UK nowadays, which is a great shame as it isn’t only wheelchair users they’re good for. They’re also good for people who’ve had knee or hip replacements. I believe every club should have one or two in their cycling studio.

And generally, I’d like to see more of the big companies – manufacturers, training providers, operators – showing that it can be done. That accessibility can be mainstream.

What’s your mission?

I want to get as many people fit as possible, regardless of their ability. Indoor cycling is a huge part of that: it’s low impact, you can adjust the workout to your level and it brings a wealth of fitness benefits. It’s a great workout for everyone.

What are your goals?

I’d like to open my own gym or PT studio, including indoor cycling.

I’d like to work with big companies to drive accessibility up the agenda.

And I’d like to become a Schwinn master trainer, so I can get more people with impairments qualified as coaches. It’s a great career. My advice: don’t think about it – just get out there and do it!

The post Dis/ability appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

I was a professional cyclist when I was younger, in the German national youth team from the age of 16, competing on the road, in the velodrome, on mountain bikes.

I also embraced indoor cycling, starting out as a participant in 2011 before becoming an instructor in 2017. Then something happened that made indoor cycling even more important to me. In 2018, I had a serious bike accident outdoors, breaking my arms and my knee and only surviving because I was wearing a helmet. I lost the confidence to cycle outside.

Indoor cycling became my go-to workout. It’s the time when I switch off and forget about the world. There’s nothing I enjoy more, and it really doesn’t take much effort to get on the bike once you have one at home. I aim to share that passion with everyone who cycles with me.

“Even if you’ve never done indoor cycling, don’t ever worry that you won’t be good enough to do my classes”

At the moment I’m not teaching live, in-person classes – we moved house recently and there aren’t any cycling studios nearby – but I’d like to in the future. For now, alongside my main job as a teacher, I pour my passion into Cycling Sophie – my online platform.

What inspired Cycling Sophie?

In the pandemic, people who had previously done my live, in-club classes were writing to me and asking for help in staying active during lockdown.

We, my business partner Jan and I, looked at the existing online cycling content and didn’t find anything that inspired us. We had a vision of free-to-use indoor cycling workouts that would cater for all different levels – beginner, intermediate and advanced – with workouts ranging from 15 to 90 minutes, and where my passion would really come across.

“Indoor cycling is my go-to workout. There’s nothing I enjoy more, and I aim to share that passion with everyone who cycles with me.”

We uploaded our first piece of content to YouTube in January 2021, with a goal of changing how people feel about indoor cycling. Certainly in Germany, it’s always been seen as a tough workout where the room is full of men in lycra. I wanted to change that and spread my love of indoor cycling to new and younger audiences.

What do you offer?

We offer rhythm and performance-based cycling, but music is key to every class so it never feels like a chore. Once I’ve decided what I want to achieve with each class, who my participants will be, what they need and what techniques will support them, I move straight on to music. I always have a good mix of genres – hip hop, rock, Latin, K-Pop and so on – as well as different beats and cadences.

We also train using Myzone heart rate zones in every class, so it really is just about you and your body. Even if you’ve never done indoor cycling before, you don’t ever need to worry that you won’t be good enough to do my classes.

We upload two new workouts a month to YouTube, mostly in German. Although we started out producing English language content for a global audience, now only one class in every four is in English. That’s one of our biggest USPs: our production quality stands out, as does the quality of the workouts, but it was when we started focusing on German language content that our YouTube user numbers soared. There just wasn’t anyone else doing this for indoor cycling in Germany, and the demand was high.

All our content is currently free, although you can support us financially if you’d like to.

You’ve partnered with Wexer…

Core Health & Fitness got in touch to say they were interested in working with me. Core owns Schwinn, but it also owns digital fitness brand Wexer, and I’m delighted to say that Cycling Sophie is now live on Wexer Virtual – the in-club system – and Wexer Mobile.

It’s really exciting, because it gives us a chance to reach people who cycle in clubs and who might not have come across Cycling Sophie yet. We’ve started with 30 workouts on the Wexer platform and will regularly add new content.

What are you most proud of?

Cycling Sophie is about to reach 1 million YouTube clicks and we have around 11,000 subscribers to our channel – men and women from Germany but also around the world, from the UK to the US, Australia to Russia to Mexico. We also have 2,300+ followers on Instagram. I’m hugely proud of how many people we’ve reached already.

“Focusing on German language content made our user numbers soar. There wasn’t anyone else doing this for indoor cycling.”

I’m also proud of how many lives we’ve changed. I get messages on a daily basis – and I try to reply to them all – thanking me for providing such good content for free. It’s what inspires me and the team to keep going.

We’ll continue to offer free content, so everyone has a chance to access indoor cycling and feel the passion I feel for this beautiful sport.

What next for Cycling Sophie?

We’ve just moved up to a new level with YouTube, so we can now also offer a paid-for membership. We’re aiming to launch this by the end of this year or early next, and it will unlock another two pieces of content each month. There may even be different levels of membership if you also want tutorials, nutritional advice and so on, and potentially resistance workouts too.

Because I believe that’s key to the future of indoor cycling: we need to focus on fusion workouts, combining indoor cycling with resistance training. You simply won’t get results through cardiovascular workouts alone.

We also need to support people in adopting a more rounded approach to health generally. I have a Masters in PE and English philology and I want to draw on all of this, as well as my own experience as a cyclist, to communicate – in a way that’s really easy to understand – how you can combine nutrition and different exercise disciplines.

“Cycling Sophie is now live on Wexer – a chance to reach people who cycle in clubs, who might not have come across us yet”

Longer term, I also dream of having my own indoor cycling studio, but for now I’ll focus on channelling my passion and expertise to the people on the other side of the camera – whether they’re at home or using my content in the gym – to bring them the positive energy of indoor cycling.

The post Cycling Sophie appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

MK: Margarett and I both used to instruct at another studio, but we felt something was missing. We made the decision to leave and create our own welcoming, community-focused space.

We started out as an online platform during COVID, with really loyal followers from our previous club who followed us online and got their friends involved too. And then, as we were coming out of the pandemic, a member of our community told us about a space that was available to rent. 

And that was that. We opened Fuel Cycling in Monterey, California, on 12 August 2021. At the time we had 20 bikes in our studio – what we affectionately call The Tank – with a warehouse-meets-speakeasy vibe where we have everything you need, without the frills you don’t.

Honestly, I had never planned to own a studio. I’m a full-time teacher and that was all I ever intended to be. But we had a community who wanted to ride with their favourite instructors and we just felt we had to make it happen. 

I knew I couldn’t do it on my own, but together with Margarett, our fantastic manager Lindsey and our girl gang of amazing instructors – five of us from our old club – we did it. Crucially, we’ve also done it with the help of our community.

Can you elaborate?

MK: When we started, we didn’t have much. Neither did we have it all buttoned down from day one. We were warned that we’d never be able to compete against the big franchises and the corporate studios, but we had five amazing instructors, a great manager and a ready-made community who told us that whatever we did, they’d come. So, we trusted our instincts and we went for it. Our thinking was pretty much: “We have bikes, we have speakers, we have music and we have our community. We’ll be fine!” And where many corporate studios have closed over the past year, we’ve grown and grown.

For the first few weeks, the only décor we had was a sign that said ‘It feels good to be home’, but together with our community, we’ve slowly added things over time. We now have a plant wall to which our members have brought their own plants. One weekend, 10 of us got together to paint all the walls black. When we needed mirrors, we put out feelers to see who could help. We’ve tweaked little details as the months have gone by and we’ve done it together as a community.

We’re also next door to a CrossFit studio and we get great support from them. We operate independently, but we’re there to help each other.

One of my big learnings in creating Fuel Cycling has been knowing what my limits are and how to ask for help. Over the past year, we’ve made connections across our local community – far beyond our original group – as people have come forward to support and help us. 

“We didn’t start a cycle studio and then try to build a community. We’re a community that built a cycle studio”

How is your community so strong?

MG: As our manager Lindsey puts it, we didn’t start a cycle studio and then try to build a community. We’re a community that built a cycle studio.

We do nurture this, of course. We’re there at local events, competing in trivia competitions as Fuel, raising money and making donations to charity, doing beach clean-ups and so on. We also have our own social events, such as our popular Pumpkins & Pinot ride.

But the point is, we were a community before we were a studio and that shows. When new people come to Fuel, it isn’t only our team who welcome them as if into their own home. Our members do the same. They go over and talk to them as if they’ve known them for years and even help them set up. People spend time in our community and just want to be part of it.

Fuel Cycling is where friendships are born and it’s such an honour to be that space. Everyone is there for each other, to the point that members will schedule visits around celebrating milestone rides with their friends, for example, or to be there if someone is coming back for their first ride after an illness. They don’t work out just to work out. They work out to see their friends. If they can’t make the ride, they’ll come to the social afterwards. 

Our riders and our staff see Fuel Cycling as their studio, and rightly so. They were there when we started. They’ve grown with us and helped us when we needed help. They’ve come to class and they’ve introduced their friends. They drive our sense of community. 

Our rides are great, but it’s the people who really make us. 

What about community beyond the studio?

MK: We saw something really interesting coming out of the pandemic: lots of new local businesses being set up by people – and especially women – who had been inspired to finally do the thing they’d always dreamed of doing.

We spent a lot of time going out to meet them, walking the streets and visiting all the coffee houses, the farmers’ markets, the little artisan shops to see how we could help them. Now, every month, we showcase a local business on our social media and we have a Makers’ Market in our studio: a cabinet where local makers and merchants can showcase their products, from jewellery to home-made soap to CBD tinctures. 

It isn’t even about trying to get them to join our studio. It’s important to us that we’re part of our local community. 

“It’s challenging in The Tank, but also hugely encouraging. There aren’t many places I feel as strong as I do when I’m in that room”

Tell us about your programming.

MG: Fuel45 – our 45-minute cycling class – makes up most of our schedule. We used to do Fuel60 once a week, too, but our community wasn’t quite ready for 60 minutes back then; we may reintroduce it at some point if there’s demand for it.

Alongside this are regular special classes: everything from musical themes to our Cookie Exchange ride, where everyone bakes cookies and you all swap them so you go away with one of each. We do a bingo challenge too, where you tick a box each time you ride a different bike. It gets people out of their back row comfort zones and shows them they can do it.

All our classes are rhythm rides. The lights go down and it’s like dancing on a bike. We do make the rides challenging, but it’s all done in such a fun way that people get lost in the moment and don’t realise how hard they’re working. 

Our instructors get off the bike and dance around, they motivate you and remind you what you’re capable of; there’s no focus on what you can’t do. The riders cheer each other on, too. It’s challenging in The Tank, but also hugely encouraging. There aren’t many places I feel as strong as I do when I’m in that room.

MK: In terms of the programming itself, we’re fortunate to have five amazing instructors, all of whom were itching to get away from the whole corporate ‘this is the recipe’ approach. All our classes have to include a variety of rhythms, and must be adaptable to both newcomers and regulars, but other than that we leave it to our instructors to do what feels right for them.

That includes the playlist, which shouldn’t just be chosen for a good workout. It should also reflect the instructor and what’s going on with them that day. Say I feel like I need a mental boost. I’ll start with that and I’ll pick tunes and design my programme around it. 

For us, music isn’t just music. It’s a soundtrack that people should get something out of at an emotional level.

“We’ve had people tell us coming to Fuel is like going to church, because we say everything they need to hear!”

How do you train your instructors?

MG: It’s a collaborative and ongoing process. We know it’s in all our interests – and those of the studio – for everyone’s classes to be full, so we aren’t competitive with each other. We do each others’ classes as part of this; it’s fine for us all to have a different flavour, but we can still learn from each other. Nobody knows everything. 

New instructors also co-teach with established instructors until everyone feels they’re ready, and we all bring something – different skills and strengths – to help them in their training. 

MK: The way we connect with our members is also very inclusive: our team knows it’s always ‘we’, never ‘you’ or ‘I’. Everything we do, we do it together with our community. 

We also ask our instructors to open their hearts and their lives, because inevitably there will be people in class for whom it resonates: their experiences and feelings, hopes and fears. In fact, we’ve had people tell us coming to Fuel is like going to church, because we say everything they need to hear!

MG: Crucially, though, being in the saddle doesn’t make it The Margarett Show, and the same goes for all our team. A lot of studios showcase their instructors, but that can be intimidating for riders. At Fuel, it isn’t about what the instructor can do. It’s about making every class accessible, challenging everyone in the room to exactly the right level and doing what we do together.

Is being women-owned important?

MG: We didn’t intentionally set out to be a women-only team and we’re very open to employing male instructors. However, we are women-owned – and also minority-owned – and I think that matters for a lot of reasons. 

At the age of 45, I became a widow with five children. There was a real moment of doubt, of wondering how I would move forward. Could I do it? Was I strong enough? How would I provide for my children? Purely at a personal level, creating Fuel Cycling… it was so important for me to show my children that their mum was strong. That I could do it.

And then there’s Molly: a full-time teacher who was also studying for her special education credential at the exact same time we were launching Fuel. I think it’s so important for our community, and other women in particular, to see that.

Fuel is part of a wave of new, women-owned businesses that have come out of COVID and it’s been really humbling to be a part of that, working to see how we can lift each other up.

MK: The funny thing is, though, that we hadn’t really thought about all this when we set out to create Fuel Cycling. We did what we did because we felt we had to for our community, and my boyfriend really spurred me on to do it.

It was only afterwards, when people saw what we’d done and talked to us about it, that we realised what it meant to them, to the community, to women. So often, women are told ‘no’ – especially minority women. Fuel Cycling is proof that you don’t have to look a certain way to accomplish what you want. Certainly this year, International Women’s Day felt very different for me, when I was up there on the bike and using our studio to prove that dreams can become reality. 

“We haven’t done it the easy way. We’ve done it in a really meaningful way – a way that matters to us and our community”

How are people responding to you?

MK: I think post-COVID, people are very aware of who they’re supporting and where they’re spending their money. People come into our studio and they love the ride, but even more than that, they want us to be successful. They see the love our studio has been built on, and that we continue to pour into the community, and they want to support us.

MG: I think it’s also true that people see themselves represented at Fuel Cycling. Ours is a very diverse crowd: gender, colour of skin, ages, backgrounds. We have military wives. We have grandmothers. And although 70–80 per cent of our members are women, we have men. Intimidated at first by all the women, they quickly get hooked into the community and bring their friends too, so the number of male members is growing. 

We very much represent the community. Everybody has a seat at Fuel Cycling.

What are you most proud of?

MG: We’re a community that’s built a studio and the feedback is incredible. People say it’s like Cheers, because everyone knows your name! They say you walk in a stranger and leave a friend. Hearing things like that, it makes me really proud of what we’ve created.

We haven’t done it the easy way, either. We’ve done it in a really meaningful way – a way that matters to us and our community. I think that’s really important.

I’m also incredibly proud of the fact that, just 11 months after opening, we won Best Boutique Fitness Studio in the Best of Monterey 2022 awards. The names we were shortlisted alongside, I felt honoured even to be considered, but we won! It’s meant such a lot to our whole community.

MK: What I’m most proud of is seeing how lives have been changed by being part of our Fuel Cycling community. I always get really emotional when I see people celebrating a milestone, making friends, doing something they’ve never done before – standing up in the pedals during a ride, for example, or coming to class in new gym-wear and feeling great about themselves. I always wonder, would that have happened for them without Fuel Cycling? I’m just so proud of what we’ve all created together.

“A lot of studios showcase their instructors, but that can be intimidating for riders. At Fuel, it isn’t about what the instructor can do. It’s about what we can do together”

What are your plans moving forward?

MG: We may introduce a couple of new cycling concepts over the coming months. We’re fine-tuning what those might be, but ultimately it will be based on what our community is ready for.

MK: Beyond that, the sky’s the limit. We’ve already grown our membership to 70 and our studio to 35 bikes, but we’re just getting started.

We currently offer around 15 classes a week and could easily add more, as well as bringing in new instructors. That’s where we always look to spend our money – on top-quality staff – and we have plenty of space at our current site to grow.

Longer term, I have big dreams for Fuel Cycling. Five years from now, I’d love to be in larger premises where we have a second studio for complementary disciplines – yoga, stretching, barre and so on – as well as a juice bar. All our instructors are multi-disciplinary, so it’s just the extra studio space we’d need.

Would we ever open more locations? I don’t know – never say never. We could also go online again to make Fuel accessible to even more people. The most important thing, though, is that we built Fuel for this specific community. We will first build and grow here before we even consider going anywhere else.

The post Fuelled by community appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

Training Stress Score (TSS) is something I invented in 2002 in collaboration with Dr Andrew Coggan. It’s a composite number that takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to arrive at a single estimate of the overall training load and physiological stress created by that training session. 

Put another way, it quantifies the training stress on your body after a workout and is applicable to power-based cycling or rowing. [For a briefing on power training, see RIDE HIGH issue 16.]

“TSS lets you track the cumulative stress of each workout on your body to ensure you’re resting enough”

It was a measure I knew I needed to help my athletes accurately understand how hard each workout was compared to others. I also knew I could use this data to shape a plan to peak them at exactly the right moment for big events. Dr Coggan provided the science! 

Why is it important?

Before we invented TSS, kilojoules (kJ) – how much energy you burned – were used to quantify the stress of a ride. The problem with this was, it didn’t acknowledge ride intensity: you can ride for longer at a lower intensity and burn the same kJ, but the physiological stress on your body will be nowhere near the same. 

TSS gives a far more accurate picture of how much stress you can create. Most important of all, it lets you cumulatively track this stress, allowing you to build a picture of your chronic training load (the cumulation of everything you did between 15 days and six weeks ago, and with it your overall fitness) and acute training load (your workouts over the last two weeks, and with it your current fatigue) to understand the Training Stress Balance in your body today.

This information, in particular the chronic training load, tells you exactly when you should push hard in training and when you should rest. It allows you to continually strike a good balance between fitness (which results from training stress) and freshness (which results from rest) to keep improving – and, where relevant, to hit top form for your event.

As an indoor cycling instructor, it allows you to track the cumulative stress of each workout on your body to ensure you’re resting enough – most injuries are down to insufficient recovery – without losing fitness. 

How do you calculate TSS?

As I say, TSS takes into account both workout duration and intensity, with intensity based on the individual’s FTP (functional threshold power).

The easiest way to understand TSS is that you score 100 points if you go as hard as you can – that is, if you cycle at your personal FTP – for an hour. From that benchmark, it’s easy to relate it to other workouts.

“After six weeks of instructing two cycling classes a day, your chronic training load could be 160: the same as a pro at the end of the Tour de France!”

Basing it on FTP makes it scaleable, too: Bradley Wiggins cycles at his super-high FTP for an hour and gets a score of 100. A deconditioned individual cycles at their 80-watt FTP for an hour and gets a score of 100. All you need is an accurate personal FTP.

Some software – such as TrainingPeaks, which you can download as an app – works out the TSS of each ride for you, and there are a few bikes that include this score on their console. If you don’t have access to that, though, it isn’t too hard to calculate the TSS of a ride yourself. 

The equation is TSS = {[(duration (s) x normalized power (W)) x IF]/(threshold power x 3600 s)} x100 – but don’t be put off by how it looks, as it isn’t actually that complicated! 

First, take the workout duration in seconds and multiply that by normalised power (which in the context of studio cycling is almost always average wattage), then multiply all that by the intensity factor (see end of this article: What do we mean by intensity factor?) This is the only bit of guesstimating you’ll need to do, as this figure won’t be in your bike. However, you can get a pretty good idea of the intensity factor simply by dividing your average power (wattage) throughout the class by your personal functional threshold power. 

“As a basic guideline, I’d advise that if your chronic training load hits 115, you need to rest. That could just mean taking it easy in class.”

You then divide this figure by your personal FTP x 3600 (seconds, to get it up to an hour). Finally, multiply all that by 100 – just because we wanted to present scores as full numbers!

What does TSS mean in practice?

If your score is less than 150, we categorise that as low stress – that is, it should be relatively easy to recover from that workout by the following day. Note that recovery is not the same as being totally fresh: you may still have sore muscles. However, it’s likely you could produce the same effort again the next day, or at least get very close to it. This is how we define recovery.

A score of 150–300 is medium stress: you should have recovered by the second day. High stress is TSS 300–450, where residual fatigue is likely to be around for a few days at least. And then epic is a TSS of more than 450, and here you’re looking at anything from a few days to a few weeks before you can get on the bike and do the same again. The muscular soreness might be gone, but your cardiovascular system still needs more time to recover.

You talk about cumulative load…

Yes, and this is where TSS becomes really valuable. Let’s move away from elite road racing examples and focus purely on indoor cycling instructors to bring this to life.

Every single ride has its own TSS; a typical hour-long indoor cycling class – with its sprints and climbs but also its recovery sections – will have a score of around 65–90. So, let’s say TSS 80 as a rough average.

Now let’s assume an indoor cycling instructor teaches a class a day. Six weeks later, their chronic training load is 80. That’s do-able. Even TSS 100 a day is do-able. Your body adapts to training stress after all – it’s how we get fitter – and a load of 80–100 is a moderate yet solid level of stress. 

But what if they’re instructing two cycling classes a day – not uncommon – and they’re cycling them ‘properly’, by which I mean they’re in the saddle hitting all the %FTPs they’re telling the class to hit. Do that every day for six weeks and all of a sudden, chronic training load is 160 (plus any other workouts they happen to be doing).

Now let’s consider that cycling pros, when they reach the end of the Tour de France, have a chronic training load of 160–180 – and then they rest!

Now we can begin to understand why indoor cycling instructors get injured or sick when they’re doing too many classes, and why it doesn’t actually take much for class load to tip over into being too much.

So, when does an instructor need to rest?

First things first, as an instructor, you should absolutely be logging the TSS of every class you instruct, so you build up an accurate picture of your chronic training load (CTL). You then listen to your body and identify what your CTL is when you feel you can’t perform any more. As soon as you see yourself approaching this number in the future, you know you need to start thinking about building in some rest.

“Remember it’s about chronic training load: one day off doesn’t immediately undo the last six weeks of effort”

As a basic guideline, I’d advise that if your chronic training load hits 115 – if you add up the TSS of all your rides over the last six weeks, divide by 42 to get an average daily score, and that average is 115 or more – you need to rest. 

(Note: Specialist software will weight more recent workouts higher than workouts six weeks ago. However, for the purposes of simplicity, calculating an average daily TSS as above will suffice.)

Rest could mean taking it easy in class, whether that’s ‘faking it’ rather than actually cranking it up in the saddle, or getting off the bike and walking the studio floor to offer encouragement and motivation.

It could mean taking a break altogether, if schedules allow. But even here, remember that it’s about chronic training load: one day off doesn’t immediately undo the last six weeks of effort.

Read more: Hunter’s previous RIDE HIGH article – on why he believes indoor cycling classes should always be based on power – can be found here.

@peakscoachinggroup
/peakscoaching

The post Recovery at work appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

Founder, Authentic Instructor Training Inc.

Delivery methods have no doubt diversified within indoor cycling, encouraging all of us to keep learning, growing and challenging ourselves. 

Yet particularly as our sector re-opens from the pandemic, bringing a wave of new clients into fitness, I believe it’s critically important that we take classes back to basics; while we’ve all had time to research our trade, now may not be the best time to introduce all sorts of next-level moves into your classes. 

As an instructor, your role is to make every participant feel successful, but I’m currently seeing far too many instructors making things too complicated for their riders and leaving people behind. So, my first observation from an education perspective: instructors must (re)learn how to integrate new riders with well-versed riders to maintain client success. Practise next-level choreography at home or post-class with fellow instructors, but only slowly introduce new moves and combos so you build your class together.

“our instructors learn to ‘tap’ every song using a BPM app so they know how to use it in class”

Second, let’s be honest, very few people fall in love with a stationary bike. They fall in love with the experience of riding together to the beat of incredible music in an inclusive community. It’s why we love doing music workshops – because, from boutique studios to big box gyms, music is key to instructors scaling up their class experiences.

All the instructors we train learn to ‘tap’ every song – using a BPM app – to register the beat. Once they have the BPM, our tempo guidelines tell them how and where that track could be used in class. Only then do we look at musical rhythms, big beat drops and lyrical connection to give their riders goosebumps.

Next, teach instructors to be comfortable on camera: they’re going to need it in this hybrid world. Our experience is that instructing online is harder than in-person, so we actually train people to deliver online first. This builds a solid foundation before we move on to in-person.

Online instruction requires a very different skillset from in-person to ensure those on the other side of the screen feel engaged and seen. At a minimum, your energy should be at least 25 per cent higher online, with a good balance struck between showing great technique on the bike and being off-bike, connecting with clients individually and checking their form.  

Finally, my firm belief is that you can’t teach someone to be an elite indoor cycling instructor in eight hours alone. There are so many levels to creating a great experience, and it takes time to build people’s confidence to get out there and deliver. I’d like to see a governing body in place to monitor the industry and ensure consistent standards are maintained.   

Yet however much indoor cycling evolves, I believe one requirement remains unchanged: whether newly qualified or highly experienced, instructors must forge a genuine connection with their customers, and that requires an ongoing focus on building next-level engagement skills. Emma Barry said it best: “If clients like you, they’ll leave you. If they love you, they’ll stay.”  

@trainingwithtashie

Noël Nocciolo

Cycle master trainer, boutique thought leader, consultant

Big box gyms must decide if they wish to be known for great instructor talent. With other departments competing for budget, this is not always the case. If they do, a new approach to investment is required, countering the lure of high-promising boutique studios by rewarding talent financially and investing in continuing education, hosting regular workshops for free or at a reduced price.

Meanwhile, boutiques must move away from the ‘one big training pre-opening only’ approach, and/or knee-jerk training only when competition arises, instead investing in regular growth and mentorship. Talent is the product; riders may come for the luxe amenities, but they stay for the connection forged in class by the instructor. Internal curricula and continued up-levelling of skills has never been more essential.

But what should that continuing education look like? For me, nothing will replace quality continued education that’s rooted in exercise science, evolving over time with new research and conclusions and not adding a move just because it was seen on Instagram. Alongside this, however, as gyms and studios increasingly compete for riders’ time, money and attention – including at-home – instructors must also hone their training for personality, vibe and inclusion.

“When coaching those unfamiliar with power training, I show the impact of efficient pedal-stroke speeds even when still riding to the music they love”

I myself hit the jackpot in that I completed the entire SoulCycle instructor training in 2011: less about anatomy and physiology, more about music manipulation, energy and performance. I then took the Schwinn Classic certification the following year with Rachel Buschert Vazaralli, who blew my mind with her personality and musicality when delivering scientific principles. She made pure riding fun: on the beat as well as with a purpose. Both sides of that training coin have helped immensely in the way I’ve delivered education myself since 2014, showing how every style of cycling class can be made captivating and ‘entertraining’.

As co-creator of PEP For FitPros, I also believe the way we use our voices is key to being captivating and ‘entertraining’. In our course, we teach instructors to preserve their voices and protect their careers, but also to authentically differentiate themselves vocally from other coaches. Personality, energy and attitude can all be traced back to how we use our voices healthily and as performers: screaming on microphones, losing our voices and risking longer-term voice injury are out; compelling coaching is in.

My training always supports technology too. When coaching those unfamiliar with power training, I aim to get a demo bike with a power meter to tangibly show the impact of efficient pedal-stroke speeds, even when still riding to the music they love and whose beats they want to ride.

In short, I like to see continuing education as a buffet we take from and budget for annually, taking the best of the certifications, and the best of the internal trainings and performance workshops, to help new and veteran instructors to grow and become more rounded. I’m interested in what we can add to our educational lives rather than take away.

@noelcycles
@pepforfitpros

Zack Schares

Fitness consultant & talent agent

As indoor cycling evolves, there are many instructors – whether newly qualified or in it for years – who are looking to upskill to meet the emerging, predominantly boutique-driven expectation of a true performance in the saddle. 

It’s why I run multi-weekend instructor training workshops that dedicate a full weekend to getting each participant up on the podium, running a class and taking feedback. I want everyone to really understand what it takes to be up there, engaging the room, being a great coach and mentor rather than just a good rider.

“Lack of leadership is the greatest impediment to us having the instructor workforce we need”

I also encourage people to find their own style; it’s not about going online and watching the top brands and influencers, then trying to copy them. It’s great to be inspired by others, but these brands do so much behind the scenes to lead people in the way they do. It simply doesn’t work if you try and copy them. You have to find your own style.

If you want to run a studio yourself, you also have to be a great leader. You have to set your team up for success.

I’ve sadly seen too many examples of instructors leaving their employers to set up on their own, thinking they can do better but without any strong leadership skills. Their mindset isn’t right: they push to make it all happen quickly, putting pressure on their teams, so focused on doing better than the local competition that they haven’t properly thought through how they want to run their own businesses, build their own brands, lead their own teams.

Meanwhile, head instructors don’t really know how to manage those teams, especially when they’re filled with creative types as instructors tend to be. 

I believe this lack of leadership is the greatest impediment to us having the instructor workforce we need, which is why leadership is the focus of my new workshop. I believe this is the most important way in which education can evolve to give us the indoor cycling instructors we need. 

Launching in September in Mexico City, I’ll be delivering the workshop in partnership with Christopher Chandler from The Nutrition School – a specialist in health and life coaching. With a basic premise that strong leadership starts from within, we’ll define what leadership means at different levels of a business and cover topics such as building credibility and trust, giving feedback, problem solving, empowerment and effective listening.

We recommend that at least two people attend from each organisation – owner, head coach, instructor – so teams can take away their shared learnings and grow together.

I believe this workshop has the potential to make a real difference. I believe the instructor workforce we need will result from strong leaders setting that workforce up for success.

@zax_fit

Jennifer Sage

Founder, Indoor Cycling Association

I have enough to say on this topic that I could fill pages! Instead, I’m going to deep dive into how in-person and online education can combine to produce the highest quality instructors.

During lockdown, we saw an explosion of online training courses, certifications and virtual classes. Yet for me, the hands-on guidance of in-person education – so valuable especially when just setting out as an instructor – is hard to replicate online. I firmly believe original certifications should be delivered live. 

Where online can add real value is in continuing education – something many studios didn’t insist on pre-pandemic for cost reasons. Online is a cost-effective way to broaden knowledge: while your primary certification should be on the bikes you teach on, you can upskill by taking online courses from other providers.

Online courses, e-books and indoor cycling membership sites can also be excellent ways to enhance your knowledge of cycling science, technique, coaching and cueing, communication skills, motivation, power training, profile design, sourcing music, using the power of music to match the message of your profile, working with older or less fit riders, teaching virtual classes and so on.

Indeed, more complex subjects such as exercise physiology and teaching with power are arguably better studied online, simply because of the ability to repeat the content.

And even virtual cycling classes, while not a course per se, are a fabulous way to improve your coaching skills. Subscribe to your favourite master instructor’s virtual rides and write down their inspirational cues. It’s not much different from being at a conference!

“Expand your knowledge of the science of cycling, not just the entertainment aspect. You’ll become a more rounded instructor.”

But proceed with caution: there are some very poor instructors out there sharing sub-standard ‘education’. Thoroughly vet your sources and be wary of free content. Just because it’s popular, doesn’t make it good. 

Other tips for online education include ensuring it’s based on proper exercise science. Seek to expand your knowledge of the science of cycling, not just the entertainment aspect that’s so popular at the moment. You’ll become a more rounded instructor who can create classes with a purpose and more confidently answer riders’ questions. 

Look for a course on teaching with power. Even if you don’t have power meters on your bikes, you’re still producing it. When you understand the elements of producing power (cadence and resistance/force), you’ll have solid foundations to create safe, effective classes that produce results for your riders.

Seek courses in teaching across the entire intensity spectrum, so you don’t fall into the common trap of only ever teaching high-intensity intervals. Consider taking a course or reading a book on working with elderly riders. Seek courses in how to be an empowering, motivational, inspirational, engaging instructor (riders will flock to your classes!)

Finally, when choosing your online courses, ideally find someone with prior experience of training instructors in-person – they will have a greater understanding of relaying information than someone who’s never taught live workshops – and make sure there’s a way to contact them with questions. Check they provide transcripts and/or handouts, too. 

Done well, online continuing education can play a major role in improving the quality of our instructor workforce.

@indoorcyclingassociation
@ridewithjennifer

Louise Ager

Fitness education consultant

In Denmark, the last couple of years has seen a shift away from specialist cycling classes – larger timetables of differentiated classes catering specifically for beginners versus intermediates versus the ‘go hard or go home’ brigade – and towards smaller timetables of signature classes where the instructor has to try and cater for all levels and needs in one class.

This is particularly evident at larger gym chains, and for me it’s a great shame. Of course, I appreciate the desire to deliver consistent experiences. I appreciate that many instructors are sadly not sufficiently qualified nor experienced to choreograph their own excellent workouts – I’ll come on to that in a minute. I appreciate that having too many cycling classes on the timetable may mean they aren’t all full. 

However, I believe we must offer diversity in class styles to bring a broader audience to indoor cycling: classes for beginners, for overweight people, for seniors, for endurance enthusiasts, for those short of time, for fans of different music genres. The more generic the experience, the less likely you are to really engage someone.

Education has a major role to play here. Five to 10 years ago, cycling certifications in Denmark took between five and eight weeks to complete. Now many have dropped to three to five days – a dramatically condensed timeframe that I believe offers little scope to explore the wide range of possible class styles. I think this is a major contributor to the shortage of really good cycling instructors now, and in turn to the timetables clubs can deliver.

“I’d like to see certifications take longer again, to allow new instructors to really get into the detail of different class types and audience needs”

I’d like to see certifications take longer again – 50–70 hours as a guideline – to allow new instructors to really get into the detail of different class types and audience needs. Newer topics like technology and online delivery need to be covered too, and there must be plenty of time for practice in the saddle. New instructors have to learn how to capture an audience.

They must then continue to develop themselves, attending workshops to keep building on their initial certification, fine-tuning their craft and getting better and better at engaging people, making it fun, reading the mood of the room and instantly adapting to it in their delivery and even the shape of the ride itself. Mastery is an ongoing process.

Put bluntly, we need to make instructors good enough again that they don’t have to rely on templates. We need to push standards back up. 

We must then let instructors be true to themselves, focusing on whatever they’re really good at and the audiences they’re really good with. They don’t have to be able to do it all – being different is good – but they do need to be better at delivering whatever they choose to specialise in. 

Of course, the next step is educating studio managers and supervisors to start scheduling for a broader audience, with targeted classes that have a purpose and an intentional audience. This will be a process, but I do believe it’s the right thing to do.

Angela Reed-Fox

Course director, Indoor Cycling Institute

I believe the quickest, easiest way to upgrade a cycling studio experience is not through hardware, but through supporting instructors to improve their knowledge and skills.

Let’s start with technology. With the growth in wearables, riders are now far more informed about their bodies’ response to exercise. Instructors must upgrade their knowledge accordingly; weaving things like heart rate into a workout, boosting effectiveness for riders who have that tech, is easy to do without cluttering your instruction if you know how. The same goes for bikes with accurate power meters: instructors must upskill to design and deliver effective sessions.

Because ‘effective’ matters: people want fun, but they also want results, and just pedalling on a bike isn’t guaranteed to deliver them. I spent 10 years as a nurse and met so many people who felt they’d tried everything and nothing had worked. Instructors must learn to design and deliver sessions with specific goals rather than just filling 45 minutes, helping gyms build a reputation for quality.

“Instructors must learn to design sessions with specific goals, rather than just filling 45 minutes”

With a growing incidence of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other lifestyle conditions, there must also be more emphasis on closing the gap between fitness and health. Done well, indoor cycling is safe and accessible for a large proportion of the population, so instructors must be trained to recognise this – and to instruct in a way that attracts, retains and boosts results for this wider cohort. This will include effective communication: nurturing, challenging and encouraging people rather than just shouting.

Safety is also key. I see the same mistakes being repeatedly made by instructors who don’t understand – or have forgotten – the basics about resistance, cadence and the safe interplay between the two. That’s a massive training issue and can easily lead to (avoidable) injuries and even litigation. Instructors must be able to lead safely and spot unsafe cycling in class.

They must also remember – even be (re)trained in – the basics of customer service: arrive first, leave last, know names, address riders by them. As remote offerings proliferate, every gym must identify where they can excel over online and really go for it. Community and camaraderie will be crucial. 

I also think there’s a growing and overdue need for studio management and lead instructor training. It doesn’t require much, but they should certainly know how to maintain safety and best practice, how to recruit and support instructors, what to keep an eye out for. As tech and bikes become more advanced, and riders come to expect more, this is becoming a discrete set of responsibilities that needs to be covered within training.

Finally, many instructors just want to excel at indoor cycling: the discipline is heading into its own space, and that’s entirely right. I believe it’s outdated to expect instructors to also have a certificate in gym instructing, PT or exercise to music. Cycling shouldn’t be CPD on top of one of those qualifications. Rather, there should be regularly updated, indoor cycling CPD on top of a dedicated, entry-level indoor cycling certificate.

The post Future-proofed instructors appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

That much has already been extensively talked about, of course. But what comes next is vital: ensuring clubs are delivering a true hybrid experience, not merely ticking the box of hybrid technology.

As the buzzword becomes ‘omnichannel’, operators should be under no illusion that digital can be a mere add-on. Moving forward, equal importance must be given to digital and in-person, ensuring the same user experience is delivered whatever the point of entry.

And when I say the same, I mean exactly the same. Every customer will use multiple touchpoints and expect to dive straight in to a familiar experience each time.

Clubs must therefore learn to view everything they do as one big customer-centric experience – and I believe this experience has to be led by content.

Content is the element of a health club offering that can transcend all boundaries. Where equipment is to a large extent anchored in a physical club, content is replicable on any channel: in-club, online, through an app, smart TV, smart mirror or other smart device.

“Every customer will use multiple touchpoints and expect to dive straight in to a familiar experience each time”

Content also happens to be what today’s fitness consumer – now well-accustomed to working out with on-screen trainers – seeks inside your facility and out.

Content creation is therefore no longer an adjunct to the business of running a club. It is the very cornerstone of hybrid success, underpinning omnichannel delivery of your club experience.

People power
Content is also where the money now is, so it’s hardly surprising that everyone from celebrities to media networks seems hell-bent on becoming a fitness content provider these days. Yet clubs still have a major USP: their in-house superstars.

Group exercise instructors have been key to member loyalty for decades, renowned for building communities of enthusiastic followers, but they’ve become even stronger during lockdown as their personalities, programmes and friendly faces reached beyond club walls and made us all feel better during the pandemic.

Clubs must recognise the power their instructors and trainers now hold. They are the content creators. They are the face of your brand in the digital arena. They are also the faces your members know and the people who, as channels to market proliferate, have the power to reach huge audiences.

If you’re looking for an advantage over the big digital players and the global fitness influencers who try and seduce your members away with their ‘three months for free’ offers and their Hollywood eyes, this – your team of local rockstars, whose relationships with members weld them to your brand – is it.

It therefore goes without saying that every club operator should be maximising opportunities to put their in-house superstars in front of customers, both on-site and at-home – and that means creating digital content fronted by them.

Of course, most clubs already did this during lockdown, but it was a kneejerk response to unforeseeable circumstances, with content often shared for free on third-party platforms. Moving forward, what’s needed is a sustainable strategy for the production of ownable, brand-enhancing, monetisable, local superstar-led digital content.

“Our data shows that the more fresh content you create, the more forgiving members are on quality”

A case in point
Why bother? Let’s take a look at Asia Pacific’s Evolution Wellness, which launched its web-based content platform – Virtual Studio – in partnership with Wexer in July 2021.

Fast-forward to January 2022 and our analysis of usage data to identify the most popular classes from Wexer’s global content library. To that analysis, we then added the content from Fitness First and Celebrity Fitness – two of Evolution’s brands in south-east Asia – and found that Evolution Wellness had 13 classes in the top 50 most viewed when aggregated across all our clients.

Clubs’ own content can be a huge usage driver, and in turn a major loyalty tool: the variety of Wexer’s global content library is what draws people to on-demand in the first place, but the locally-produced content plays a major role in keeping them there.

Self-produced content can also be a significant revenue driver. Recent Credit Suisse research found that 52 per cent of club members would be happy to pay for a digital tier to their membership, and our data backs this up: Evolution Wellness is projecting US$500,000 in Virtual Studio revenues for year one alone, all from existing members, with the lucrative prospect of non-geographically limited audiences as yet untapped.

Make the most of what you do
Producing digital content doesn’t have to be hard, either. Start by looking at your live timetable. Where are your superstars? Which are your waitlisted classes?

Maximise reach and ROI of these classes by installing a simple camera set-up in-studio and filming them; you’ll quickly compile a rich library of your own superstar-led content that can then be made available on-demand via your app, website, members’ smart TVs, even on the big screen of your in-club virtual studio.

It doesn’t even have to be beautifully produced. Our data shows that the more fresh content you create, the more forgiving members are on quality: four pieces a day and it needs to look pretty slick, but get closer to eight pieces a day and it really is fine filmed as a fly on the wall of the live class studio.

Indeed, unless you’re a large multi-site operation with the budget to build and run specialist digital production studios, our advice is that you focus on getting the most out of everything you already do – all that incredible content you’re already producing – by filming it and making it accessible via multiple platforms, both digital and physical.

This, really, is the vital mindset shift. You need to see all your content as, well… content. Don’t mentally place in-person content and digital content in different boxes. Live in-person classes and workouts, live-streamed and on-demand sessions with your in-house stars, on-demand content from third-party providers to ensure strength in depth.… It’s all simply content that pours into one central repository, from which your members can pull the experience(s) they want via whichever touchpoint they choose – whatever channel works for them that day.

“Hybrid isn’t just a project. It’s a new model in which digital is a key business division that must be resourced”

I’m not going to turn this into a big Wexer pitch, so all I’ll say for now is this: all it really takes is a shift in focus and a sprinkle of technology. All of the above can be achieved with our ecosystem of white labelled digital solutions. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss the Wexer API, SDK, App, Web Player or in-club Wexer Virtual; whatever point you’ve reached in your process of digital transformation, we can help you start or continue your journey.

Create a win-win
Of course, your content creators could feasibly go online themselves, independently of your club; there are influencers out there making millions. But your in-house stars are unlikely to have the database, nor necessarily the business skillset to build one. They have the talent and the mass appeal, but not the platform.

Meanwhile, your club has the audience – your database of members – and the pressing need to become omnichannel to better serve that audience.

Which is, of course, where it all aligns perfectly, with money to be made all round – provided you create a win-win scenario for both club and superstar.

To keep your content creators contributing to your brand rather than their own, you must find ways to incentivise and reward them for the incredible contribution they make to your now omnichannel business. We have a number of clients who pay their stars more for content that drives high usage, for example.

Nurture your talent, too, encouraging them to rise into the starring role you and your members need them to occupy. Empower and incentivise them to promote the content they create with you among their followers; when content is your product, you sell your talent and your talent in turn sells you. Help them grow their profile at the same time as rewarding them for their role in your success, to ensure their ongoing loyalty to your brand even as their reach and appeal grows.

In short, recognise that their success is your success, but work hard to ensure they know the flip side is also true: that they will do better with you than on their own. As usage and revenue rises, your operation will have more to invest in content, meaning superstars continue to grow… and so the virtuous circle goes on.

Yet underpinning this is a simple but vital secret: you have to fully commit. Hybrid isn’t just a project. It’s a new model in which digital is a key business division – one that must be resourced and prioritised.

Indoor cycling in a content-led world

“Virtual classes have long been used to meet off-peak demand and reduce downtime in studios. Indoor cycling is no exception – and with Wexer technology now allowing clubs to stream their own self-produced content onto the big screens of their virtual studios, operators have a chance to create a real buzz around their group cycle offering,” says Bowman.

“The first step is upping the ante on your live classes to make each of them a truly special event that members waitlist to be a part of. You want every live cycling class to be packed, so you might even consider reducing the number of live classes.

“Then put a basic camera set-up in your group cycle studio and record all these incredible live classes, capturing the energy of the room as well as the carefully selected rockstar instructor.
Once recorded, this content can be scheduled to run in any slots that used to be live instructor-led, as well as being made available on-demand the rest of the time. Your own signature ‘wow factor’ cycle classes are suddenly available whenever members come into the club.

“And of course, use of this on-demand content isn’t limited to your cycle studio. The number of people who now have a cycling option at home amazes me; we’re putting more indoor cycling content onto our Mobile platform to meet demand, with cycling already accounting for around 8 per cent of class views. When you consider the equipment requirement and the 1,500 different classes available in our Mobile library, that’s pretty impressive.

“As a club, there’s great value to be had in creating your own indoor cycling content.”

The post Align Your Stars appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

Les Mills programme director – SPRINT, RPM, BODYPUMP

When you’re talking about rockstar instructors, it’s important not to be too elitist. As our Les Mills training system proves, by focusing on the key pillars of great instruction – technique, choreography, coaching, communication and performance – it’s possible to teach someone to become a world-class instructor.

There is a deeper layer, whereby you know who’s going to be a real rockstar even before they train as an instructor. They just have the X factor, and it tends to come down to soft skills. However, for me the secret is to dive deep into each individual to work out what their superpower is – because everybody has one, and sometimes more than one.

“The faster you identify your superpower and focus on what you’re really good at, the faster you’ll become a rockstar”

You may find your superpower immediately, for others it takes longer, but it’s all about understanding your personality type. Why do you want to be on stage? What is it about you that will draw others to you?

Some people are natural connectors, communicators and community-builders. Others are performers who really connect to the music. There are some whose natural athleticism draws people to them. And then others are natural motivators who can make people really push themselves in class. Over the years, I’ve found these to be the broad areas of superpower: communication and connection, performance, inspiration, and athleticism.

Once you find your superpower, play to that strength: you should always teach from your strongest point. Don’t feel you have to copy others. Work out what you can do better than others, dial that up on-stage, be authentic to who you are and the rest won’t matter so much. People will be drawn to you when you dial up your superpower.

That said, you can’t totally neglect your areas of weakness: you’ll need to be able to bring elements of coaching, connection and motivation into any class. But it is OK to accept that you don’t have to be equally strong in every area. Me personally? I’ve never been great at connection, however hard I work at it, but my superpower is motivation. Know what you’re really great at and have it in your back pocket at all times, ready to pull out whenever you need it.

You may find your superpower influences the classes you choose to instruct, too. I’m programme director for SPRINT, RPM and BODYPUMP, and I’d say SPRINT plays to the strengths of athletes and motivators. For RPM, performance comes to the fore. And then flipping into the digital world, it’s more about coaching, inspiring and motivating; connectors may find it harder to play to their strengths via a screen.

In general, though, the faster you identify your superpower and focus on what you’re really good at, the faster you’ll become a rockstar.

Noël Nocciolo

Cycle master trainer, boutique thought leader, consultant

Hear from Noël on how superstar instructors…

• Are authentically themselves on-stage, but in a heightened way
• Are enter-trainers, marrying experience and training needs in every event
• Can absolutely be taught, with superstardom something that can be nurtured and trained

Renata Jarz

House of Workouts CEO, presenter, speaker, GX consultant

Even those with the greatest charisma still need the basics in place: being fit themselves, good technically, preparing their choreography well and so on. Superstars can’t rely purely on their X-factor to carry them through. It’s like baking a cake: you can’t put all the icing on top if the cake itself isn’t baked properly. Discipline is key.

Empathy is also hugely important, as it underpins genuine connection. Too many instructors want to shine on-stage, whereas the best instructors are motivated by making the people in their classes happy and healthy. They really get to know their participants. They teach as the participants want to be taught, not as they would want to be taught. They get on participants’ level and pitch the class perfectly to those in the room, and to how those in the room feel on any given day. They make every participant feel special and seen.

They use words that activate participants’ right brains, rather than just technical words that activate their left brains, focusing on happiness and feeling good to stimulate endorphins, dopamine and serotonin, ensuring people come out of class on a high.

“Too many instructors want to shine on-stage; the best are motivated by making those in their classes happy and healthy”

They aim to surprise participants every time, making each workout feel different – even if it’s a class they’ve taught before. Every class is scripted, and scripted differently if it’s a re-run, putting the accent somewhere new to avoid falling into the same-old teaching patterns. This inspires participants and helps the instructor stay fresh. I also recommend teaching no more than 14 classes a week, so it remains a pleasure and not just a routine.

But even then, with all these boxes ticked, there is an X-factor that marks true superstars apart, and this is even truer for digital superstars than for live superstars. For digital channels, where you can’t fall back on in-person interaction, you need that extra twinkle in your eyes, that special smile, that ability to ‘make love’ to the camera.

I’ve been in the room while classes are filmed and felt a real ‘wow’ factor during the live performance, but then seen it played back on-screen and not felt the same. It can happen the other way round, too – great on-screen, live not so good – although generally I find digital superstars are more likely to also be great in-person than vice versa.

It’s also the case that superstardom doesn’t necessarily cross disciplines. You can be great on a bike but terrible in another class format. Your natural style of movement has to fit the programme if you want to be a real superstar.

Sue Wilkie

Head of instructor support, EMD UK

What makes you stand out in a crowd? There will be numerous instructors in your area, many teaching exactly the same release as you. Some might have taught for longer than you, too. They might be more qualified. So why does someone choose to come to your class specifically?

Quite simply, it’s YOU. It’s your innate ability to connect and communicate with participants, building a rapport that makes them want to come back – something I don’t believe can be taught.

It’s your true love for what you do that shines through whenever you teach. Your vibe attracts your tribe; that’s true wherever you teach, whatever type of class you teach.
It’s also about preparation. Being a superstar is a hard role to keep on top of – charisma alone doesn’t guarantee it – so it’s the hours you put in behind the scenes to keep the choreography fresh and the session plans relevant, all while trying to maintain your love of the job.

It’s the time invested in recording your delivery of a class, then watching back and evaluating yourself on the three key areas of teaching: Instruct, Coach, Motivate.

It’s the time you take to really know your content and choreography, so you make it look effortless on the day. I’ve spent many hours listening to tracks in the car so I knew every change in tempo, every block, every chorus by heart before putting the choreography to it. You make sure everything flows so you enjoy teaching it, because that shines through and inspires your participants.

“There will be some who just don’t click with you in class. Know not to take this personally. You are who you are. Embrace your uniqueness.”

And of course, it’s about building a community. As a superstar, you teach to the entire class, not just those at the front, so everyone feels welcome and valued. You make time to chat with participants before and after class, too, so they feel part of the community. And you use the insights from those chats – understanding what music or track your community likes out of the latest release, for example, or what goals they have – to make your class experience even better.

And finally, you’re happy to be yourself. Not everyone has the same abilities or attributes, and there will be some who just don’t click with you in class. You know not to take this personally. You are who you are and you embrace your uniqueness.

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“If you consider the word ‘activist’, it means someone who brings about change,” explains Caroline Macklin, head of brand for Virgin Active. “We’ve listened to our members, upped our game and hired the best of the best to channel their vast knowledge into bringing about change in our group exercise offering.”

“In other companies, you have a head of group exercise,” adds SJ Aboboto, Virgin Active’s cycle activist. “Virgin Active has done things differently, bringing in expert instructors to each dedicate themselves to one of the ‘big five’ disciplines. It’s about getting the very best out of each product, raising things to an experiential level that heightens member satisfaction and encourages people to try new things and mix up their workout routines.”

Here, Aboboto tells us about the new group cycle programmes she’s created for Virgin Active, with a roll-out that starts this month.

What’s the rationale behind the new programming?

We’ve set out to define who we are – to define the Virgin Active experience across all our disciplines – so whichever club you go to, you know exactly what you’re going to get.

Within that, it’s important that the experience is unique to us – that we own the product and are able to keep evolving it – so each activist has been busy creating signature classes that bring the boutique studio experience into our clubs.

“We’ve set out to define who we are, so whichever of our clubs you go to, you know exactly what you’re going to get”

What this means is that, while instructors of course inject their unique energy and personality into their classes, the formats themselves will now be consistent – and classes of a consistently high quality – across all our clubs and studios.

This is an important change from where we’ve been up until now. In cycle, for example, all classes have historically just been called Group Cycle, with the style and format varying from instructor to instructor. Our new programmes will ensure a consistent, and consistently great, member experience.

What cycle concepts have you created?

I’ve designed four new signature classes: MOVE, TEMPO, POWER and PRO.

MOVE is a boutique-style concept that’s all about cycling to the beat: lots of choreography, upper body and weights. We don’t use the console at all in this class.

POWER is a performance-based class that’s similar to outdoor cycling, with an emphasis on technique and moving in and out of the saddle. The console is very important in this class, focusing on data as you push towards benchmarks and goals.

“I’ve had lots of instructors initially tell me ‘I only instruct power’, but by the time they’ve done the training, 90% have changed their minds”

TEMPO is a hybrid class that fuses power and rhythm cycling: some sections are simply to the beat, others are more focused on the console. There’s an option of upper body movement, but it’s more basic than in MOVE and if it isn’t your thing, that’s cool – just ride.

And then PRO is all about a connection between the bikes and a big screen at the front of class, with a heavy focus on data.

Each class has a blueprint, a journey to follow, with instructors able to inject their own musical choices onto this. Anyone wanting more guidance can access monthly templates with suggested music tracks – mixing genres, tempos and RPMs so there’s something for everyone – and more details on choreography.

What does this variety achieve?

First of all, it’s about inspiring new people into cycling, as well as keeping existing cycle fans happy with different styles of class: some like data and pushing themselves hard, others like to be distracted from the workout with music, choreography and upper body work. You have to ensure there’s something for everyone.

It’s also about ensuring instructors are happy, with a class style that fits the way they like to teach. If we want to deliver the best possible experience for members, they must be comfortable with what they’re teaching.

That said, the training process has been really interesting. I’ve had lots of instructors initially tell me ‘I only instruct power’, but by the time they’ve done the training – I train everyone in both programmes – 90 per cent have changed their minds.

Even if they don’t teach both, it’s really important to have a knowledge of both programmes, to answer member questions and to understand there’s no right or wrong. As long as everything you do on the bike is safe and has a purpose, it will bring something to the workout.

For example, the upper body weight track is something a lot of people question, because the weights aren’t heavy and the wattage not high. That’s true, but it brings fun, rhythm and co-ordination. It has its own benefits, so I’m keen that everyone is educated across all formats.

Really, my advice for members and instructors is the same: Just come and try it!

Tell us more about the training.

Even if you instruct at Virgin Active already, these are new products, so we’re supporting instructors with two weeks of e-learning followed by four weeks of face-to-face practicals and webinars. Finally, before go-live, there’s an assessment where you deliver a 20-minute ride including intro and outro.

“I constantly have an eye on how I want to evolve the product – where we can take it, what trends we can explore, what trends we can create”

We also take instructors to our Aldersgate club, our first full-experience studio, to get a real sense of how an immersive boutique experience should feel for our members.

Alongside this, we’re also developing our own Level 2 indoor cycle qualification, which we’ll release in Q4 of this year and run through The Virgin Active Academy at our Mansion House head office.

What’s the roll-out plan?

We’re initially launching TEMPO and POWER, with MOVE and PRO to follow shortly after.

TEMPO and POWER will launch in eight clubs this month and then roll out from there. In the classes I’ve been instructing recently, I’ve effectively been instructing TEMPO and I’ve had amazing feedback, but it’s still been under the Group Cycle label.

How about online classes?

We have a purpose-built studio at Mansion House where throughout lockdown, us activists have been filming classes for Virgin Active’s app; I’ve been doing cycle and dance.

This started during lockdown, but digital content was always part of our strategy and feedback from our members has been really positive. Club+ members have access to all our digital content included in their membership. Online+ members can get a free 30-day trial and then pay £9.99 a month, or £99.99 for 12 months upfront, which also gives them access to club passes: monthly Online+ membership gives you one club pass, an annual package gives you four, and you can buy more to suit your lifestyle.

We’re trying to provide complete flexibility in how people work out with us.

What does your typical day look like?

It’s totally different every day. I design programmes, instruct live classes, film on-demand content, run masterclasses, upskill instructors, develop the core team and nurture members who want to become instructors. I support clubs in achieving good levels of occupancy, retention and experience. And, of course, I constantly have an eye on how I want to evolve the product – where we can take it, what trends we can explore, what trends we can create. It’s a busy role!

“Music should be a driving force across all products, not just rhythm cycling but power-based classes too”

What’s your secret for a great class?

When you’re cycling outdoors, you have the scenery to inspire you. In the studio, it’s all down to the instructor and the music.

Music should be a driving force across all products, not just rhythm cycling but power-based classes too. Get it right and it enhances performance as well as the experience: your body naturally matches itself to the beat.

Music is an energising force and it sits at the heart of every great class.

The post Activism at Virgin Active appeared first on Ride High Magazine.

My name is Nuno Ribeiro, I’m 31 years old and I’m from Barreiro in Portugal.

I was born with cerebral palsy, a deficiency related to the central nervous system. The best way to explain it: my brain doesn’t send the correct commands to my body, so I have problems with balance and walking.

In fact, when I was born, the doctors told my parents I would never walk.

However, we were referred to a physiotherapist who offered hope, telling my parents I would indeed walk. The first stage was surgery to stretch my tendons. This was an innovative surgery at the time – only a few places in Portugal offered it – and the doctors didn’t know what the outcome would be. But it was a success, and at the age of seven I took my first steps.

“When I was born, the doctors told my parents I would never walk”

Then began a long process of recovery until I was eventually able to walk alone, without needing support.

But the journey didn’t stop there, because around the age of 16 or 17, I’d grown tall enough that I needed more surgery; my tendons hadn’t stretched in line with my growth and we needed to stretch them again.

This time, the surgery was divided into three phases, and the short version of the story is that it was once again a success. Rather than continue to go through endless physical therapy, though, this time I decided to go to the gym to continue my recovery.

When did you discover indoor cycling?

I was about 19 when I first went to the gym and met the personal trainer – José Campos – who would change my life.

Exercise has always been part of my life – it’s had to be, as without it my physical condition would deteriorate. It’s also so crucial to giving me the mental strength to deal with more challenging days. However, training with my PT was something else again. I soon started to feel notable improvements in what my body could do, including improved strength thanks to muscle gain. I also felt better mentally, with greatly increased motivation.

In one of our sessions, I asked José if he also instructed group classes and he said yes: indoor cycling. What he then described to me sounded so wonderful, I asked if he thought I’d be able to do it. He said it would be difficult, but my whole ethos in life is to change mentalities and demonstrate that the word ‘impossible’ should not exist in the human dictionary.

“The fact I have cerebral palsy and yet I’m an instructor… I’m sure it encourages people to leave the studio thinking differently”

So I tried it, and my passion for indoor cycling has been burning strong ever since. I love the energy of these classes. I also love the fact that, when I’m on the bike, I can switch off from my disability. It’s as if I don’t have it. It’s a truly incredible sense of freedom.

And you’re now an instructor?

After a few years, just taking part in classes wasn’t enough. I wanted to teach!

It was then I was introduced to Pedro Maia, Spinning® master instructor, who had already trained others with some kind of limitation. After an evaluation to assess the feasibility of me doing the course, he suggested I do the training and then re-evaluate the possibility of a career as an instructor.

I completed the international Spinning instructor certification, as well as a few modules of Spinning Continuing Education: Strength Energy Zone, Profile Designs, Heart Rate Games and Becoming a Rockstar Instructor.

Receiving my instructor’s certificate was a breath of fresh air and a huge boost to my already growing motivation. I’d achieved something I never thought would be possible.

Where do you instruct classes?

Portuguese law says I can’t teach full-time in a gym – I can only cover other people’s classes when they aren’t available – so I don’t have regular slots, but I do teach in a number of gyms close to my home.

Mine are always freestyle classes, designed and built by me in accordance with the rules of the Spinning programme. I believe having fun is very important, but training with awareness and purpose is even more important, so I always have a clear training objective in mind and I choose the music accordingly.

I also make sure I use popular songs from the radio and I factor in participants’ music preferences; I tend to cover afternoon class slots when people are tired from their day’s work, and great music is an excellent way to keep them motivated.

What’s your secret to motivating members?

I’m very much myself on stage. I think that’s so important, because members can really see and experience the passion I feel. That’s the most important thing any instructor can bring to a class: passion. When you have a passion for what you do, half of the work is done already, because participants feel it and it boosts their own motivation.

“When you have a passion for what you do, participants feel it and it boosts their own motivation”

I also invest in regular Continuing Education. It’s very important to keep learning if you want to inspire people.

Another tactic I have is simply to say: ‘If I can, so can you!’ The fact I have cerebral palsy and yet I’m an instructor… I have no doubt that inspires members who attend my classes. I’m sure it encourages them to leave the studio thinking differently.

Because indoor cycling can be tough. When people try it for the first time, they don’t think they can take it. When they attend my class, though, it changes their way of thinking. They realise they can take it and they become regular attendees.

How do members respond to you?

What I try to bring to the gym goes far beyond the workout. It usually starts right at reception, when they tell the members I’m going to teach. People’s reaction tends to be a question: “You’re coming to work out?”

I don’t find it strange – it isn’t every day members have an instructor with cerebral palsy leading the class – but what I want is to open people’s minds and show them that limitations need not render anything impossible in our lives.

What’s your advice to those with similar conditions to yourself?

Indoor cycling is a great form of exercise for people with physical limitations, but do first seek advice from a properly certified instructor, to discuss what adaptations may or may not be necessary.

Then, when you start, never give up, no matter how hard it is. Even the things you find difficult at first will become easy over time.

Whoever you are, if someone tells you something is impossible, substitute the word ‘impossible’ for ‘possible’ and prove them wrong!

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