A Spinning Tale

What happens when you unleash raw energy in a room full of avid cyclists? They reciprocate and give it right back. It’s indoor stationary cycling at its most stimulating. Yup, that’s why I love leading a spinning class, and here are ten more reasons that pull me back over and over again.

1.    No other workout gets my heart pumping faster than when I’m coaxing the participants to go as hard as or harder than me. There’s something about being at the front that makes me push myself to the extreme.

2.    The energy in the room is palpable. You feel it in your blood, in the adrenalin, in every nerve, and in the collective sigh at the end of a song.

3.    What other low impact workout can burn as much calories as spinning—700 to 1,000 calories in an hour—and have a low injury rate?

4.    Stress relief goes hand in hand with the class. It melts away with every drop of sweat.

5.    Gotta love that group cool-down. It’s the “We made it together” feeling. You can’t get that when you go solo on the treadmill or elliptical.

6.    The endorphin kick lasts long after the class is over, maybe burning some more calories…just kidding.

7.    I suspect the participants’ positive feed-backs probably crank up the production of endorphins.

8.    Relax, breathe, tighten up the core muscles, good posture—all the good stuff that you forget to do when you’re working out by yourself…I belt these out loud to the class every time I need to remind myself to focus on my own techniques.

9.    Creating a playlist and choreographing a routine give me almost as much pleasure as when I write. Just as I pick and choose my words, adding and trimming, so I select my songs, listening, cutting and rearranging.

10.    Last and certainly the most fabulous side benefit is the social aspect. New friendships beyond the cycle fit studio, Sunday breakfast after a class—not always the healthy kind…what the heck, we’ve earned it.