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Now that is a great response.

I sent it a responce ... but I not be able to post here. It looks like if you aren't on the RMP bandwagon your messages are "auditied"

It's not about being on any "bandwagon". It's about applying good sound training methods to increase performance. Drop saddle has no place in any cycling training program.

Kia Ora all,

First want to say thanks for all those who use this site as a means to communicate and share information. It's a great way for us all to communicate :-)

Ok, in my mind we are here for the participants and some of you have already highlighted. Our classes are not designed for elite athletes - fact: 80% of people who attend group ex including cycling are there for the social experience and to burn some calories. Most Group Ex class have a time period of 60 minutes or less due for several reasons. Studio availability, most people only have 60 minutes for lunch etc. Who the heck goes to the gym for more than an hour anyway's unless you are an athlete? And as an athlete, if I have more than 60 minutes, heck I'm hitting the road or the dirt!

We are there for THEM! In this industry we are great and guilty of focusing on the people who are already converted or the athlete in our class. This is easy cause its not as much work. Its the beginners or first timers who we need to be there for. Especially indoor cycling where they are already scared as crap to enter the room already!

The beginner is the difficult task! Can you lead a class with 40 people in it all with different needs? Can you provide the motivation for the athlete who wants to smash themselves? Can you in that same class provide options and safety cues for that first timer who may not return if they are smashed by the 3rd track into the workout? 

This is our challenge! :-) 

Our role as fitness professional is to help change lives, shape futures and with adherance :-)

45-50 minutes not long enough - well anyone who knows how to make use of time know that in 50 minutes you can do as much physically that you want - add more resistance, take more weight, take lest rest etc. If you tell me that I have 50 minutes to work out I will do what I need to do in 50 to make it productive. If I have 90 minutes, I will pace my effort to last 90 and so on.

Bottom line there is nothing wrong with any workout (RPM, Spinning, Scwhinn) - moving is improving I say :-)

What does differ as we all have acknowledged is who is leading the class, is it safe and how they are guided. 

Kia kaha everyone

Dan 

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Live and Ride Strong, Dano

Well, thats officially settled. Thanks Dan.

I didn't bother to read this whole thread just to reply to the OP, RPM is as hard as you want to make it.. I'm male, 23, do 5-6 les mills' classes a week, I average 180 throughout RPM with peaks of consistantly 208 at the end of track 7 (track 5 probably a touch higher). One day I had the unfortunate experience of a spinning class (no RPM instructors were available for that timetable spot).. it felt like track 1 for the first 15minutes, then switching between track 2 and track 6 intensities until the end.. I was sitting there the whole 45 odd mins, micromanaging my resistance (always up, never down once). Most of the time, in this spinning class.. I felt like I was going to hurt myself from going so fast with little to no resistance (i've had more resistance on in the most laid back track 6's recovering from the hardest track 5's).. I quite literally had to do the resistance micromanagement to actually make a workout of this class.

Dan thanks for the continuing feedback here.

I do realize at the end of each class it's not about us. It's about the people that walk up and say "I love your class" and while RPM can put the greatest set of moves together, music and profile if you can't find a motivating RPM teacher it's not worth the paper it was writing on. That goes for all styles. 

I think what happened here as a Spinning instructor I walked into a class with a high expectation, the "WOW me factor." And the reality is the "WOW" isn't a function of RPM, it’s a function of us, the instructors the lead these classes.

I’m blessed, when I teach I have a full room 32 bikes all filled. Front 2 rows are advanced, your next row is intermediate and your back row is beginner. I try to teach a class that leaves every group feeling great, I want them to get a great workout and keep coming back. This is an art we all work on and regardless of style, who trained us, we all have the same goal, keep our students coming back.

In closing, there is no need to argue the point of one style vs. other. The thing I have learned here is the style is only a tool, how we use the tool is up to the instructors that teach. We can all talk about the tools, but how we apply them is really what makes all the difference.

So God Bless you RPMer’s for all you do!!!

 

I want to than the person who wrote this. I have Rpm and cycling at my club and recently took the GFM position and have a bit of a mess to clean up. And the Freestyle cycles keep dogging on RPM. And people are not coming to it because of the instructors additude.    Also they think going super fast is work.  I wish they would put some gear on the bike and see real work.  I feel I am the only person fighting for RPM because the freestylest that the old GFM talked some of them to take the cert and they act like it is the worst thing in the world.  So I have spent 2 hrs getting info to educate them on RPM and I feel this posting is going to help.

 

 

Thank you

Becky

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ddbgroup:

I want to than the person who wrote this. I have Rpm and cycling at my club and recently took the GFM position and have a bit of a mess to clean up. And the Freestyle cycles keep dogging on RPM. And people are not coming to it because of the instructors additude.    Also they think going super fast is work.  I wish they would put some gear on the bike and see real work.  I feel I am the only person fighting for RPM because the freestylest that the old GFM talked some of them to take the cert and they act like it is the worst thing in the world.  So I have spent 2 hrs getting info to educate them on RPM and I feel this posting is going to help.

 

Oh ... I wish you the very best of luck that will not be an easy task  We have some of that Spinning vs. RPM rivalry at my club which is so stupid.

The thing that concerns me is that it sounds like you have Spinning instructors teaching RPM because they were forcecd/coerced/talked into doing the training. As good as your intentions are, they may never fully come around and love RPM because it's not what they want to be teaching. Do you have the option to start opening up to recruiting some new RPM instructors, maybe some current members who enjoy the program or instructors from nearby? Not saying replace all the ones you have, just add some people into the mix who may help win over the ones who aren't as impressed with it?

Good luck - it sounds like you're up for the challenge and I'm sure your members will be better off in the long run. 

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Free the body. The mind will follow.

At our club, we're in the process of introducng RPM, with a grand unveiling in about 4 weeks.  We actually did what Michela002 suggested in the previous post.  We recruited RPM instructors from the general membership (yours truly being one of them) and kept the freestyle classes intact.  That gives our members more choices:  freestyle and RPM -- not just RPM.  Yes, the freestyle instructors tend to advocate their style strongly but most of them are smart enough not to dismiss a style that they haven't taught.  Those that teach both seem to appreciate the differences.  Frankly, I doubt that our Group X Coordinator would tolerate dismissing one style for another.  One instructor trashing another instructor's course -- especially in front of the membership -- would be the height of unprofessionalism.

Hmmm, i think perhaps you wern't pushing your self hard enough and finding the right resistance to start with to get a good work out?

Here is my post.

Started doing RPM now and then in my spin classes at clubs that didn't have the licence (just to see if they liked it) and which have some good spin instructors doing packed out classes.

May class at one club had good numbers but was a bit later that some of the other classes so hardly ever sold out.

More and more people started coming to my class and there started to be waiting lists. I kept going on about RPM to the GFM and that it seemed to work there. The result, the club has now taken on RPM because of feedback from participants. I am the only instructor there and now teach 3 classes a week and they all have waiting lists. The other classes are still there but the RPM ones I do get booked up first!

They also like the fact I give little talks about the benefits of what we do in RPM and the reason for riding on the beat and with the correct resistance. I take in a heart rate graph of my ride on most releases to show the results they can get if they follow my cues on pace and resistance during the ride.

The other club's classes have also gone from strength to strength. I think RPM is a fantastic class alongside freestyle spin, but I have teamed with some instructors that teach it a bit too technical and they just don't make a fun class!

We have a lot of factual evidence as to why RPM works that LM have done. Many freestyle classes are put together with hardly any though to the benefits given to the ride with preference given more to how hard it will seem to the participants, because many people taking part in cycle classes think the best instructors are the ones that max them out in 30 min during a 1 hour class!! I know, I have put mixes together myself like that in the past just to please the "He Man" element in my classes!!

Ask the instructors to break down the benefits and to why they picked the tracks they did in their class and most would be stumped!!

Yeah JPgirl13.  Great points. You are there for them, not yourself.

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jen

if you google "Jennifer Sage" and read her stuff, you can get educated about spinning, and make up your own mind. i know I learned a lot, and I only teach RPM.

 

I'm trained in Spinning and will take my RPM in two weeks.

I resisted doing RPM, mainly because I believe Spinning is THE  original indoor cycling program and all others copied from Johnny G's idea. (Same with Combat, taken from Taebo.) But basically at Fitness First, if you don't teach RPM forget about getting a class. There are usually 2 - 3 cycle classes a week compared to 15 - 20 RPM.

With Spinning it really does depend on the instructor to put together a good profile with appropriate music. Unfortunately a lot of freestyle instructors do "boring" profiles - too much flat road or just straight climbing, and the class gets bored. I tend to use more interval training as participants seem to like the constant "get up get down go fast go slow" that you get in RPM. God forbid the little darlings get bored, but they do have the attitude of "I can sit on a bike going straight for 30 minutes by myself, entertain me." So I use a lot of upbeat Top 40 style music rather than techno (my trainer would kill me if she knew, she's all about techno with no words for Spinning.)

RPM takes the work out it so any instructor can walk in and teach, but it still takes a good instructor either way. And at the end of the day, it's the participant's job to turn up the resistance and do the hard work.