Wednesday morning @ recycle

My first trip back to recycle this morning was a sweaty one.  Last night it felt like a cyclone was hammering the city, and as our apt is up high the wind howled past us and the rain battered the windows.  I didn’t get the sleep that I wanted, so hitting up class was harder than usual.

I knew Christina didn’t show up to help me relax, either … a lot of fast arm pumps to some new (to me) music including some new (to the world) Rihanna … the song title eludes me, though.

I struggled during the shoulder and bicep track that she led, but I forgot all about my arms once we hit the last two songs.  Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity was a heavy, uphill seated climb.  When Christina climbs she also somehow manages to pulse out a beat with her legs; it looks like she’s kind of dancing, and it looks like a lot of fun.  I try to emulate it, but I fail … I’ll need to ask her about this.  It only works on a very high resistance, though: perhaps I need to get over myself and give it some more gear.

The class ended with Billie Jean.  I saw on Christina’s interview page that if she could teach a one-artist class it would be to MJ.  No doubt; she’s perfected the art.  We spun to Billie Jean with moderate resistance, the challenge being to keep with the beat.  And it’s a fast beat – 117 bpms according to this site.  The class exercise peaked when we had to maintain the pace in position 3, which is just hell on your glutes and hamstrings.  The freaking song is 4:54 seconds long, meaning that my right foot hit a stroke over 550 times to end the class.  Gotta love the ass-kicking (molding?) workout you get here.

Friday morning @ Recycle (2/2)

I kept on my sweaty long-sleeved shirt and wiped off my bike (futile) after the first class.  I refilled my water bottle.  I was happy to see Christina stick around with me to complete the double-header with Meredith teaching.

Meredith heated it up quickly with a warmup track and then, sensing my fatigued shoulders I'm sure, led us through an chest & shoulder song (are you serious right now?) where I felt like screaming.  Instead I just called her a lot of mean names in my head for the full 4 minutes.  Given how hard she drives her classes I'm sure that I'm not the first.

My favorite section of the session came when she jammed the new hit from David Guetta and Usher, Without You.  This song seemed somewhat questionable to me at first but then Meredith crescendo(e)s into a medium/high-resistance climb and we hit the chorus: invigorating!  The whole class is in sync and it's what spinning was meant to be.  The hard beat of the music unites the class ("shoulder to shoulder" was the call) and everyone works harder than they bargained for.  Great success.

Friday morning @ Recycle (1/2)

Christina taught a full class early this Friday morning.  There was a lot of hard work done to the tune of songs that were less pop-y and more focused.  I felt a few cardio zen moments (endorphins, perhaps).  In particular there was a 2:30 - long song with a relatively fast pace.  Christina put us at a low-moderate resistance (6.5 or 7) and the challenge was to keep the pace of the song for the entire duration.  And we were to do so while crouched in position 3.  She encouraged us the entire time given how difficult the pace was, and afterward gave a little pat on the back, telling the group that when Recycle opened earlier in 2011 (is this right?) almost no one could complete the track.  I believe it; I certainly couldn't have.

It's a mark of Christina's knack as an instructor that she can keep me motivated and excited through softer or slower songs (I typically prefer hard, fast beats); I enjoyed the hell out of that class :-)

To round out the challenge, she ended the Reboot class working our arms.  She really ground them out, which in general would be fine except for this was a double-header and Meredith was up next ...

Tuesday evening @ CAC

This was my first RPM spin class with David, the group fitness instructor over at CAC.  I have taken a few other group classes over there (body pump, zumba, and body combat*) with David and his energy translates perfectly into RPM.  He was co-teaching with another instructor (Izzy, I think, and I fear that I may be mispronouncing the name >.<) and began by giving everyone some really good instruction.

Here is a picture of the CAC spinning room from above.

You can see that it is a converted racquetball court, and they have made some efforts to ensure good sound quality there.  Actually CAC’s former spinning room was it’s main group exercise room – a big, open space – and bikes had to be pulled off of the wall as class started, and replaced when it finished.  This is a clear improvement; I’m happy to see the redoubled effort on their spinning program.

Back to the class.  One thing that strikes you immediately with David is how motivating he is.  He’s super positive and smiles full-time, even when it’s a grimace-smile and you can tell he’s working really hard.  I worked somewhat hard through the first 2/3 of the RPM class (some seating sprints with low-moderate resistance were tough) but where the workout really climaxed was on the last song, the RPM-ified version of Linkin Park’s Numb.  We’re crushing the hill at 80% or 90% of our max resistance for the majority of the song until the last hill climb.  David rallied the troops (not many instructors do this weel) and elicits yells, grunts, and hoo-ahs from the spinners.  The final < 1 minute of climb was so intense I was lightheaded.  Water bottle: emptied.  Great class.

*shameless plug: everyone who can should start attending the body combat sessions over at CAC because my awesome wife co-teaches there somewhat regularly, and is working to get certified by Les Mills (being certified as an actuary only takes you so far).  She’s a bad-ass.

Tuesday morning @ BSC DTX

Meredith packed another class full today, which included my former coworker Rachel (@creativeactuary) along with most of what I’ve seen as The Regulars there.  Last week I rode down the elevator after class with just one Regular, an older gentleman who usually sits at about the centroid of the room of bikes.  “Meredith’s been kicking my ass for a few months now; I’m hooked.”  This is a standard reaction: spinning does not discriminate on age or gender when it comes to working out, and Meredith is a prime conduit for the experience.

Today’s particular ass-kicker, if you were honest with yourself, was to Ke$ha’s Tik Tok.  The honesty here is key since spinning is an at-your-own pace sort of exercise.  There is plenty of encouragement from the other group members and from fierce instructors like Meredith, but you could go through class just piddling around for 45 minutes if you’d like.  I don’t like, though.

On Tik Tok, we spun at a medium-high resistance, with wicked intense accelerations in the saddle during the choruses followed by brief stints in position 3.  I forgot my bottle of water today (big mistake) and I was punished for it.  Victory was claimed, though, at the end of the routine: I walked out energized for quite a long day.

Saturday morning (11am) @ Recycle

So this day was a two-a-day for me, and back-to-back which is quite grueling.  Especially when Meredith is the second instructor.  She was on fire: we were sprinting and doing really quick crunches and tricep pumps in the Reboot class.  You’ll probably recall from an earlier post that the Reboot class involves an arm workout as well as spinning, and this was an Advanced Reboot class, lasting for a whole hour.

We hit the (now-)classic Avril tune, What The Hell, and sprinted all out.  If you’re new to spinning and haven’t exercised to this one before I recommend putting it on your headphones, sitting down at a bike in the gym, and sprinting all out to the choruses.  It’s invigorating.  One of Meredith’s strengths – and why I continued to take her class to begin with – is picking up on songs that make for kick-ass spinning.

Saturday morning (10am) @ Recycle

Aly at the Recycle Studio taught a vibrant class yesterday morning.  The studio was packed and luckily I was able to secure one of the front-row bikes.  Aly taught a Request class: the theme was Chris Brown v Rihanna.  I was a little skeptical at first but that was mainly driven by my own ignorance of the Chris Brown and Rihanna catalogs, and how well they are adapted to the spin track.  There are a lot of quick, hard beats - well suited to the exercise.

I always enjoy attending classes from instructors for the first time; there’s a learning curve that in itself is exciting.  While spinning has it’s own jargon (check out the glossary section!), and we can hear the positions and exercises that are being called out, it’s a goal of mine to understand the aims of the instructor and which muscles they intend each song to work out.  It’s helpful for me when I hear “your quads should be on fire” or “you should really feel this in your hamstrings”, since I know if I am on the right track or need to change something up.

Aly’s class was nicely choreographed – there were a couple of cool dance-ish moments where you could tell everyone was getting into it – and the climbs were rigorous.  She’s a very encouraging and challenging instructor.

Wednesday evening @ Recycle

The Recycle Studio is located on Tremont street in Boston's South End.  Recycle serves up a unique and satisfying spinning experience.   This blog will start to feature reviews of each of the spinning studios around town that I've visited, and I'll go into a lot more detail on each, but for now start by checking out all of their locations at Bikeurious' latest addition, the studio locations page (also found in the tabs at the top of the home page).

Meredith turned me on to Recycle many months ago and I try to treat myself to a ride there at least once a week.  She was teaching the Reboot class tonight, involving some fiery spin as well as some arm workouts.  These bicep, back, and shoulder exercises are performed with weights (2 lbs each ... don't knock it till you try it) that are provided on the bike.

The bikes here feel great, and I put on some serious resistance for a few hill climbs.  I also tried my best to keep pace with MJ's They Don't Care About Us in various positions.  It's my recent favorite spinning challenge.  Meredith confessed at the start that she's lifted it from another Recycle instructor; I'll be covering that class soon as well.  One move I tried to pull off a little more precisely this ride was keeping my center of gravity pulled way, way back as we held on to the center, protruding handlebars.  It was an effort, but I feel I left with a better glute workout than usual.  I'll let you be the judge of that, though.

A successful spin (sweat soaking through my jacket as I left) to top off a challenging day.

Wednesday morning @ Cambridge Athletic Club (CAC)

My wife and I went to Natalie's RPM class this morning at CAC.  It was a pretty chilly walk across the salt-and-pepper bridge but the first track got us all warmed up.

The class was quite challenging.  A couple of the songs involved a pretty fast-paced climb where we had a lot of resistance applied (or "on the fly"); I was sweating profusely.  I was thankful for some of the built-in breaks that RPM has, where we do a few shoulder rolls, etc., before continuing to punish our legs.

Other challenges for us in the class were a 75-second sprint (ouch) and a few hard seated climbs.  All-in-all great positive instruction from Natalie, good song selection, and a hard workout.