Lately, I've been going to spin classes as a part of my triathlon training. They are kinda fun but I've noticed some strange things about the instructors.
1. They don't realize that most hills crest. It's a common thing to start at a low resistance and work up to a high resistance. They usually say something to the effect of "we're going up a hill". The strange part of that whole thing is that when you are at the highest resistance, they say something like "we're almost at the top" when normally the highest incline would be somewhere in the middle of the hill and then it would slowly become less steep until your at the top. And now that I think about it, most of the hills that I know have the same grade for the majority of it. It doesn't look like the graph of x^2 at all.
2. The majority belong to the cult of "Not Stretching Legs Before Spin Class (Only Arms)" but only a few believe that it's dangerous to stretch your legs while on the bike at all.
3. They don't understand that I pace myself based on how long the class is. If I'm expecting a 45 minute class and it's 40 minutes in, I will give it the rest of what I've got because I want to be spent when I'm done. If the class then goes on for an hour I'm going to be fighting nausea the rest of the time.
4. Similarly, my last instructor didn't understand that by saying "We're almost done" all the time actually makes things go longer. To her, "We're almost done with this hill/sprint" meant 2-3 more minutes. Plus she started saying "We're almost done" at the 35 minute mark (of a 45 minute class that she took for an hour).
5. When I was just getting started, the instructor described a "jump" by saying, "remember when you were a kid and you jumped curbs? It's just like that." But when I said, "You actually jump the spin bike?" (because that sounded wrong), she laughed at me. Apparently, she meant "jumped off curbs". I wonder if she had to wait for a driveway to get back up on the side walk.
mwz
1 comment:
gah! those spin teacher suck! you should come to my class. My hills crest all over the place, I don't say "almost done" until you ARE done, I spend the WHOLE class doing leg stretches, and class is ALWAYS the same length. Actually only that last part is true. There are two teachers at my gym that primarily ride outside and I don't think their hills even crest but they do tend to have longer more outdoor-like hill drills. I personally think that's super boring and so do a lot of other people. I do try to avoid saying "almost done" until there's less than 30 seconds left for the same reason you cited but still sometimes I mis-estimate the music and screw up. And that's just a really weird way to describe a jump. I don't think jumps reflect anything you would ever do outside on a bike (although I tried to do jumps once outside and it was very interesting).
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