Sunday Morning Spinning

I've been wanting to try spinning for months (years?) now. One of my besties goes to spinning classes pretty consistently at her gym, so I have been intending to go with her on a guest pass; however, due to our schedules rarely syncing up, it's taken a long time. But today was the day! We went to a 9:15am class. 

We arrived a little early to get through the guest pass process and to make sure I'd have time to figure out how to adjust the bike. The instructor was probably in her mid-forties and very helpful. She helped me figure out how to set my seat to the proper height and gave me a quick run-down of all the spinning terms. 

I learned that there are three positions. Position One is with your butt in the seat with your hands in the center of the handle bar. Position Two has your hands on the corners of the handle bar and standing up. Position Three is also standing, but with hands at the top of the handle bars and leaning over them. Weight stays on the legs at all times. I could really feel my abs working during Position Three. 

During the class, the instructor would have us count cadence (the downbeat of one foot for a set amount of time) to make sure we were all keeping a fast pace. We also did "jumps", which were the sequence of five seconds of Position One, five seconds of Position Two, and five seconds of Position Three, repeated for four minutes. 

Load In and Load Out were also new terms for me. Load In refers to increasing the resistance. A Load was a set amount of time to stay in one position. Load Out was decreasing resistance. Load Out was only called at the end of class, but I decreased my resistance a few times throughout class when I started to feel like I was very off from the set pace. 

It was hard! I was gasping for air after about 20 minutes. (This is always my issue with cardio. I run of breath way before my body wants to quit. Another reason to focus on breathing in yoga!) After class, my friend told me it was the hardest spinning class she'd ever done. This made me feel pretty good, since I found it challenging but I never felt like I was going to die. I have a friend in Chicago who teaches spinning and she has people do push ups off the handlebars. We didn't do any kind of upper body, but I definitely feel like my lower half did a lot of work. 

I'm thinking of joining the gym for the months of March and April. The gym we went to had an indoor track, spinning, weight machines, fitness classes, an indoor pool, and tons of other cardio equipment. I can join her account for about $25 per month, so I feel like it's a great deal. I really want to stay motivated through these months because I have committed to doing one or two triathlons (which will be a first for me) and Pelotonia. This gym would allow me to practice every skill needed for these events while it's still cold outside.