Want to push your spinning performance and your overall fitness to a higher level? Cadence (RPM) is how fast you’re peddling. On the next fast flat road, take one hand off the bar and place it over one knee, allowing your knee to tap it on every up stroke. Measure how many times your knee taps your hand for 60 seconds (or 30 sec x 2). Try to get a cadence between 70-80. Then add 1/2 to 1 turn of resistance while forcing yourself to maintain that same cadence you just measured. When a real cyclist wants to go faster, they use higher gears which make each pedal stroke harder, but generating much more power per stroke. Your legs will work harder, your cardiovascular system will work harder, and you won’t be as limited by genetic factors that dictate how fast you can pedal. On a sprint, add another 1/2 to 1 turn of resistance, and then pedal as fast as possible until exhaustion. Be warned: It will be a much harder class.
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Fitnessgroan's Blog 
Just what I need — to die more completely in spin. 🙂
As someone who did a lot of cycling in the real world, I always paid attention to balance of cadence and gear ratio. One can of course go faster by pedaling faster or by increasing the gear. Knowing the right combination of cadence and gear for each set of conditions was an important and constant set of calculations.
One of the questions I have about spin is that the goals are so different from those of competitive cycling. The object is not necessarily to go fast — especially since the bikes don’t move. On the road, I would aim to keep a fast cadence because I find that I can go longer, but in a spin class, I don’t have that objective.
Perhaps you can cover in a later post some of the things we should try to do in a spin class that we would not do if we were on the road.
hahahahaha. Actually, the goal of Spinning is partly to help those real riders meet their road challenges better, when training outside isn’t an option. By trying to create conditions more intense than they are likely to face in the real world; steeper inclines, more frequent sprinting, etc; we hope to improve the performance of those activities when they come up. Of course, indoor stationary cycling can never truly mimic the feel of an outdoor ride where you have wind resistance, uneven road surfaces which put different strains on the arms, core and back sapping physical and mental energy, and no road is ever perfectly level. In that regard road cycling will always, in general, be a more intense workout, if the rider is sufficiently motivated. And that’s something else you have in the class; a coach, other participants providing a motivating environment, and some kick ass music to pump you up!