Storebuilder Blog - Cycling to work/Fitness

Vince Lombardi, football coach

Did Zoe's RPM class last night and as usual it was well attended with all the usual suspects.

A couple of new faces around but many of them never seem to return. There is a hardcore of spinners who turn up regular as clockwork for every session and then always a smattering of newcomers who either come to try it out or just fancy something different from their usual routine.

As I see it this is an all or nothing exercise. You have to be making three or four sessions a week to make progress, or at least be doing comparable exercise classes so that you can maintain a high cadence with a good amount of resistance on the spinner. When it get's to the stage where you are struggling to push the pedals round with a light resistance it can be very hard work and for beginners it's extremely fatiguing which I guess is why many of them never come back.

Which is a shame, because it's one of those workouts that is ideally suited to beginners once they get over the initial shock of the difficulty factor.

I think the club should give out information leaflets on what is going to happen in the class and what to expect. Not to put people off, but to make them aware of the strenuous workout that is spinning and begin to encourage them to come back.

It seems to be common that people "give it a go" and then decide that it's just too hard to perservere.

But for those that do it's an extremely rewarding workout that get's progressively more captivating with every spin. Once you get to the stage where you can manage  to keep up with the cadence for the whole session then a whole new world of possibilities emerges (more on that later). I'm now into my fourteenth week and every session is a pleasure.

This morning I decided to take an impromptu break and do the morning spin class with Matt (I'm fortunate that my office is just a couple of minutes from the gym) and without pushing too hard it was a thoroughly enjoyable session. It's the ideal workout for people on limited time.

One thing that I've noticed is that in the beginning the weight loss is negligible, in fact I put on weight for the first few weeks which was slightly discouraging, but compared to the boredom of working alone on the stairmaster I stuck at it.

Now the fat is melting away. I'm nowhere near skinny but my XL tops now need to be ironed because I don't stretch them on anymore! The weight loss seems to be speeding up and I guess that's to do with metabolism but also I'm a lot more active in other areas. More walks, more cycling, less beer.

Thanks to Wendy for saying that I'd "noticeably" improved. It's comments like that that really motivate you to keep coming back and keep working at it. That's the beauty of working out with a bunch of other people who are all working towards the same goal. Thanks Wendy!

If, like me, you sit in front of a computer all day and got fat, get yourself in a class and you won't look back.

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