Here is an article from
my personal training newsletter from 2009, it has some good advice about contraindicated movements that instructors are still
performing.
I’m taking an indoor
cycling class when the instructor does something that is
not only unusual, but also potentially dangerous.
Unfortunately, some of these
moves are neither
safe nor effective and could
lead to injuries among
participants. That’s
why we’ve tapped leading experts
from various indoor cycling
programs to shed light
on some of these contraindicated
moves. They’ll also
reveal what it takes to
create a good cycling class and
why coaching is more important
than instructing so
you’ll never have
to rely on these moves again.
Five Common Mistakes
One of indoor cycling’s
biggest advantages is
its simplicity. “You
sit or stand, change resistance
and pedal,”. “It
doesn’t get much more difficult than that.”
Yet in recent years, instructors
have made cycling
more difficult, and several
reasons may be to blame.
For starters, many cycling
instructors come from
aerobic fitness backgrounds,
and transitioning from
the aerobic arena into indoor
cycling can be challenging.
“Group fitness instructors
are often [accustomed]
to such complex choreography
that when they face
the simple design of cycling
classes, they’re lost,”
that participants are getting
bored riding bikes,”
As a result, instructors
employ creativity
and make up moves that aren’t
real to the road.
While these moves might
seem like fun to participants,
they aren’t always
good for them. “Some of
these moves are contraindicated,
which jeopardizes
participants’ health,”
adding that we have seen many insane things in cycling classes,
including a national TV show that removed the saddle
so participants couldn’t
sit.
So what are some of these
contraindicated moves? Take
a look at five of the top offenders:
Out-of-control cadences:
If you’ve never cycled outside,
it’s easy to ride
indoors with cadences that are too fast.
Yet if you were to ride
that quickly on the road, you wouldn’t
get anywhere. Plus, super-fast
pedaling doesn’t provide much
of a challenge for your
body. “You might have the perception
that you’re working
hard, but you’re only as productive as
the power you’re producing,”. If you use
lower resistance and higher
cadences, you have lower power
output, which means you’re
not challenging the cardiovascular
and muscular systems as
much and will have a harder time
reaching your goals. Super-fast
cadences also pose dangers to the hips, knees and ankles.
To keep participants in
control, do cadence checks where
you ask participants to
count pedal strokes. For instance, do a 10-second count and
then have them multiply by six to
determine their revolutions
per minute (RPM). Cycling manuals recommend that cadences
not exceed 110 PM.
If you or your participants are going faster than that, add resistance to slow the legs. You might also replace the
word “sprint”
with “surge” or “power surge.” “To most
students, the word ‘sprint’
means pedal as fast as you can,
which is a recipe for disaster,”
she says. Instead, to do this
right, make sure participants
have enough resistance on their bikes. Then ask them to add
more leg power to that already challenging resistance, and
you’ll successfully execute a surge.
Conversely, pedaling too
slowly (under 50 RPM per
Schwinn), can cause the
legs to fatigue before achieving
much of a cardiovascular
benefit. suggests that if you
keep cadences between 60
and 90 RPMs in class, “you’ll
always be able to find the
workout intensities that make
indoor cycling such a great
workout.”
One-legged cycling: Professional
cyclists will do onelegged
cycling on machines that
measure force output produced
by each leg. Yet in an indoor
cycling class, explains,
Power output typically is
not measured so the value of
one-legged cycling is questionable.
Besides, cycling is a twolegged
sport, and reducing it to
one leg makes no sense.
More importantly, though,
removing one foot from the
cage or clip increases the
likelihood of getting hit in the calf
by the pedal and causing serious
injury.
The risk increases in dimly
lit studios where participants can’t see their bodies
clearly. Regardless of light level, however, instructors
should never ask participants to remove their feet from the pedals
while they’re riding.
Push-ups on the handlebars:
Have you ever seen a
cyclist do this on the road?
Then why do it in class? Besides, doing push-ups on a bike
doesn’t provide enough challenge to build strength,
and they make participants move unnaturally on the bike,
which could put them in compromising positions. “Save
push-ups for when you’re on the floor and grounded to the
earth,”
Isolations: You might love
telling students to freeze
their upper body while in
a standing position so they feel
a burn in their quads. Yet
the long-term ramifications
could be tremendous. “You’re
placing undue stress on the
hips, knees and ankles,”,
“which could cause serious injury.” Instead,
find ways to challenge the quadriceps more safely. One suggestion:
Move into a standing position, but increase the resistance
and cadence slightly so it feels like a difficult road. You’ll
then feel that same burn without the dangers.
Designing Classes With Safety and Efficacy in Mind:
Now that you know what doesn’t
work, let’s look at what
does work in indoor cycling
classes, tackling this important
question: How do you create
safe, effective and fun indoor
cycling classes without
these moves?
Can you answer three questions
at any time in your class:
1. What’s the goal?
(e.g., Are they trying to pass five
riders to make it to the
top of the hill first?)
2. How should the work feel?
(e.g., Comfortable? Hard?)
3. And finally, how long
will the work last? (e.g., Thirty
seconds? Four minutes?)
Once you learn how to become
a better coach, you’ll
no longer have to rely on
contraindicated or questionable
moves to fill time in your
cycling classes. No doubt you’ll
also hear how much more
participants are enjoying your
classes. In the end, you
may even boost the numbers in
your cycling classes, and
that’s the ultimate compliment
any instructor can receive.
