I started my day kind of lazy because I spent the night before at my friend Sarah's wine and cheese party. A LOT of cheese and cookies were consumed! I didn't have any wine but I still ended up leaving right around midnight.
I was still feeling sleepy around 10 a.m. and had to drag myself to Full Psycle for my first class there. I walked in a few minutes before 10:30 and the whole atmosphere was quiet chaotic. I had to wait in line before I could even sign in.
There were 2 girls working the front desk and neither seemed to care that it was my first time. I actually asked to sign the waiver and then they gave me my cycle shoes. BTW, I LOVE that these spin studios provide shoes, it's always a pain to carry them around!
I looked around trying to find at least a coat rack and saw none so I actually took two of the free lockers to fit my massive backpack and winter coat. Like I said no one at the front desk had given me any direction.
The lobby was cute enough but if you walked passed the Full Psycle room back to the water fountain you could see that studio wasn't quite finished. I think there were bathrooms but I didn't notice any showers.
I was told that I was bike 20 so I walked into the rather dark room and had to ask another girl where to find the bike numbers. But once I found my bike it was easy enough to adjust. The instructor told us all to get a pair of weights, a towel and make sure we had water.
There are two screens that display the power info for all the bikes and because of this I noticed the time. The class was supposed to start at 10:30 but we actually started at 10:37. Now I've been to a lot of classes in the past month using Class Pass and this was the first time I noticed a class actually starting late.
Eventually we did start and the instructor explained our power readings, etc. very well. I noticed right away I was falling to the bottom of the list though :(
Basically each bike was on the board and depending on how much power was generated the rankings moved. At various points we had "races" or sprints and during that interval the power rankings only reflected the power generated during the race. We also did a 3 minute threshold test. The avg power number we got during this 3 minute time was used for a scale to show how hard we were working. So like 60 percent was green but 95 percent was red. The instructor would tell you what zone you wanted to be in. I found this very helpful to figure out how much I was working. Sometimes in spin class I space out or get lazy and I know I'm not working as hard as I should.
Halfway through the class I actually started dripping sweat!! And even though my rankings weren't that high I did manage to be pretty high during the individual races. And by the end I had slowly moved up the over all rankings.
Another motivating tactic was to split the room into groups. We would have a race and get one power number as a group and then almost immediately have to do the same interval again and this time we'd try to beat that number. It really made you push extra hard because only the team number was shown so you weren't really sure if you were going fast enough or not.
I liked how Full Pyscle used these little tricks to make the class more exciting then the typical spin interval class.
After the class you immediately got an email telling you all your information.
I'm excited to use these numbers as a baseline and hoping I can get these numbers to approve. I know my threshold during the 3 minute test was 97 so it looks like I was able to maintain that threshold for the entire ride. How exactly does Full Psycle power compare to the computrainer power? That I'm not sure. But I think that if I can manage to get my power numbers up then I will see big improvements in my biking!
I left the class feeling pumped and energized and I can't wait to go back again!!!!
Have you tried Full Psycle? What's your favorite spin class?
No comments:
Post a Comment