Spinning: a new work-out favorite

I'm sitting on my couch, laptop right in front of me, TV on, and my thighs still burning from my venture into the land known as spinning. That's right, spinning. I've always been fascinated by this work-out phenomenon, especially when I heard that one of my very good friends was doing it too. Once I found out that she does spinning, I found myself asking numerous questions, but my interest stopped there.

I also started working out again, but soon found that running the same distance around the same lake every day is really boring. I became bored, my motivation went down, and I kinda found myself half-assing it. Not only did my friend do spinning, but she also used to take dance classes, and work out at the regular gym. I decided I needed to switch it up a bit and found numerous group exercise classes, but all of the facilities required an annual membership of $40+ per month. What happens if, after 2 weeks, I don't like that either? Now I'm stuck with another bill that isn't even for something I actually want or like doing. After 4 days of Google searches and posing an open question on Facebook, I found something. A fitness center about 10 minutes from my home, group classes, evening and weekend classes, and a pay-as-you go agreement, unless you want to do a contract. This opportunity was too good to pass up. So here we go.

It's called Cycletripz and is located in Winter Park, Fl. You walk in and there is a smell of fresh flowers mixed with vanilla greeting you. The lobby is painted a bright, yet kinda soothing pink with a counter to the left. I unfortunately do not remember her name, but the young lady who greeted me was extremely helpful, told me I get the first two classes free, and showed me around. As I was waiting for 11am to roll around, I noticed that there we two guys setting up the room with our bikes. Although I was excited to try something new, I now also became quite nervous. I mean I had never done this before and I had heard that this is one of the toughest classes you could take. When you walk into the room, you notice a huge neon-colored painting to your right and then the front of the room is lined with mirrors and two projection screens. In the corner is DJ equipment and you can hear house music starting to make its way into your ears. Also, to your left, are about 3 or 4 rows of bikes set up. We were only 6 people and two of us, including myself, were new. An instructor assisted us with getting our bikes set up and then told us to start riding, as kind of a warm-up, until the entire class was ready. Starting to sweat in 3... 2... 1...

 
The next thing I notice are the lights turning off and a blacklight being turned on; the music also got louder. Am I in a club? Fine by me. Underneath the sounds of the music, I hear a man's voice, I look up, and there is the trainer starting to lead us into the work out. It started with basic riding and then we had to stand up and increase the intensity. I am telling you, after 15 minutes, I was ready to jump back into my car and call it a day, yet somehow I was enjoying the exhaustion. My main goal was never to stop riding. I wasn't able to do all of the exercises we were supposed to for the amount of time we were to do them, but I did think I kept up very well as a newbie.

Thirty minutes in I told myself that I am halfway done and if I stop now, I wasted 30 minutes for nothing. So I kept going. Sweat was coming out of every pore in my body and I had to wipe the beads off of my forehead, so I wouldn't go blind for a few seconds, once that saltiness hit my eyes. At about 45 minutes, I really thought that i needed to stop. By this point I had tuned out the instructor, due to exhaustion, and just did my own ride. Although I may not have been doing the exercises exactly as everyone else had, I tried to still stay at the same resistance level and never stop (don't let them see you be weak!). I tuned back into the session when I heard him say "this is the last set before we get into the cool-down". This was my time to give it the last bit of energy and show the vets what this newbie can do. "Get ready for the cooldown in 3, 2, 1... and cool down by setting the resistance to the lowest level and just pedaling" - ah! The words I had been waiting for. Once we did some last minute stretches while riding the bike, we were told to get off and do some leg stretches. I got off and realized that I didn't think my legs could support me anymore. My legs were so weak from pedaling like a banshee that i had to, for about 3 seconds, hang onto the bike, so I could get used to standing again. After another round of stretches the class was done and everyone was clapping. A sigh of relief across the room. We cleaned out bikes, turned the lights back on, and headed out to our cars.

This was probably the single most exhausting workout I had ever done. Right after we were done, I wasn't sure if I could do this again, given how exhausted I was, but later on I realized that I loved the exhaustion. Needless to say, my next class starts tomorrow at 11am sharp.

When I got home, I did some research on spinning and found that this is the new "hip" thing in exercise. Not only because it is high intensity and involves you being in a group, but also because a one hour spinning session can burn anywhere from 500 to even 1000 calories. This depends on your weight and intensity as well. I mean talk about a fat burner!

Have any of you ever done spinning? How did you like it? Did you dislike it?