I took a spinning class at my new gym. I haven’t been spinning since the hallowed days of glitzy Healthworks a couple of years ago. The instructor was a substitute. He was quiet as he intently adjusted and then assumed the instructor’s bike, wearing a sweatshirt and nylon sweat pants. “I’m obviously not Abby,” he said, Abby being the instructor that appeared on the BSC class schedule. “I’m Bob. We’re going to start out with a 5-minute warm-up and stretch, work out for 30 minutes, then cool down for 10. Do what you can and stay at a level that you’re happy with.”
Bob looked around the room meekly at the 15 fit men and women on spinning bikes in front of him. “Everyone’s all set? Good. We’ll warm up with the lights on and music off.”
After a warm-up suitable for geriatric patients, in which he lead us in gentle arm and torso stretches as we peddled, Bob said “Let’s take it up to a 3,” referring to the 10-level scale that spinning instructors use to gauge workout intensity as it relates to the adjustable tension on the bike.
He turned off the lights and put on an upbeat Dave Matthews song. “Let’s start pedaling to the tempo of the music and keep it here.”
In the back of the room, I dutifully pumped my legs to the crappy soft rock and amused myself by staring at the bobbing behinds of my classmates. After a hectic day at work, it felt good to unwind and imagine I was cruising on my bike on a desolate road on a cool, sunny day.
Suddenly, one of the more obnoxious Blink 182 song’s came on. “Let’s take it up to a four and push it a little more,” Bob called, his voice loud and intense. We switched into third position, which is when you hunch over the bike with your butt sticking up. Then we did some second position, which is standing upright. “Harder,” he yelled when the music got really loud. “Push push push!” Bob got off his bike and removed his sweats. My initial impression of Bob being out of shape was dashed when I got a look at his tightly muscled body, that of a male gymnast.
An incredibly loud and high-energy cheesy techno song came on; right on cue, Bob tossed his shirt aside and started dancing. Like, we’re all on these bikes, and he’s dancing around the front of the room, doing all these fancy kicks and stuff, sporadically shouting things like “Push push push!” and “I’m seeing some great form here! Great form, all across the room!”
From there, spinning took an incredibly scary tone. He turned into a football coach who shouts at his players as they high-step through the holes of a line of tires. Bob just never stopped yelling or moving. When he got on his bike, it was to lead us through drills that involved him telling us to turn the tension knob up, up, up and “Push! Push! Push!” He watched himself a lot in the mirrors. When he got off to dance, he would weave through the rows of bikes and yell. Just… yell.
Several females in the class looked downright horrified. Maybe they were regulars, and Bob’s style was quite different from Abby’s. I pictured Abby to be like this Healthworks spinning instructor who was a new-age flake. She acted like spinning was no different from yoga, and would pepper her classes with calming visual metaphors (“Imagine you are painting whirly circles in your favorite color with your feet as you pedal”) and descriptions of the topography of the United Arab Emeritus. She pumped us up with Blues Traveler and cooled us down to Enya.
“Okay, take it up to a seven and when I have the urge, we’ll hit second position,” Bob yelled as the class entered its zenith. “Push push push! I want you to push that wheel! I like the energy I see out there! I like the form I see out there! Take it to the next level! Push Push Push!”
Granted, his maniacal mannerisms distracted me from the tedium of stationary bike exercise. Riveted by Bob’s contemporary Russian folk dancing knee bends mixed with techno-paced hip thrusts, and impressed by his consuming enthusiasm for the quality of our workout, time passed quickly; before I knew it, we had begun our cool down. Bob got back on his bike and said “Let’s all focus on bringing our heart rates down.”
Yes. Let’s.
As I left the gym, Bob was at the front desk talking with one of the manager-types. Somehow he recognized me under my coat hood, and interrupted himself mid-sentence to lean over the desk and assertively bark “Thanks for coming out. You have a great evening.” Startled, I said lamely “Thanks… thanks for a good class…” and sort of waved as I scuttled away in terror.
Fear-based spinning classes totally rock.
