Cycling across the Andes in the dark with your eyes closed (Spinning)

Member Name: pussycat

Product:	Spinning
Date:	04/09/00 (456 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Different exercise experience, good calorie burning workout, quite relaxing in a bizarre way

Disadvantages: Difficult to stay on the bike with your eyes shut, weak legs the next day, some centres are not properly equipped

This has got to be the weirdest exercise experience I have ever had. I visited a friend last week and she was raving about the latest fad exercise class that had started at her local health club so I just had to go along and have a try.

I went to a beginners class and when the idea was explained to me, I was a little bemused by it. Basically, you spend about 45 minutes cycling on specially built exerise bikes. Sounds like a good work out but a little boring.

But here's the twist - the lights are dimmed, you close your eyes and concentrate on the background music and the instructor's voice and you are transported to another world so that you are actually cycling throught the Andes or wherever it is that your instructor decides on. The instructors are trained (or should be!) to guide you into a trancelike state and they describe the surrounding scenary that you should try to imagine yourself cycling through.

Sceptical? So was I. But it was actually rather good, if somewhat surreal. If you open your eyes (I had to otherwise I was going to be the first person in the world to fall off an exercise bike!) you can see the scenary that you are imagining you are travelling through on huge video screens around you which in itself makes it quite a pleasant experience.

I had serious doubts about my ability to last 45 minutes on an exercise bike but you can work at your own level within the group - after all, they're not going to leave you behind :) But the main thing to focus on is the intructor's voice which should take you to a plane of relaxation which is almost a semi-hypnotic state. You have to concentrate on this and you do believe (on one level) that you really are just about to cycle up a steep hill. I cheated at one stage and opened my eyes and had a look at what everyone was doing and they really did start to strain to get up the hill and then relax when the instructor said that the path had evened out. It
was amazing.

So whilst I'll admit that cycling in a room full of strangers in the dark with your eyes closed might seem a bit bizarre, it really did provide an effective workout - as I say, I kept stopping but I still felt as if I had had a really thorough work out at the end of it.

A word of warning, some health clubs haven't got proper facilities and just move the ordinary exercise bikes into a different room, put some music on and turn off the lights. This won't give you the same experience and its not supposed to be as safe. Instructors should be specially trained in spinning so that they know how much high-pressure work to put on the class and when to ease the pace off. Apparently, a lot of health clubs are jumping on the spinning bandwagon without the appropriate facilitates and correctly trained staff.

Summary: