I debuted a new cycling routine this week at Equinox and holy hell, it was HARD. I was feeling the burn about two minutes into class and had second thoughts that maybe I made the workout too hard. Eh, people seemed to love it! And they survived so whatever. I realized this routine is perfect if you can’t make it to a class, it’s an easy structure that you don’t necessarily need an instructor (although hi, definitely come to my class) and because you’re racing against yourself, you can continue to push yourself super hard even if you aren’t in spin class mode.
Often times riding on a stationary bike not in class leads to a lackluster workout, but give this a try and let me know how you feel.
This ideally would be done on a bike that is able to measure stage time and distance. On the Equinox consoles it looks like this:
The way it works is you press the bottom left “stage” button and those numbers (time and distance) under the word stage will reset. For this workout, you’ll be doing a pyramid of time trials in varying lengths. You start with 1 minute intervals. You press that stage button then for 1 minute go HARD. After the minute is up, check that bottom left number to see how far you traveled. Then take a 45 second break and do another 1 minute hard push. Check the bottom left number again and compare it to how far you went during that first minute, was this time better?
Next you get a one minute break before you move to the next level which are 2 minute intervals. Each time interval is done twice so you can try to push it harder the second time. You make your way up to 3 minute intervals, then work your way back down to the shorter 1 minute intervals.
The whole routine looks like this:
The way to go further is to increase your power. Add resistance and push it harder and you’ll travel further. I recommended that students play around with the resistance throughout the trials. You can always add or take away resistance mid time trial, you don’t have to stick to one level. You can be in the saddle or out. During your break time you can lighten the resistance to catch your breath and give your legs some freedom.
You can definitely do this workout without a console and without stage timing but it adds a nice competitive element with the console, you can see step by step if you’re working harder and moving yourself further.
Always warm up and cool down with some light pedaling. Enjoy the ride!
