General Musings

The Difference between Spinning and That Trendy New Class You Just Took

Happy Memorial Day! I hope you all are off doing fun long-weekend things instead of reading this blog post.

On Saturday, I drove up to New Hampshire to take a 9-hour Spinning certification workshop. Not how I typically spend Memorial Day weekend (quite the opposite, actually), but I’ve fallen so in love with teaching group fitness that I want to expand my expertise to the stationary bike, and this was the only day that worked for my schedule. I still have to take the online test to be officially certified, and once I do, I’ll put together a post talking more about my experience with it and the details of the certification.

For today, I just wanted to share a little interesting tidbit about the world of stationary bikes and clear up some common misnomers and confusions—there’s actually quite a bit of controversy surrounding “Spinning” vs. “indoor cycling.”

Spinning is a trademarked name, and is what you might think of as the traditional bike class you’d take at the gym (more common a few years ago). It’s based off outdoor cycling, so if you wouldn’t do it riding a bike outdoors, you don’t do it on the stationary bike. The workouts are supposed to replicate situations you might find yourself in on the road or in a race, and are built around heart rate zones—there’s actually a huge emphasis on this and wearing a heart rate monitor is strongly encouraged. Classes are each focused on different training types as well. Monday might be a strength ride, while Tuesday is a recovery ride, Wednesday an endurance ride, and Thursday a race day (you simulate a road race on the stationary bikes, pushing your hardest at the highest gear you can). To be an official “Spinning” studio, all the instructors must be Spinning certified through Mad Dogg Athletics and adhere to the program.

So that fun, trendy class you just took where you’re dancing around on the bike, using hand weights, doing push ups on the handle bars, and riding to the beat of the music? Not a spinning class. That’s an indoor cycling class. Pretty much everything you do in a SoulCycle “indoor cycling” class is prohibited in a Spinning class for safety reasons, or because it’s simply just not something you’d do on an outdoor bike. Unlike Spinning, where one day might be a recovery ride or a class where the goal is to keep your heart rate below 75% of your max, the goal of indoor cycling classes is always to kick your butt and leave you feeling totally spent. Think about it: if you’re spending $20+ per boutique cycling class, you want to feel like you got a killer workout–and people often associate killer workouts with a high heart rate, pouring sweat and a high-intensity class. I’m guilty of this as well–hell no am I spending $25 on a recovery ride. But in the training world…yes, these are just as important as classes where you push at max exertion rates.

To most people, it’s like…who cares. Spinning, indoor cycling—close enough. But the Spinning community is actually pretty up in arms about studios like SoulCycle and FlyWheel being commonly referred to as spin or spinning studios. Some hardcore cyclists and triathletes are flat-out appalled at what people are doing on stationary bikes in today’s group fitness classes because it goes against everything you’d do riding outdoors or racing.

The master trainer who taught my Spinning course on Saturday is a devoted and incredibly knowledgeable cyclist, and I found it fascinating hearing her opinions on these trendy boutique classes—especially since I love them. It’s ironic that I got Spinning certified, because the type of classes I love and want to teach aren’t even technically “Spinning” classes. I’ll get more into it in the post I do about the course, but I’m still so happy I did it—I learned a ton.

Traditional Spinning vs. Indoor Cycling—which do you prefer? And did you know that Spinning and indoor cycling were two different things?

How to Use a Gymboss Interval Timer

I got a reader request for a tutorial on how to use a Gymboss Interval Timer and thought now would be a perfect time to post it because Gymboss recently sent me their new miniMAX to try out (I’ve included a guide to both models in this post).

As a heads up, all the Gymboss links in this post are affiliate links (if you go to Gymboss from P&I and buy a timer, I get a small commission), but I’m by no means trying to be a salesman here. There are free smartphone apps that work great for interval timing as well, I just personally love the Gymboss—and it comes in especially handy when I’m teaching group fitness classes (students don’t want to see you walking around the studio with your iPhone). For those of you with a Gymboss or wanting to buy one, here’s a basic set-up guide:

How to Use a Gymboss Interval Timer

There are three modes: clock, stopwatch and interval timer. To change modes, hold both the up and down arrows at the same time. I’m going to focus on the interval timer mode.

Press any button to turn it on.
Press SET. The work interval will start blinking (top number on the right). Use the up and down arrows to adjust the number to your desired length of time.
Press SET again. The rest interval will start blinking (bottom number on the right). Use the up and down arrows to adjust the number to your desired length of rest. If you don’t want a rest period (for example, just want the timer to beep every minute), bring this number down to zero.
Press SET again. The number of rounds will start blinking (number in bottom left corner). Use the up and down arrows to adjust to the desired number of rounds.
Press SET again. The type of alarm beep will start blinking. BH = beep high BL = beep low V= vibrate. Use up and down arrows to change the type until the one(s) you want is blinking. I usually just keep mine on BH.
Press SET again. The alarm duration will start blinking. You can choose 1, 2, 5 or 9 seconds in length, using the up and down arrows to scroll through the options until the one you want is blinking. I keep mine on 1.
Push SET one final time to exit setup mode. You’re now ready to begin your workout.
Press START to begin.

If you need to pause it during the workout, hit the START button three times quickly in a row. To stop and reset the timer, hold the START button down for three seconds.

How to Use the Gymboss miniMax

The buttons and general instructions I went over above apply here as well; the miniMax just has some extra features. Instead of just one INTERVAL mode, you have four options:

1 interval
2 intervals
3+ intervals (up to 25)
Multi (2-25 intervals with the option to repeat certain interval or groups of intervals)

Hit SET and then MENU (use the arrows until the pointer is at MENU then hit SET) to chose your desired mode. For the 1, 2 and 3+ interval options, you’ll follow the same steps as with the regular Gymboss timer (Hit SET and then SETUP to begin). For the 3+, once you’ve entered the desired number of intervals, put 00:00 for the next one and it will stop prompting you to add more.

Setting Up Multi Interval Mode

Let’s go through an example on the Multi Interval mode because this is probably the most complicated.

Let’s say you wanted your running workout to look like 3 rounds of this:

A 5-minute jog
Tabata intervals of sprinting and walking (8 rounds of 20 seconds of sprinting and 10 seconds of walking)
A 5-minute jog

When entering this into the Gymboss miniMax, we think of it as 4 intervals: 5 mins, 20 secs, 10 sec, 5 mins. Just like I outlined anove with the regular Gymboss, you use the SET button as an “enter” and the arrow buttons to adjust the time. Keeping that in mind, you enter the following:

5:00 x1 – a 5-minute interval
0:20 x8 – 8 rounds of 20 seconds of work
0:10 xP – 10-second rest intervals alternating with the previous interval (push the down arrow from 0 to get the P option when entering in number of rounds)
5:00 x1 – a 5-minute interval

The timer will prompt you to enter in another interval, just leave it at 00:00 and press SET so that it knows you’re done. It will then ask you how many rounds of the above routine you want to complete. For this particular example, you’d use the arrows to bring the number to 3 and then hit SET. You’ll then be prompted to select alarm type and duration of alarm, as outlined at the beginning of the post. When you’re finished, your screen will look like this:

When you’re ready to start your workout, hit START. This is what your Gymboss will look like in progress:

Other Gymboss miniMax Features

You also have the option to save a workout configuration for future use so that you don’t have to go through the process of setting up each interval again. Once you’ve entered all your intervals:

Hit SET to bring up the menu.
Use the arrows to scroll to SAVE. Once your pointer arrow is next to it, hit SET.
Chose preset 1 (P1) or preset 2 (P2). Hit SET.

To open a saved workout, hit SET to bring up the menu and scroll to RECALL. It’s important to note that you have to be the in the same mode as the workout you’re trying to open. For example, you can’t bring up a saved 3+ interval workout if you’re in Multi mode.

I hope that was helpful! This post is super long, but hopefully it doesn’t make using this timer seem more complicated than it actually is (it’s easy–I swear!). If you have any other questions about Gymboss timers, let me know in the comments section.

Links are affiliate.