I've never met anyone who believes that confidence ISN'T important. I'm not investing time to even look for literature to support my assertion because I'm CONFIDENT that you all believe me when I say that confidence is an important predictor of performance.
When I began my journey as a Spinning instructor, I didn't have any confidence. And I sucked -- not ONLY because I wasn't confident, of course, but that didn't help either. I mean, I REALLY sucked. I sucked so badly that I didn't even KNOW how badly I sucked. And that's the point. One can look at the endpoint of the trajectory from "sucking" to "not sucking," appreciate the powerful emotional transformations that occurred along the way, and call it a day. But I think it's more useful to analyze the fuel -- the motivation -- behind the process.
Was it the pursuit of "not sucking" -- that is, avoiding failure? Or was the pursuit of "being awesome?" Most certainly the latter. It meant something to me to learn enough, listen enough, think enough, and otherwise "be" enough to earn people's trust to help guide them through their own personally meaningful improvements.
Think about it. When you work hard at your job, do you do it primarily to avoid being fired -- or because you genuinely want to do excellent work? When you do something nice for your kids or your spouse, do you do it primarily to avoid pissing them off -- or because you genuinely want to do something nice for them? Extending the framework: Do you hold a 30 minute training interval at lactate threshold primarily because you'd feel weak/inadequate if you didn't finish it? Or because you appreciate that the difference between 29:00 and 30:00 is a moment you can hold onto as long as you want to, to represent your confidence, your self-efficacy, your belief that you have and are everything you need to conquer the challenges of your world?
Maybe you didn't think to make that interval mean more than that interval. Maybe you didn't have to. But if you framed it that way: would it have made a difference? Would equating an off-bike purpose to your on-bike task mean anything 'extra' to you? Would it have made the time pass more quickly, more enjoyably? Would you have been more likely to accomplish your specific, concrete physical goal? Would it have left you feeling any different when you did? Would you have taken that feeling with you?
Last weekend, I rode my third Century (yes, I'm done now...), which prompted me to ask myself why the hell I've made time to train for and ride three 100-mile epic conquests within an eight-week period. There are a lot of other ways that second-year medical students can spend their free time. I may now be someone who "does" Centuries -- but Centuries aren't something that people just "do." How I've always seen it was that training for a Century (or two, or three...) equated with Operation: Real Cyclist. I never saw myself as a real cyclist before; I saw myself as someone who only started trying to do this thing a year ago, who doesn't know how to do really important things (i.e., changing a flat), who has memorable episodes of failure (i.e., hitting her head on concrete), who despite knowing a shit ton of useful technical things about being a real cyclist has no useful construct with which to translate this knowledge into self-confidence and self-efficacy. Oh my gosh. That sounds exactly like... being a second-year medical student.
So, yes, training to be a Real Cyclist was meant to parallel training to be a Real Doctor. Except this seemed more manageable. I knew exactly HOW to accomplish this kind of training. I knew exactly what I needed to learn, what I needed to practice. I had complete control over my physiological response to challenge, I had immediate feedback on my skills and adaptations (i.e., from my heart rate monitor), and measurable, objective ways to evaluate my progress. So it paralleled my larger life challenge -- yet was more "masterable." When I finished my first Century, I felt awesome. I felt like I could take over the world. I got a tattoo to commemorate the joy and confidence that comes from continuous incremental improvement ("Kaizen"). When I then encountered stressful circumstances in my medical training, I called up that feeling. "If I can do X, I can do Y," if you will.
As Y got more demanding (i.e., helping to take care of real patients), I needed X to be more dramatic. So I did Centuries #2 and #3. But by the end of last weekend's undertaking (with shooting pain from my re-torn tibialis anterior tendon and my spasming hamstring), I wasn't riding for the pursuit of self-confidence to accomplish some unknown future Y anymore. I was riding because I thought I'd feel lousy/inadequate if I didn't finish. I envisioned myself, not triumphant at the finish line, but back at the hotel sulking or driving home 3 hours thinking about how I wasted my time. There was no doubt about it: I was riding to avoid failure.
At the end of the day, I finished. But it was a miserable ride -- and when it was all over, I wasn't even all that proud. "Good job, Self," I said. "Way to not fail." Is that what I'm going to remind myself when I'm standing at the foot of a man with crashing blood pressure whose acute pancreatitis was about to kill him (which is a situation in which I found myself a few days later)? "Come on, Self, you can do this. That time when you rode that bike 100 miles and... uh... didn't fail?" Will THAT calm me down, and empower me to take a step back and use my brain to confidently save a human being's life? Hell no it won't.
It matters. The way you frame it absolutely matters. "Avoid failure: Check" is not the same as "Conquer Challenge: Check." The former doesn't build confidence. It doesn't last, and it doesn't translate. So you know what? When I drove 3 hours to ride a bike 100 miles and drive 3 hours home, I really DID waste my time.
That's not to say that athletic feats, when framed appropriately, can't translate into non-athletic confidence. I will never, ever forget a particular moment in April 2009 during Spinning MI Caroline Dawson's class in NYC, looking down at my heart rate monitor and realizing that I was about to hit my 30th minute of sustaining a 184 bpm heart rate -- which, to my knowledge, was 10 beats above the last time I'd had lactate threshold measured. I will never, ever forget that moment of appreciating the efficacy of my training to increase LT that much in a year, and the global appreciation of my strength and power. I *think* about that moment literally ALL the time in my non-fitness life. Not because it was actually a big deal. But because I framed it in such a way to make it a big deal to me. I chose to make it mean something.
I use that moment as my gold standard by which to compare every Spinning class I ever coach. My personal life mission is to inspire a human being to feel like THAT, the way Caroline's class made me feel. That's the goal. My "formula" these days for achieving said goal is to take solid scientific training principles and fit them into a "theme" for some psychological/emotional concept that I'm exploring in the rest of my life -- something that I want to explore further by devising questions and thoughts and pathways for people to ponder, something that I believe other people will find useful to explore.
If you've been following this blog for a little while, you'll remember that I've had this grand-scale life-improvement mission to get comfortable with discomfort. The past few months have been all about that, with a reasonable level of success. I can screw up an interpretation of a chest film in front of 115 people and be awkward and inadequate in an emergency department, and breathe through a peaceful acceptance that I'm ok and that the world will continue to rotate. Mindful acceptance, devoid of negative, defeating self-talk, is SO much more helpful. I'm glad that I invested so much energy actively exposing myself to uncomfortable situations to be able to practice my responses to them. And I'm glad that I successfully used more than 15 Spinning training sessions based exclusively on key sub-subconcepts of this larger point (i.e., taking stock of physiological sensations of discomfort, equating on-bike discomfort with an off-bike purpose, etc. etc. etc.) to help other people work through these challenges.
But now it's time to build on acceptance of discomfort and self-compassion, and start building confidence. Confident PURSUIT of something, not mere avoidance of failure.
I coached a ride about this the other night that went REALLY well. Here goes...
Note: I'm going to write up the training parameters as a 0-10 RPE scale here (and going forward) to be most useful to most people. I've taught my riders with heart rate monitors to equate 8/10 with Lactate Threshold and 5/10 as 80% LT as their anchoring points.
MHR formulas do not work. And since can't accurately measure MHR in most people, using MHR as an anchor point from which to take percentages is inherently inaccurate. The way I have been using % MHR is to set 85% MHR = Lactate Threshold, and reverse-calculate a MHR to use for further calculations. But by doing that, we are effectively anchoring training parameters to Lactate Threshold ANYWAY. So why pretend otherwise? I use % LT parameters in my own training, and have started using it in my classes. This "note" is getting really long -- I eventually need to write a separate post about how I'm integrating % LT parameters into classes of mixed HRM- and non-HRM wearers. But for a truly well-written article about why MHR formulas (i.e., 220-age and 226-age) are inaccurate, I encourage you to read Gene Nacey's brilliant piece that also links to a full-text excellent, digestible account of the research behind these formulas' inadequacies that I liked so much that I disseminated it to the students taking the Intro to Heart Rate Training course I am teaching at UVM.
If you ARE going to assume that your measured LT = 85% MHR, solve the equation for a fake MHR, and use those numbers for Spinning Energy Zones, etc., here's a chart that helps to explain equating verbal descriptors with RPE, with these heart rate training parameters. I rewrote the intro (from July 2008, when I was underappreciative of RPE) - if you've seen this before, might be worth another peek.
Now, really, here goes:
"BUILDING CONFIDENCE"
Premise: Sometimes it's tempting to believe that there is only one way to build confidence. On the bike, sometimes we think that the only way to build confidence is to push as hard as we can, for as long as we can. But in reality, there are a lot of ways to build confidence. Sometimes the most confidence-inspiring training session can be the one where you discipline yourself to maintain 80% LT in the saddle, appreciating the strength of your rhythmic, controlled breathing to modulate your response to challenge. It's all about deciding WHAT is going to bring YOU confidence in that moment, and giving yourself permission to go for it.
Structure: Climb, 6 surges -- each surge will be a change in the rhythm, where you will choose to respond in a specific way that makes you confident. Based on that newfound confidence, climb again -- with 1 more surge to the finish line
WARMUP: 4 minutes
Cue breathing. Cue form. Describe ride and expectations.
EXPLORATORY CLIMB: 8 minutes
Progressive load seated to 80% LT ("5 out of 10"). Progressive load to "6 out of 10." Progressive load to "7 out of 10" (10 beats below LT). Pay attention to breathing, physiological sensations. Start to think about what brings you confidence, in various realms of your life. How do your physiological sensations reflect those experiences? Do they heighten your confidence? Distract? At what intensity do you feel most empowered, in control, alive? In the seat? Out? Where are you best focused and primed to meet your needs?
SURGES: 12 minutes
30 seconds x 3
1 minute x 3
90 seconds x 3
Let every surge equate with an opportunity to build confidence. When the rhythm changes, make a choice that will allow you to experience the specific conditions that you need in order to directly speak to your appreciation of your abiliities, strength, and power. Surge to the intensity you selected in the initial climb as your confidence-building zone.
POWER CLIMB: 8 minutes
Progressive load to chosen intensity, and your job is to sustain it. Empowered by your breathing, empowered by your belief that sustaining this effort directly translates to your enhanced belief in yourself for navigating the challenges of your world once you leave this room.
FINAL SURGE: 3 minutes
What's it going to take to translate your confidence on the bike to your world off the bike? Surge in such a way to structure an experience for yourself that will last, that you can call up when you need it most. A surge that reminds you that you are strong, that you are powerful. A moment you choose to mean something. A moment you choose to mean EXACTLY what you need it to mean.
COOLDOWN/STRETCH
It wasn't anything fancy -- it was plain and simple. And it worked. And you know what? Most of my class stayed seated, closed their eyes, and afterwards told me that they worked at their "5 out of 10" the whole time because that's what they decided that they needed.
Nothing could have made ME more confident to hear. It meant that they "got" that their purpose was to feel empowered to make their own choices to meet their own needs, and that those choices had no requirements other than to be deliberate, purposeful, and specific. They needed to mean something. And they did.
Showing posts with label profile design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label profile design. Show all posts
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Ride that Never Gets Old.
One of my New Year's resolution "concepts" was that if I find myself lapsing into a bad, energy-draining habit, that I am supposed to replace it immediately with something energy-boosting. I'm not going to lie: I have my share of terribly energy-draining habits, far worse than the one I'll now describe. But one that I've been trying to deal with once and for all is my AWFUL procrastination tendencies. I've analyzed them over and over and over and over and over again -- and what I've come down to is that, for me, procrastination is a self-handicapping mechanism. If I think I don't have access to the tangible and intangible resources (including the "perfect" energy or mood) to do the best job ever in the whole world, I simply don't attempt the job.
I did a few mild- to moderately AWESOME rides over the past few weeks that I've meant to write up for my "Coach Yourself Corner" of do-it-yourself training sessions, the feature I added to Spintastic over the summer designed for my riders, the original audience of this blog. Over the past few months, I've come to appreciate that some indoor cycling instructors have started to read this thing -- which humbles and thrills me but also inspires me to internalize a lot of pressure to, as I just described, "do the best job ever in the whole world." If I don't have the perfect amount of free time, the perfect environment, the perfect attention span... I just don't write. Cue: BAD HABIT. MUST REPLACE.
Truth be told, I don't have the perfect set of resources available to me at this present moment to write about my rides in "Coach Yourself"-style. When I write up rides for that segment of the site, I have a very specific vision for which I'm a real stickler -- what I want people to think about, what I want people to feel. I have to memorize the pathophysiological mechanisms, virulence factors, symptoms, and treatments for 50 bacteria within the next two hours; I really can't justify writing how I want to write. But I can write SOMETHING, I'm now telling myself. And so I will.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. This is a secret that will probably be of interest to you whether you're one of my riders, a rider who's never met me, an instructor who knows me, or an instructor who's stumbled upon this collection of my rantings. Ready...?
I, Melissa Marotta, STAR 3 Spinning Instructor, have done the same damned profile EVERY class I've taught over the past month (with the same exact group of riders). And you know what's better? I've done it on purpose. An experiment. An intellectual challenge. I've spent hours preparing them, too. Hours preparing the same damned profile every day for the past month.
Kidding you, I'm not. And nobody can tell the difference. Why? Because that exact same ride profile with a different purpose, a different theme, a different focus is actually a completely different ride. And that's a concept that illustrates that it's not always a "brilliant" profile, the kind one puts pressure on one's self to create, that leaves a mark. It's something that takes place during that ride profile -- the way a rider feels about himself or herself, appreciates the profound synchrony of movement, breathing, feedback, focus and empowerment. The feeling that rider takes out the door.
And you know what? Turns out, you can create that feeling, fresh and new -- over and over and over and over and over again -- even with the same damned profile for an entire month... if you play your cards right. And it's awesome.
Oh, and guess what? This "how on earth are you not sick of this?" profile is an Endurance ride (per parameters of the Spinning program). I've done a sub-LT profile with a room full of "more is more" (wrong!) recreational athletes who haven't even been riding with me long (see also: I don't have that much "street cred"), and they friggin' love it. Imagine?
I don't purport to represent the "magic answer" to the struggles of designing perfect classes. I sure as hell don't teach perfect classes. But I can tell you about my month-long experiment, and how it worked out for me.
A colleague of mine, a brilliantly creative Spinning instructor, lamented last week by email that she's been feeling overtrained, burned out, and not at all energized to teach her classes. That she's falling into the age-old trap of feeling pressured to "kick (her) classes' asses" in order to keep them engaged. That she knows better - but can't break out of her rut. She stopped believing in herself as a resource, as a coach. She stopped believing that her knowledge of a "better way" was supreme to the myths held by the masses. The themes of her rides, once varied and inspired, became limited to that oh-too-familiar harder, faster, "give it all you've got"-types -- which, while exciting and important at appropriately timed training sessions, isn't the best thing for her riders to be doing every single class. Not good for their bodies, not good for their minds. And not good for their coach, either. And because of that, she forgot what SHE loved about indoor cycling in the first place. She didn't fall in love with it because of how it felt when her ass got kicked; she fell in love with it because of how she was able to make HERSELF feel. The ride profiles that de-energized her didn't reflect that.
One of my personal life upgrades when I "downgraded" from a full-time cycling coach to a relatively sedentary medical student was that I actually started maintaining a healthy, balanced training schedule. Since I wasn't teaching as much (or at all for my first month in Vermont), I was able to spend time just RIDING by myself. I bought myself a Spinner NXT for my bedroom, named it Giacco after the puppy of the amazing woman who taught me how to ride a bike outdoors, set up my whole space to accomodate the VERY specific mirror placement, and made time to connect with what *I* loved about Spinning in the first place. I made myself cry at least twice a week, because I'm just that dorky. When I started teaching again, I actually just plum stopped riding with my classes. When I coached off the bike in NYC (the majority of my classes by the end of my time there, since I was teaching 21 of them a week), it was because I had to. Now I'm choosing to. I'll hop on to model good form during transitions, but otherwise I'm workin' the floor. Why? Because it's hard, and I like forcing myself to get better at it? Sure. But also because, when I'm on a bike during my classes, it's not about me; it's about the 25 people in the room. When I ride Giacco, it's allllllllllllllll about me. And that's where I come up with many of the themes for my rides. It might be a thought, or half a thought even. An experience, a sensation, that I never would have had without taking the time to ride for ME. Away from my class.
This thought occurred to me last summer during WSSC (at which I actually didn't ride that much -- maybe twice the whole conference?), which was the first time I'd ridden "for me" in a while. Josh Taylor's "Just be AWESOME!" (which I remembered from the previous two times I'd ridden with him, but had forgotten about) changed my life. As an athlete. As a coach. I've based at least 10 rides on that line by now. So simple.
A month later, I began the first phase of my experiment. I didn't ride any of my classes for two weeks, and spent all my free time hopping about NYC taking classes I'd heard were "really really bad." It was my research time, preparing for Week 7 of my Summer 2008 Theme Scheme -- which, to coincide with the launch of the "Coach Yourself Corner," was about how to one's best coach is one's self. How great music and great instruction was better seen as the frosting, rather than the cake itself. I spent those two weeks enduring pretty tedious training sessions (which were tedious mostly because they weren't actually presented as training sessions), and presented a ride (and an accompanying "survival guide") based on my experiences. My classes found it hilarious, but I never intended it to be. The whole point was, literally, what do you tell yourself during a training session -- what do you think about? What do you see? All of my cues came directly from the things that popped into my head while I was "enduring" these rides of zombie-esque or cheerleader-esque instructors and music that didn't "do it" for me. Now, "taking bad classes" is one of the top pieces of advice I give beginner instructors (along with riding with inspiring coaches, too, of course!). Underappreciated value in experiencing what not to do, but also discovering what YOU instinctively do to coach YOURSELF... and then, later, appreciating how you can teach your riders to do the same.
These things you come to tell yourself -- they can become the themes for your rides! Spinning MI Jennifer Sage wrote a brilliant piece on her blog a few weeks ago about the importance of setting objectives and sub-objectives during every training session. I make a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge deal about this with my classes. I talk about it more than HRMs, if that's possible. I encourage my riders to "always be climbing for something" -- for every effort to mean SOMETHING; not everything, but something. Technical purposes, physiological purposes, psychological purposes -- no matter. But something that's going to be a big uniting theme that every effort should reflect, like middle schoolers are taught to write research papers: one thesis to which the topic sentence of every paragraph relates, with every sentence within each paragraph relating to both the topic sentence and that one big thesis. If a sentence doesn't meet those two criteria, it gets cut. That's how I design my ride profiles, at least. And that's how I select my cues, too. (For example, I would NEVER talk about pushing outside of one's comfort zone when my theme was about how rewarding it is to train at lower HRs to become a fat-burning machine -- unless, of course, one's comfort zone is "pushing as hard as you can," thereby rendering "outside" to mean "restraint." I've definitely made rides like that.)
I've been writing for an hour, which is inconsistent with my "bugs and drugs" memorization responsibilities, and I probably could have written up my profiles for "Coach Yourself" at this point. But no matter. I'm ALMOST about to make my point. I'll get there eventually...
I wrote a little bit about one of my rides from last week on my other blog, which is more of an audience-less collections of my experiences during my training in medical school - some relevant, most not; some articulate, most not. I don't usually write about rides on that one, but this one was very special to me. I called it "The Impact Ride" -- and the premise was as follows:
I began, spontaneously, with a quote from Obama's inaugural address, which had been given a few hours before this class began. It wasn't perfectly relevant, but it was timely enough that I made it fit. He was talking about how people should have the freedom to pursue what gives them purpose and happiness. Maybe he didn't say "purpose," but I equate the two and thus subconsciously linked them and, accordingly, that's the version of reality I presented to my class. I then suggested that, often, we don't know what makes us happy. That we don't think about it. So, for the next 45 minutes, we were going to think about it -- and maybe, just maybe, get on track to pursue it.
Part 1: How can riding this here bike make an impact on you? What would have to happen? How do you want it to happen? Is it the feeling of control over your HR? Your breathing? The belief that your physiological experience can match what you intend? What would you need to do to sell it to yourself, that you can have that kind of impact on yourself... right here in this room, on this bike?
Part 2: Now that you've accepted that you can have an impact on yourself, what are you going to do with that? What do you want to accomplish? What kind of impact on the world -- large or small -- would give you a sense of purpose and passion? What would it take to make that happen? What specific, concrete actions can you take?
Part 3: What makes you feel most empowered, like you can do anything? Building on the belief that you can have an impact on yourself, with a clear idea of what is meaningful to you to do with that, climb for it.
Loop ride. Duh. A boring, simple loop ride.
Loop 1 - 70% MHR seated climb, 3 "surges" (I'll explain shortly) up to 75%
Loop 2- Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80%
Loop 3 - Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80% with an option to 85% on the last one
That's it.
When I use the word "surge," I mean it as an opportunity for an effort of a prescribed period of time - from 30 seconds even up to 2 minutes. I coach it as an opportunity that they can choose to meet however they see fit -- with speed, with resistance, with a change in position... or not at all. I tell them to only take the "opportunities" that mean something to them. I use this device a lot. People used to get really anxious, the freedom of movement. So I address that liability before they can get anxious. I tell them not to let freedom make them anxious... just to try to go with it. Even the most anxious people seem to have come around...
Onto today's ride. I've spent months graaaaaaaadually building the concept, but put the actual ride together in 10 minutes... 10 minutes before I had to leave to go present it to my class. I NEVER planned to finish this ride today - but at the last minute, was inspired to wrap up this ever-building concept and make a "go" of it. The ride was called "Synesthesia," after the concept that one can experience something with one sense (ie, sound) and very vividly extend that experience to another sense (ie, sight -- as in, color). Ever felt that? I bet you have. I experience it fairly frequently, and I thought it'd be pretty sweet to make a ride out of it.
I've been subtly making casual "notes to self" about the particular sounds that evoke -- for me, when I'm riding FOR ME (see above) -- experiences of other senses. I used absolutely no new sounds. I used my go-to power standards, that my classes have heard 500000000 times, and told them to give themselves permission to hear and experience the same sounds differently. To close their eyes and "see" the rhythms. To breathe the rhythms. Smell them. Taste them. To respond to the images they invoke for themselves, of themselves. Tapping into the thoughts and images that empower them. Relating them to SOMETHING, anything, for which they're climbing.
Profile?
Loop ride. Duh. A boring, simple loop ride.
Loop 1 - 70% MHR seated climb, 3 "surges" (I'll explain shortly) up to 75%
Loop 2- Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80%
Loop 3 - Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80% with an option to 85% on the last one
NO JOKE.
Really? That's it? You've been doing THAT for a month and nobody's realized, and your classes are packed... and they tell you how unique and inspiring they are? YES. I AM SERIOUSLY NOT KIDDING.
Am I going to use this profile for the rest of my life? Of course not. I'm going to do something different tomorrow, in fact. But has this month been a fascinating experiment? Aaaaaabsolutely.
It's not what you do. It's how you can inspire them to use their own minds to think clearly, to empower themselves to accomplish whatever they need to use their time to work on. It's what they take with them when they walk out the door.
I did a few mild- to moderately AWESOME rides over the past few weeks that I've meant to write up for my "Coach Yourself Corner" of do-it-yourself training sessions, the feature I added to Spintastic over the summer designed for my riders, the original audience of this blog. Over the past few months, I've come to appreciate that some indoor cycling instructors have started to read this thing -- which humbles and thrills me but also inspires me to internalize a lot of pressure to, as I just described, "do the best job ever in the whole world." If I don't have the perfect amount of free time, the perfect environment, the perfect attention span... I just don't write. Cue: BAD HABIT. MUST REPLACE.
Truth be told, I don't have the perfect set of resources available to me at this present moment to write about my rides in "Coach Yourself"-style. When I write up rides for that segment of the site, I have a very specific vision for which I'm a real stickler -- what I want people to think about, what I want people to feel. I have to memorize the pathophysiological mechanisms, virulence factors, symptoms, and treatments for 50 bacteria within the next two hours; I really can't justify writing how I want to write. But I can write SOMETHING, I'm now telling myself. And so I will.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. This is a secret that will probably be of interest to you whether you're one of my riders, a rider who's never met me, an instructor who knows me, or an instructor who's stumbled upon this collection of my rantings. Ready...?
I, Melissa Marotta, STAR 3 Spinning Instructor, have done the same damned profile EVERY class I've taught over the past month (with the same exact group of riders). And you know what's better? I've done it on purpose. An experiment. An intellectual challenge. I've spent hours preparing them, too. Hours preparing the same damned profile every day for the past month.
Kidding you, I'm not. And nobody can tell the difference. Why? Because that exact same ride profile with a different purpose, a different theme, a different focus is actually a completely different ride. And that's a concept that illustrates that it's not always a "brilliant" profile, the kind one puts pressure on one's self to create, that leaves a mark. It's something that takes place during that ride profile -- the way a rider feels about himself or herself, appreciates the profound synchrony of movement, breathing, feedback, focus and empowerment. The feeling that rider takes out the door.
And you know what? Turns out, you can create that feeling, fresh and new -- over and over and over and over and over again -- even with the same damned profile for an entire month... if you play your cards right. And it's awesome.
Oh, and guess what? This "how on earth are you not sick of this?" profile is an Endurance ride (per parameters of the Spinning program). I've done a sub-LT profile with a room full of "more is more" (wrong!) recreational athletes who haven't even been riding with me long (see also: I don't have that much "street cred"), and they friggin' love it. Imagine?
I don't purport to represent the "magic answer" to the struggles of designing perfect classes. I sure as hell don't teach perfect classes. But I can tell you about my month-long experiment, and how it worked out for me.
A colleague of mine, a brilliantly creative Spinning instructor, lamented last week by email that she's been feeling overtrained, burned out, and not at all energized to teach her classes. That she's falling into the age-old trap of feeling pressured to "kick (her) classes' asses" in order to keep them engaged. That she knows better - but can't break out of her rut. She stopped believing in herself as a resource, as a coach. She stopped believing that her knowledge of a "better way" was supreme to the myths held by the masses. The themes of her rides, once varied and inspired, became limited to that oh-too-familiar harder, faster, "give it all you've got"-types -- which, while exciting and important at appropriately timed training sessions, isn't the best thing for her riders to be doing every single class. Not good for their bodies, not good for their minds. And not good for their coach, either. And because of that, she forgot what SHE loved about indoor cycling in the first place. She didn't fall in love with it because of how it felt when her ass got kicked; she fell in love with it because of how she was able to make HERSELF feel. The ride profiles that de-energized her didn't reflect that.
One of my personal life upgrades when I "downgraded" from a full-time cycling coach to a relatively sedentary medical student was that I actually started maintaining a healthy, balanced training schedule. Since I wasn't teaching as much (or at all for my first month in Vermont), I was able to spend time just RIDING by myself. I bought myself a Spinner NXT for my bedroom, named it Giacco after the puppy of the amazing woman who taught me how to ride a bike outdoors, set up my whole space to accomodate the VERY specific mirror placement, and made time to connect with what *I* loved about Spinning in the first place. I made myself cry at least twice a week, because I'm just that dorky. When I started teaching again, I actually just plum stopped riding with my classes. When I coached off the bike in NYC (the majority of my classes by the end of my time there, since I was teaching 21 of them a week), it was because I had to. Now I'm choosing to. I'll hop on to model good form during transitions, but otherwise I'm workin' the floor. Why? Because it's hard, and I like forcing myself to get better at it? Sure. But also because, when I'm on a bike during my classes, it's not about me; it's about the 25 people in the room. When I ride Giacco, it's allllllllllllllll about me. And that's where I come up with many of the themes for my rides. It might be a thought, or half a thought even. An experience, a sensation, that I never would have had without taking the time to ride for ME. Away from my class.
This thought occurred to me last summer during WSSC (at which I actually didn't ride that much -- maybe twice the whole conference?), which was the first time I'd ridden "for me" in a while. Josh Taylor's "Just be AWESOME!" (which I remembered from the previous two times I'd ridden with him, but had forgotten about) changed my life. As an athlete. As a coach. I've based at least 10 rides on that line by now. So simple.
A month later, I began the first phase of my experiment. I didn't ride any of my classes for two weeks, and spent all my free time hopping about NYC taking classes I'd heard were "really really bad." It was my research time, preparing for Week 7 of my Summer 2008 Theme Scheme -- which, to coincide with the launch of the "Coach Yourself Corner," was about how to one's best coach is one's self. How great music and great instruction was better seen as the frosting, rather than the cake itself. I spent those two weeks enduring pretty tedious training sessions (which were tedious mostly because they weren't actually presented as training sessions), and presented a ride (and an accompanying "survival guide") based on my experiences. My classes found it hilarious, but I never intended it to be. The whole point was, literally, what do you tell yourself during a training session -- what do you think about? What do you see? All of my cues came directly from the things that popped into my head while I was "enduring" these rides of zombie-esque or cheerleader-esque instructors and music that didn't "do it" for me. Now, "taking bad classes" is one of the top pieces of advice I give beginner instructors (along with riding with inspiring coaches, too, of course!). Underappreciated value in experiencing what not to do, but also discovering what YOU instinctively do to coach YOURSELF... and then, later, appreciating how you can teach your riders to do the same.
These things you come to tell yourself -- they can become the themes for your rides! Spinning MI Jennifer Sage wrote a brilliant piece on her blog a few weeks ago about the importance of setting objectives and sub-objectives during every training session. I make a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge deal about this with my classes. I talk about it more than HRMs, if that's possible. I encourage my riders to "always be climbing for something" -- for every effort to mean SOMETHING; not everything, but something. Technical purposes, physiological purposes, psychological purposes -- no matter. But something that's going to be a big uniting theme that every effort should reflect, like middle schoolers are taught to write research papers: one thesis to which the topic sentence of every paragraph relates, with every sentence within each paragraph relating to both the topic sentence and that one big thesis. If a sentence doesn't meet those two criteria, it gets cut. That's how I design my ride profiles, at least. And that's how I select my cues, too. (For example, I would NEVER talk about pushing outside of one's comfort zone when my theme was about how rewarding it is to train at lower HRs to become a fat-burning machine -- unless, of course, one's comfort zone is "pushing as hard as you can," thereby rendering "outside" to mean "restraint." I've definitely made rides like that.)
I've been writing for an hour, which is inconsistent with my "bugs and drugs" memorization responsibilities, and I probably could have written up my profiles for "Coach Yourself" at this point. But no matter. I'm ALMOST about to make my point. I'll get there eventually...
I wrote a little bit about one of my rides from last week on my other blog, which is more of an audience-less collections of my experiences during my training in medical school - some relevant, most not; some articulate, most not. I don't usually write about rides on that one, but this one was very special to me. I called it "The Impact Ride" -- and the premise was as follows:
I began, spontaneously, with a quote from Obama's inaugural address, which had been given a few hours before this class began. It wasn't perfectly relevant, but it was timely enough that I made it fit. He was talking about how people should have the freedom to pursue what gives them purpose and happiness. Maybe he didn't say "purpose," but I equate the two and thus subconsciously linked them and, accordingly, that's the version of reality I presented to my class. I then suggested that, often, we don't know what makes us happy. That we don't think about it. So, for the next 45 minutes, we were going to think about it -- and maybe, just maybe, get on track to pursue it.
Part 1: How can riding this here bike make an impact on you? What would have to happen? How do you want it to happen? Is it the feeling of control over your HR? Your breathing? The belief that your physiological experience can match what you intend? What would you need to do to sell it to yourself, that you can have that kind of impact on yourself... right here in this room, on this bike?
Part 2: Now that you've accepted that you can have an impact on yourself, what are you going to do with that? What do you want to accomplish? What kind of impact on the world -- large or small -- would give you a sense of purpose and passion? What would it take to make that happen? What specific, concrete actions can you take?
Part 3: What makes you feel most empowered, like you can do anything? Building on the belief that you can have an impact on yourself, with a clear idea of what is meaningful to you to do with that, climb for it.
Loop ride. Duh. A boring, simple loop ride.
Loop 1 - 70% MHR seated climb, 3 "surges" (I'll explain shortly) up to 75%
Loop 2- Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80%
Loop 3 - Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80% with an option to 85% on the last one
That's it.
When I use the word "surge," I mean it as an opportunity for an effort of a prescribed period of time - from 30 seconds even up to 2 minutes. I coach it as an opportunity that they can choose to meet however they see fit -- with speed, with resistance, with a change in position... or not at all. I tell them to only take the "opportunities" that mean something to them. I use this device a lot. People used to get really anxious, the freedom of movement. So I address that liability before they can get anxious. I tell them not to let freedom make them anxious... just to try to go with it. Even the most anxious people seem to have come around...
Onto today's ride. I've spent months graaaaaaaadually building the concept, but put the actual ride together in 10 minutes... 10 minutes before I had to leave to go present it to my class. I NEVER planned to finish this ride today - but at the last minute, was inspired to wrap up this ever-building concept and make a "go" of it. The ride was called "Synesthesia," after the concept that one can experience something with one sense (ie, sound) and very vividly extend that experience to another sense (ie, sight -- as in, color). Ever felt that? I bet you have. I experience it fairly frequently, and I thought it'd be pretty sweet to make a ride out of it.
I've been subtly making casual "notes to self" about the particular sounds that evoke -- for me, when I'm riding FOR ME (see above) -- experiences of other senses. I used absolutely no new sounds. I used my go-to power standards, that my classes have heard 500000000 times, and told them to give themselves permission to hear and experience the same sounds differently. To close their eyes and "see" the rhythms. To breathe the rhythms. Smell them. Taste them. To respond to the images they invoke for themselves, of themselves. Tapping into the thoughts and images that empower them. Relating them to SOMETHING, anything, for which they're climbing.
Profile?
Loop ride. Duh. A boring, simple loop ride.
Loop 1 - 70% MHR seated climb, 3 "surges" (I'll explain shortly) up to 75%
Loop 2- Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80%
Loop 3 - Seated climb 70% to 75%, 3 "surges" to 80% with an option to 85% on the last one
NO JOKE.
Really? That's it? You've been doing THAT for a month and nobody's realized, and your classes are packed... and they tell you how unique and inspiring they are? YES. I AM SERIOUSLY NOT KIDDING.
Am I going to use this profile for the rest of my life? Of course not. I'm going to do something different tomorrow, in fact. But has this month been a fascinating experiment? Aaaaaabsolutely.
It's not what you do. It's how you can inspire them to use their own minds to think clearly, to empower themselves to accomplish whatever they need to use their time to work on. It's what they take with them when they walk out the door.
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