Spinning it's not all that it's cracked up to be

Spinning is one of those exercise fads that has swept the nation. On several occasions I have gotten new members and they will tell me "I've been spinning for several years my cardio is real good". But of course it is sweetheart, 10 minutes into a Garage Gym workout the spinning diva or in the case of a guy "devo", is on all fours ready to dump his/her lunch on the gym floor. One of my spinners on his very first GG workout could not physically leave the gym for 45 minutes after the workout! Although spinning is a cardiovascular exercise it does not prepare the "spinner" for short but intense bouts between cardiovascular endurance and anaerobic strength which is common to our workouts.

As a matter of fact, some of spinners come in looking pretty out shape. After talking to them a while I hear the same story from men and women. "When I began to take spinning classes I lost weight and it kicked my butt but then I plateaued." This is a very common occurrence and the reason behind this is that essentially every time you go to your spinning class your doing the same thing. You can vary the resistance to some degree but eventually you can't and here comes the plateau.

Like I have explained before routine is the enemy. Human beings are incredible animals. Human beings have evolved and survived because we can adapt to anything and this ability to adapt can be your biggest obstacle to meeting your goals in the gym. Let's look at it from a very simple point. If you can only do one pull-up but eventually build yourself up to doing 10, during that process you will get stronger. That's your body adapting to the new stress. Now once you can perform 10 good pull-ups your next logical step is to increase the demand and try to do 15.

Your body adapted to doing 10 reps, when you try to do 15 you will struggle until your body adapts again by making you stronger so you can perform the 15 repetitions. The process can go on almost forever. By constantly challenging your body to do more it cannot adapt to the load and it has to get stronger, do you see my point? Now if you can do 10 pull-ups and you don't try to do more or even add weight to your body by hanging a dumbbell or kettle bell from your waist (using a special belt for that purpose) guess what happens?

Your guessed it, your body adapts to the load and improvements in strength and overall physical condition stop. To me, spinning is something that could be done occasionally to add variety to your workouts but it shouldn't be your only source of exercise. There's an added bonus to spinning infrequently you know what it is? Correct again, by spinning infrequently (once a month or every other month) you won't get use to it and it will kick your butt every time you go and guess what?

You might see results and you won't plateau! Personally, I prefer to ride a bike outdoors and actually go somewhere, see something, and enjoy the Florida sun. Something creeps me out about being in a candle lite room riding a bike to nowhere while listening to Yanni.

That's all I have to say about that...
See you at the gym