Cycling and Stretch and Firm

My sponsor wants me to focus more on evaluating the different cycling instructors as well as the stretch and firm instructors because there’s such a variety of teachers and teaching styles. As a result, I have been predominantly taking cycling and stretch and firm classes. Yesterday (Monday), I took a spinning class with Beth. Beth was a trainer who I had worked out with all summer for volleyball. She certainly hasn’t lost her touch, and I think she is so far my favorite cycling instructor because she always has fun music and varies the workouts from climbing to sprinting to sitting in the saddle to standing upright and so on and so forth. The stretch and firm class I took yesterday was with Patti who incorporates much more dance than lifting in her class. She relates extremely well with her class, but often had trouble focusing on others in the room because she always stared at herself in the mirror. Today I went to a cycle and sculpt class with an instructor named Jamie. Her class went a little long so I couldn’t make it to the stretch and firm class because the two classes are scheduled back to back and the JCC has a strict policy that you cannot attend a class if you’re ten minutes or more late to a class because you’ll miss vital warm-ups and will be a distraction to the others. In Jamie’s class, I was on a newer bike where the resistance gear is far more sensitive than the old bikes. Therefore, turning it just a little to the right to create more resistance is equivalent to a full turn on the old bikes. Jamie got off her bike and was encouraging others to push themselves. I was already pushing myself quite a bit and could hardly push the pedals any harder because of the high resistance that I was at. Nonetheless, Jamie turned my gear two full turns to the right and let’s just say I got quite a workout. It was, in part, my mistake though, because I wanted to try a newer bike and the only new one left was directly in front of her and the whole time I was trying to keep up to her tempo, so I made myself vulnerable. For the sculpting portion, we used bosu balls and did many squats, push ups, and ab workouts all while challenging our balance. Both yesterday and today, I have been typing up biographies of each instructor.