IOL Strength and Conditioning

The best online personal training program will

• have personal trainers with decades of weight training experience in both commercial and home gyms
• be structured to consider your personal goals and your unique life circumstances
• create a workout routine perfectly designed to suit your training experience and equipment availability

When you put those elements together, you’ll find trainees living their dreams, and that is what makes a successful online personal training program.Sounds pretty sweet, doesn’t it? That’s what we thought after discussions with IOL’s Bill Keyes, Byron Chandler, Dan Martin, Bill Peel and Chris McClinch, and with high-fives and grins all around, we set out to create the best quality personal training available online.

Today we introduce our new Online Personal Training program.

The IOL forum is terrific; the education and camaraderie can’t be beat. But let’s face it, sometimes we need a little personal attention. There isn’t enough time in the day to search through the ins and outs of a new weight training program, the latest nutrition news… and goodness knows, most of us, left to our own devices, skip a few sets or secretly slide in some pizza.

Don’t you get tired of thinking sometimes? Wouldn’t you like someone to just tell you what to do?

As I see it, there are three main benefits to an online personal trainer, assuming it’s a quality trainer like one of these IOL guys.

• Training Motivation

• Accountability to Your Personal Coach

• Confidence in Your Training Program

Once your personal goals and circumstances are considered and a good workout routine prepared, those are the three things that will make a personal training program work. And that’s what we offer.

A couple of the guys are hard at work preparing small group training, 4-10 weeks of attention from a coach, just you and a few of your closest online friends. Sessions will be priced individually, depending on the workload and timeframe, and will go online this spring.

Bill Keyes. Byron Chandler. Dan Martin. Bill Peel. Chris McClinch.

Ya can’t beat that lineup, can ya?

Read the details of our new online personal training program here.

We’ve looked at spinning as a training tool, at the various spin bike manufacturers and done a review of the basics of indoor cycle training. Now let’s take things up a notch as we consider the following advanced cycling techniques.

Many of these training suggestions are well-known to outdoor cyclists. I’d like to remind them — you, perhaps — that winter indoor cycle training is optimum for serious cyclists. You can concentrate on cadence, smoothing out your pedal stroke. Spinning permits total concentration on technique so you hit your spring training a better cyclist than you ended the previous season, and it can ease you through winter-month cycling withdrawal.

Advanced-beginning spinners: Practice constant pedal pressure. Use a smooth, round stroke — pedal in circles. This sounds funny, but at second look makes sense. Most beginning cyclists pedal up and down rather than around. Another way to think of this is to visualize a horizontal line at the top and bottom of the pedal stroke. This will make your strokes round instead of vertical, with a top and bottom, and will recruit more leg muscle.

Pay attention to your hips, whether in the saddle or out: Keep your hips solid, stable. Your legs should be doing the work, not your torso. The effort in the torso is reserved for balance.

Reminder: Keep your shoulders loose; keep your weight off your wrists.

Terms to consider

Pace: Pedal revolutions per minute — Increase pace to improve leg speed, pedal stroke and efficiency.

Cadence: Personal pace, based on body mechanics and cycling skills.

You can calculate your cadence by counting the downstrokes of one leg for six seconds and adding a zero to get your pedal rpms. Advanced indoor cyclists may want to invest in a pace monitor, such as a Cateye Astrale 8, although I personally suggest mastering heart rate training first if you haven’t already done that. Using RPMs in training adds another point of interest and another training tool for workout variety.

• Read more…

Spinning : Part 3 of 4 (Click for part 1 — Click for part 2 — Click for part 4)

Top complaint from new cyclers: saddle soreness. As we first learn to spin, we sit deep on the saddle, causing either numbness, pain or annoyance — saddle soreness, if you will. When the bike instructors at World Gym Scotts Valley first began their bike orientation, they all complained and bought biking shorts ($50+ for one pair, in case anyone’s considering this; opt for the patience).

When we started the classes, all the participants were griping, but by then the instructors were telling them to relax, the soreness would soon go away. It takes about two weeks of 3-4 classes a week to learn the techniques of riding, which mainly include increasing the resistance on the flywheel to move the pressure from the saddle onto the legs, and then increasing leg strength to handle the workload. The annoyance goes away, if the rider doesn’t disappear first.

Other suggestions for success on an indoor spin bike:

• Go to a local health club and take a couple of spin bike classes. The instructor will show you how to fit the bike, describing the seat and handlebar adjustments that you can then do at home, and will teach the biking techniques that will make a difference in your ride.
• Skootch back on the seat, then do it again when you notice you’ve slipped forward
• If you’re bouncing around on the seat, tighten the crank just a touch until you feel a hint of resistance.
• When upright, sit high; when laid out across the bars, elongate your spine.
• Practice: Learn to use the combination of resistance and speed to smooth out your cadence and manipulate your heart rate.
• Use the abductor muscles to hold your knees in. No wide-open sloppy knees for this crew, please.
• Don’t put your weight on the handlebars; don’t lean — use the handles for balance only. It’ll hurt your wrists, for one thing, but it also takes some of the load off the legs, not our purpose, is it? Try it: lean on the bars and note the legs at work. Then sit upright, leaning forward at the hips slightly. Feel it in the legs!
• Keep shoulders loose; it takes attention to do it. This will relieve potential neck ache as it keeps the stress on the legs.
• As you come out of the saddle for high-resistance hill work, keep your tail end back. It’s not a rest; you don’t want to be standing upright on the pedals.
• Grind out the hills: hips back, body folded forward, with attention on hamstrings. Push back, not down, and pull up with the hams.
• Do training segments in full-song increments, ie sprints, hill grinds, steady pace work. It’s key to finishing tough efforts for beginning cyclists.
• On hard grinds, let yourself sway from side to side as if on a curving country road.
• If your knees ache, check the height of the bike seat; if the bike seat slips too low, your knees don’t get fully extended during the pedal stroke.
• If the seat’s too high, you’ll feel yourself moving slightly from side to side.

Finally, if you don’t have a heart rate monitor and are riding an indoor spin bike for cardio health, get a clue! There’s no limit to the skills and ability you’ll gain using a HR monitor, with your bike shoes clipped in to your pedals and riding with monitored precision.

Without a heart rate monitor or music, I wouldn’t work as hard. My tools in order of importance:

1) Heart rate monitor (We address heart rate training here.)
2) Music — MP3 player
3) Bike shoes — cleats fastened to the bike pedals

In part four we’ll close with some advanced spin cycle skills.

Spin Bike Tutorial: Spinning an Indoor Cycle, Part 2 of 4

I’m completely amazed my declaration of the spin bike as the world’s top cardio training tool held up so long. I didn’t expect to get away with that for more than a few hours. Byron would surely have jumped up to yell “cross training” had he not been so busy at work, but I’m truly surprised not to have heard from a crew of Concept 2 athletes.

Well, as long as I still have the floor, let’s continue with our spin bike discussion.

Comparing the spin bike to an average stationery bike such as that which most have ridden at some time or another is next to impossible, they’re so different. Spin bikes have a weighted flywheel in the front mimicking the feel of an outdoor bike that’s actually propelled by the pedals. When you tighten the resistance and come out of the saddle, you absolutely feel like you’re cycling up a steep hill. I’ve logged a trillion hours on both a LifeCycle and a V-Bike, and can tell you, for this reason alone, it would take a major, long-term emergency to get me back on a LifeCycle.

Spin-style bikes are made of stronger steel, built for the rider to come out of the saddle and grind on the pedals, which isn’t often done on a regular stationary bike, and in many cases would break the pedal cranks right off the bike.

The word “Spin” is a company trademark that we now use to describe indoor studio cycling, much the same as we refer to Kleenex when we mean facial tissue of any kind. The original Spin bikes were designed by a racing cyclist named Johnny G, a guy who rigged this sort of funky unit in his garage for his winter training. A dozen or so years ago he designed an instructor-lead group exercise class format, which he then co-joined with Schwinn to build and sell. Johnny’s first generation Spinner was so superior to a normal stationary bike that it took fire. Serious cyclists lined up for his classes, mostly in the Los Angeles area at the time, and the Spin craze took off.

StarTrak then built the best second-generation bike called the V-Bike, which I have and like a lot, $1,000 new, but can be purchased reconditioned for around half that now that they’ve developed a couple of souped-up models.

If you’re interested in more background, here’s a brief history of spin cycle training.

One thing to look for when shopping for an indoor cycle is the seat adjustments, height and fore and aft, but also handle adjustments, again both height and fore and aft. Often the cheaper bikes only have height, but the fore and aft adjustment is an important one to compensate for torso, arm and leg length.

If I was to buy a new spin bike today, it would be a Greg LeMond RevMaster, runs about $1,100. Late addition:  That was true when this post was originally written, but no longer holds today if I could possibly pull together the extra bucks. Sean Harrington’s new bike, the RealRyder, with it’s side-to-side motion, has now claimed the top spot. Wow, very nice!

Reconditioned spin cycles are a viable way to go, because the parts are either unbreakable, or are regular bike parts that when replaced make the bike ride like new — all the parts that can go south have been replaced and the bike is lubed and painted. Voila! That’s the way I’d go for a reasonably priced indoor cycle.

Many cycling subtleties are not fully notable without bike shoes. Test indoor cycling to see if it’s suitable for you, and if it is, spring for bike pedals and shoes. The difference between pedaling with regular shoes and in cleats fastened to the pedals is huge — snapping onto the pedals enables both pushing and pulling during each pedal stroke, which is both more effort as well as a whole lot more fun.

If you share a cycle with someone who doesn’t have or want bike shoes, you can buy dual-sided pedals that have the toe basket on one side and cleat mounts on the other, although you’ll probably have to order these from a bike shop because outdoor riders will rarely use a dual pedal.

You can, of course, burn more calories sprinting on the track or running hills (let’s not discuss the stress on ankles, knees and hips), but you will won’t have the training tool that comes with closing your eyes and concentrating, and it will take a live coach to get you where a heart rate monitor and cyclometer will take you independently.

In part three we’ll discuss my top 20 spin training tips. In the meantime, if you get a chance to slide onto an indoor spinner, here’s what you can expect on the ride.

Introduction to spin training: Part 1 of 4

Today I declare the world’s top cardio training tool: the indoor spin-style bike. After more than a quarter of a century spent sampling nearly every type of cardio training introduced, some wacky fitness machines to all styles of group aerobic training to running indoors and out, car pushing and sled pulling… the bottom line remains for me the weighted flywheel indoor cycle.

Of course I know you want to be outdoors, and for sure moving your body over the earth is more challenging than training on a stationary machine of any type. But the benefits of training stationary over pedaling outdoors include the ability to use the cycle fully; you’re not limited by the terrain, traffic or weather. You can close your eyes and concentrate on your pedal cadence and on the workload without crashing into the ditch; training techniques used on a spin cycle are not possible when other concentration is necessary.

Balance, for instance.

I’m not arguing against getting outside, nor implying that moving the tires against the earth’s surface or fighting the wind isn’t harder work. I’m instead presenting a case for an indoor cycle training program where the hill doesn’t end until you decide it ends. Other tricks include spinning with one leg to balance leg strength and coordination, using music to set cadence (double time, triple time… half time), or using resistance to focus on a target heart rate. These things simply can’t be done on the street.

• Read more…

That’s it alright — Golden Era camaraderie meshes with modern day technology to create the best of today and yesterday.

Over the weekend we installed new forum software that’s light years beyond our old board. (Kinda funny, since it was state-of-the-industry when we first set it up — it’s an internet tale.) This new one’s clean, with multiple new features, one-click options and user controls far above other internet board software.

• Number One feature: It’s FAST. No kidding, this board’s a speed demon, which will slice wait time off even the fastest connection, making forum participation possible for even the slowest dial-up modem.

• First-time forum users, start here for the basic what’s-it: Top 10 Forum Board FAQ.

• Personal features in My Control Panel now offer massive individual control over the look of the forum. You do have to register to take advantage of these, although as non-members you can now print or email posts and attachments, along with other features not previously available to you.

• Check this out: You can toggle the sidebar on and off at will. Your monitor’s too small to see the threads well? No problem, turn the sidebar display off until you need it. One click and gone.

• Fully configurable quick addition of a personal signature and a link to your website, MySpace, Flicker or YouTube account

Possibly the most intriguing new feature of this board over our old board is how private messages are handled. People who use private messaging (PMs) will really appreciate this one, because instead of one conversation creating a mass of PM notes, a single thread is kept intact. Additionally, a private topic can include more than two participants, which is significantly different than before.

You can now add an image, multiple images or other files to a post, either by linking to or uploading to our server. Better yet, you have the ability place the image or images in an exact position within your text, which was not the case before. The board software will shrink them to a standard 400-pixel-wide size, but will retain the original size so users can click on the image attachment to view it full size. Very cool!

• Valid file types at this time are: .gif, .jpg, jpeg, .txt, .zip, .png, .pdf, .doc, .mp3, .rm, .avi, .mp4 .xls, .wmv, .mov, .3g2, .MOV, meaning we can now share our training log spreadsheets, coach via video, and, well, our options are nearly unlimited.

The search feature on this board is quite robust, much better than our former software. The basic, built-in searches are quick and effective, but there are also advance search techniques that will search through our quarter-of-a-million posts and cough up precise results in seconds.

This forum upgrade has been on my mind for more than a year, when I first discovered the best hackers from our old forum software user’s group were working on new board software. The results, Fusion Bulletin Board; the developers, Josh Pettit and Dave Lozier; the response from IronOnline: OUTSTANDING.

Take a visit, stick around for awhile. Our IronOnline members welcome you.