Podcast Episode #33: Indoor Cycling, Spinning & Energy Drinks

Podcast episode number 33 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast, your free weekly audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, nutrition and wellness information. My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer and nutritionist. Each week I'll be bringing you information that goes outside run of the mill exercise and diet advice. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to lose a few pounds, enjoy this week's podcast episode from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Okay, you know how sometimes your exercise routine just gets a little boring and you want to throw something new in there, something fresh, something that keeps you entertained while you're working out? About eight months ago, I was walking through a health and fitness expo and I came across this guy demonstrating all these different exercises with basically what amounted to a lightweight aluminum composition stick with a couple of elastic bands attached to either end. And he was doing lunges and curls and overhead squats and moves for lean muscle moves for performance. Performance. And so I stood there for a while watching him, and then he handed it to me and he taught me a few moves and I started to learn a little bit more about it. Anyways, I ended up buying one and brought it back to my personal training studio and started using it with some of the clients that I work with. And it turned out to be a big hit. It was just something fresh, something new, something that actually allowed for pretty decent results as well. And so, and it's called a gym stick. And what I did was I did a workout with the gym stick a couple of days ago, and I actually threw the video camera on while I was working out, took some video and put it up on the block so you can see how this thing works. You can adjust the resistance by twisting the actual stick to wrap the band around the stick. And you can also get it in five different resistance levels. So I wrote a little bit of an informational article on what it does, what it's all about, and where you can actually get one. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It's BenGreenfieldFitness.com gymstick. But the other thing that I'll include in there is you can get free shipping on this thing to anywhere in the United States. And the discount code to get shipping on that is BG stick, as in Ben Greenfield stick. So check that out. A great addition to your workout protocol. Now, on Sunday night this past Sunday night we had the Nutritional supplements Online TV lecture Q& A. It was a great time. People got a lot of their questions answered. I demonstrated all the nutritional supplements that I personally use or that I use with my clients for weight loss or sports performance or general health and fitness. And people were able to ask questions as we went. They typed them into a chat box and I would basically answer their questions, put up links. It was a really informational episode and you can pretty much ask anything you want while pertaining to fitness and nutrition. I'm not going to tell you how to get your cat out of a tree, but basically very interactive Q and A. Remember those are happening on the last Sunday of every month. All you do is click on a link, you pop in and it's kind of a chat room video style episode and I'm there for a full hour. Actually we went about an hour and 20 minutes this week just answering your questions and giving out information. So be sure to check that out and tune in next week to find out what The March Online TV Q&A is going to be all about. And speaking of next week, big announcement. We are going to have a roundtable. A large group of personal trainers come in and give their fitness and fat burning secrets for exercise exactly what they do with their clients and how they do it. These are all coaches and trainers from Pacific Elite Fitness and if you don't know what that is, it's basically an online portal where you can go and you can get a personal trainer no matter where you're at in the world who will be there for you in email, via phone and also send your workouts to you on a weekly or daily basis to give you the type of things that you should be doing as well as the accountability. It's kind of like your own concierge assistant for fitness, wellness and sports performance. The link to that website is pacificfit.net but we're going to have a bunch of coaches and trainers from that website come on the show next week and talk about the things that they do with their clients to achieve optimum fitness. So it's going to be a fitness and Fat Burning Secrets roundtable. So you're not going to want to miss that. That'll be in next week's podcast episode. Then finally for you triathletes out there, I got to mention Coach Cal Zuriski's Iron Speed Ironman Triathlon camp is coming to Coeur d' Alene May 9 through May 14. I'm going to be coaching at that camp. Coach Cal is going to be at that camp. We're going to have American and Canadian coaches, physicians, sports scientists. A lot of good stuff there. So you're going to want to check that out if you are a triathlete. It's especially perfect if you're doing Ironman Coeur d', Alene, but it's good for getting ready for any Ironman this year. For you triathletes out there, there will be a lot of other information in the show. Notes to this podcast, you're going to want to go check it out online@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and let's go ahead and move forward to this week's listener Q and A on energy drinks. Listener Q and A Listener Nate asks, what is your opinion on FRS healthy energy drinks, comparing it to other sports performance supplements? Is it a good training product or is it just another celebrity endorsed product that is ineffective? Well, by celebrities. I can think of the one celebrity that I've seen sporting this energy drink and that would be Lance Armstrong. And anytime he's behind a product, we know that the word's getting out about it. But yeah, that's a great question. Is FRS energy drink actually good for you or is it efficacious in giving you energy and in some cases enhancing sports performance or doing some of the things that it might claim to do? So I surfed on over, as a matter of fact, I'm there right now to the FRS.com Products page. And for those of you who don't know, FRS is most commonly sold in cans, kind of like a Red Bull sized can of energy drink. But it is marketed as healthy energy and it has a patented blend of a range of different vitamins as well as energy derivatives in it. And so I went over there to look over the ingredients. They've got the locale versions, they've got the non locale versions. They have a concentrate. I'm a split that that is. Yes, I'm clicking on it here. It is a concentrate that you can mix into water. Same ingredients as what's in the cans, except you mix it yourself. They've got a soft chew which is basically like an energy chew. I think I've actually had those before at a fitness expo somewhere. Again, ingredients and nutritional facts in the chews are somewhat similar to what's in the drink. So let's go ahead and read through the ingredient list for FRS Energy drinks on locale. Citrus pomegranate. We've got water as the first ingredient. White grape juice concentrate Inulin don't get that confused with insulin. Inulin is actually basically like a high fiber plant derivative orange juice concentrate, AKA sugar. I'm not sure how this can be locale with orange. Well, it's probably not calorie free. Okay. Yeah, it does have 25 calories in it. It's probably just enough orange juice concentrate to give it flavor. Tartaric acid, sucralose. And then they've got their blend of vitamins in there, mostly the B complex vitamins, caffeine, green tea leaf extract, locust bean gum and gum arabic, Alpha tosopherol and natural blueberry pomegranate flavor. When I read through this ingredient list at first glance, especially on this locale one, it's got most of mostly natural, mostly healthy compounds. But whenever something is flavored, I always like to see see what they use for the flavoring, specifically whether or not they've used completely natural flavors. And the one thing that raises my eyebrow on there is sucralose on that locale can. And the reason that I say that is there are a lot of potential dangers in sucralose. This is actually the brand name Splenda, you know, the logo for Splendid, made from sugar. So it tastes like sugar. There haven't really been any long term human toxicity studies done on Splenda, but there's a lot of controversy around the fact that it really is a very chemical compound. It's basically a sugar molecule that's been altered by having three chlorine molecules attached to it. And the research in animal studies, studies only show that about 15% of this stuff is absorbed into the digestive system, or not only 15, but up to 15% is absorbed in your digestive system and is stored in your body. And in studies that they've done, they haven't really observed full excretion of sucralose, which means that even though it's an artificial sweetener, some of that chlorine is getting observed by your body, are getting absorbed by your body. There was a recent study that also demonstrated that in rat guts sucralose killed up to 50% of the bacteria, the good bacteria in the gut of rats. So I have a little bit of an issue with sucralose. Again, there haven't been any studies that have necessarily shown that it's going to cause cancer, cancer or that it's going to cause Alzheimer's, or that it's going to cause neuromuscular defects. I can't talk today, but it would be very important for you to reconsider putting Anything into your body that would be considered a preservative or something that your body really can't metabolize properly. So I would be careful with the any energy drink, the level of artificial sweeteners. If we shoot over to the non locale version of frs, the ingredients and nutritional facts are going to appear very similar. The only difference being that it has a lot more carbohydrates and sugars in it, 29 grams of sugars. So we've got basically just imagine taking a bowl of sugar on your counter and putting a few tablespoons or a few teaspoons of that into a can, get it in the can there. And that's what you're drinking down for during a workout when your body is fairly insulin sensitive, that would be alright. But considering that the average American drinks about 400 to 500 calories per day, you need to be very careful unless you're highly active using anything like this stuff. And then the soft chews, the soft energy chews that I'm looking at, number one ingredient, number two, two first ingredients, and those are sugar and corn syrup. So they're glorified candy with some vitamin B thrown in. So my take on the FRS energy drinks is really my take on most energy drinks in that the artificial sweetener brand, yeah, it's locale, but it's got the artificial sweeteners in it that your body has a hard time metabolizing. And then you've got the sugar filled version that is sugar filled. And you got to be really careful with that amount of calories. The healthiest energy drinks that I've really seen are in like a powdered form where they're sweetened just very, very lightly, preferably with something like stevia or another flavor that's very natural. And they don't have a lot of preservatives and the things that they have to put into a soda type of can. And basically you mix them into your own glass of water or juice or sparkling water, whatever you like to have them with. So that's what I would recommend. So just be careful with the frs and realize that anytime that something is packaged in a can, you need to really check that energy label carefully. I've really seen anything that's, that's truly healthy packaged in can format. So that's this week's listener Q and A. Remember, if you have a question, you can email it to ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com or you can leave a comment in the podcast comment section or the blog comment section. Of BenGreenfieldFitness.com let's go ahead and move on to the interview this week with Jennifer Sage. Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming to you again. And this time I am with Jennifer Sage. To give you a little bit of a background about Jennifer, she's been in the fitness industry since the early 80s, big background in aerobics. She has a bachelor's in exercise science and she's taught everything from high and low impact aerobics. She's done step body sculpting, ski conditioning, core training. She has a cscs, which for those of you who don't know, it's a certified strength and conditioning specialist degree. She's got a handful of other personal training certifications as well. But what she's here to talk to us about today is related to the fact that she's a spinning instructor. And she's not only a spinning instructor, she's a master spinning instructor. And for those of you who haven't yet discovered the world of indoor cycling, you're about to find out some really cool information today. And for those of you who are into spinning, whether those of you who are taking spinning classes or even if you're teaching spinning, you're going to find out some very interesting facts about spin class and you will be able to finish up this interview and go get way more out of indoor cycling, whether you are a, whether you're an instructor or whether you're someone who uses it for fitness performance or fat loss. So, Jennifer, thanks for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me.

I want to hear a little bit about your background in cycling. We know you've done a lot in the fitness industry. But let's talk about spinning and cycling and how you got into that and what you do with it now.

Well, I've been riding a bike for fitness and fun for at least 25 years. I love doing centuries long distance riding. I live in the mountains. I love climbing hills. I love the challenge of it. I love doing something I have never done before on a bike and I love riding my bike around Europe or other countries. So, you know, I've really kind of taken that cycling to that next level. I've done a little bit of mountain bike racing, but I wasn't very good at it. So I'm probably better to just stick.

To the more recognition about the full face helmet.

No, it wasn't downhill. I did cross country. It was because it's so anaerobic and I'm much more aerobically inclined. You know, give Me a bike and I'll ride for 100 miles. But mountain biking is killer.

Right?

But back in 1988, I rode my bike around Europe, just solo, self supported, 2,500 miles. And then a couple years later I did the same around New Zealand. So I've kind of turned that passion into a business. My other business is that I take people to France and Italy to ride bikes. And yeah, so I've, you know, I just, I really believe in, you know, doing what you love. And then my other, as you said, my background is in fitness. My other passion is spinning. I've been a master instructor for 12 years and ever since I started with Mad Dog athletics and spinning, I noticed that not everybody taught spinning classes or thought about indoor cycling classes in the way that I did. I think that even if you're not a cyclist, they're just such a great training, but it's still a bike. So it has been my, how should I say, my kind of, my quest over the last 12 years of teaching and certifying instructors to teach them how to keep it real even if they don't ride a bike, that it's still a bike and you can't treat it like it's not. So I've just kind of bridged that gap between my passions for road riding and indoor cycling and try to fuse the two together.

Well, I'd like to hear more about your book, but before I ask you a couple questions about that, and I've read it, by the way, and it's full of very useful information. But for people who are listening, who maybe haven't started indoor cycling yet or haven't tried a spin class, what's a typical spin class actually? Like, how does spinning work?

Well, first of all, I should probably, First of all, we should probably talk about indoor cycling because spinning itself is a brand and it's one aspect and it has its rules and protocols.

Okay, so spinning and indoor cycling are not synonymous.

Spinning is an indoor cycling class, but not all indoor cycling classes are spinning.

Gotcha.

I should say so in an indoor cycling class, and you know, especially a spinning class, you know, the idea is to ride an indoor bike. The instructor leads you through a workout, you warm up, you can do, you know, flat roads, hills, it can be an aerobic workout, it can be, you know, at threshold, we can do high intensity training, we can do intervals, you could even do sprints. But what has happened is that a lot of instructors come in who don't know anything about cycling, which is okay. They don't have to be a cyclist. It is not a prerequisite to be a cyclist, to be an indoor cycling instructor. However, the more you understand about cycling, the more you're going to understand about the concepts that I have in my book. But in that class, what has happened in those type of classes is so many of them have kind of turned into these super high intensity all the time, you know, pedal to the metal. If you didn't leave a pool of sweat around your bike, you didn't have a good workout. Some instructors think if they're not sprinting the whole time, you know, their students aren't going to like them. And then what also has happened is they think that people are going to get bored just sitting on the bike. So things have been invented and they're doing what I call aerobics on a bike. So better to keep it real, better to stay in the saddle as much as possible and just treat it like you're riding a bike outside. It's not to say it can't be a whole lot of fun and exciting and energetic. It can, but you asked for a typical spin class. I think some of the typical ones have kind of gotten a little bit out of hand, and it's best to kind of reel them back in and get more real.

So it was basically the idea that indoor cycling was perhaps not as effective for people as it could be that inspired you to write this book.

Exactly. Actually, the real reason is one time I was sitting around with a group of cyclists and I said, oh, I'm a master instructor for spinning, and I teach spin classes. And they all kind of laughed and said, oh, I took a couple of those. I will never go back. And I asked them why, and they happened to have had a bad experience with an instructor who did one of these aerobics on a bike type of workouts. And I said, but it doesn't have to be that way. And I started describing some of the suggestions and tips that I give in the book. And they, they were like, floored. They're like, really? You're kidding. I didn't know that. Well, I'm gonna have to try it again. I said, you know, there are certain things you don't want to do. If the instructor does it, you don't have to do it. Just sit in the saddle and ride. And that idea just kept growing in me. And I was thinking, I need to put this on paper and tell other cyclists that, yes, they can. They can go indoors and have a very cycling, specific, relevant training session that is not going to take away from their cycling, because that's what some of these cyclists thought that it was going to take away from their cycling, and they were right if they did some of those kind of crazy moves. On the other hand, it's not just for cyclists, because everything I talk about is about being more efficient and effective. And you look at a move that someone does in an indoor cycling class, you analyze it, and you have to look at it and say, okay, how is this going to benefit me? Is it going to benefit me? And is there any risks? Is it going to take away from my cycling or my ability to turn the pedals? And if you come up with, well, there's not a whole lot of benefit, and it's pretty high risk, well, then you shouldn't be doing it.

So what type of activities would take place in a spin class that you would consider to perhaps be high risk or maybe ineffective for the people that are doing them?

I'll give you two examples that come to mind. The first one is high cadence. A lot of people don't realize that the pedals are attached to the flywheel. The flywheel is heavy. It's weighted, and when it's going around, it's a fixed gear system, so you can't coast. So once you get the momentum going, there's some inertia to that flywheel. It's actually pulling your feet round. So if you get. And it's also increased as your cadence increases, the cadence is your, you know, the revolutions per minute. As your cadence increases, the inertial effects of that flywheel increases. So people get going really fast with their legs. The instructor gets going, has them spinning at. Spinning their legs at, you know, 110, 120, 130 RPM. And if everyone was sweating and kind of hooting and hollering, but they're really not getting much work done. If we had the ability to put a power meter on that bike, we would see that they're doing very little work. Work is measured, as you know, in watts. Most indoor cycling bikes don't have this. But with the knowledge that I give you in the book, you can kind of extrapolate and say, hey, it's not going to do me any good to spin my legs that fast. I am going to get more benefit if I slow the legs down and add more resistance for a cyclist, it's going to make sense, because that's what you would do outside. You wouldn't jump on your mountain bike on a flat road, or a road bike, for that matter. That has A granny gear and try to go anywhere on a flat road into granny gear. For those who don't know what that is, that's the real smallest gear in the front. Basically your feet would be going, but you would hardly be moving the bike. A child on a tricycle would go faster than you outdoors. You know, you know, you would, you would say, oh, I need to shift higher, thus you have more resistance and your legs slow down. Indoors, we don't have the lack of movement of the bike to tell us that. Therefore people tend to just spin their legs way too fast and don't realize they're not getting the benefit.

Yeah, it's interesting that you should mention that about wattage and how when people have these flywheels that are turning their legs around very quickly, they're actually not having to do a lot of work with their legs, which means they're actually not burning a lot of calories with their legs. And I've had people come to me and you know, the individual A has been taking spin class for six months and has not lost a, a pound and is doing all this cardio and is leaving spin class and feeling like their legs have been working for an hour or 45 minutes, but they're not seeing any results. Then individual B will come in and whatever, they've been successful and they've lost 40 or 50 pounds in spin class over the past year because of the way that they've been spinning. So for people out there who are trying to figure out if their spin class is helping them from a performance or a calorie burning perspective or hurting them, how would A keep it real spin class actually be different? How would someone know if they were in the type of spin class that would be similar to the things that you talk about in your book?

In the book I list 13 movements that no one should do, especially cyclists. And again, the book is geared towards cyclists, but non cyclists. Everyone will benefit from reading the book because you will learn what not to do. It's more effective. What's going to help you, as you said, burn more calories, burn more fat. So an instructor who understands that won't be doing those moves such as super high cadence or things like hovers or squats or a lot of upper body movement or constant changing. You know, there's a lot of up, down, up, down. They think their students need to be distracted. Kind of like in aerobics class, you're constantly moving and changing. In indoor cycling, you don't have to be. You sit in the saddle, you ride the bike, you inspire the students not so much with external distractions, but more intrinsic motivation, using your music, your coaching. And then the other thing is just a real solid of the relationship between cadence and resistance. It's that relationship that gives you your desired intensity. If you want an aerobic intensity, you know, an endurance workout, then you're going to combine your cadence and resistance, whether you're on a flat or a hill, to give you an intensity of, I don't know, 75, maybe 80% of your max heart rate. If you want to work at threshold, then you're going to either raise your cadence a little against that resistance or raise your resistance a little bit on a flat road or on a hill again and ride at threshold, which would be a little higher in intensity, maybe around 85 or a little more percent of your max heart rate and then intervals higher intensity. The other thing about a class that would be adhering to the tenets of the book is that every single class is not a suffer fest. You know, it's important to push yourself. It's important for the instructor to push and motivate their students to go beyond their self perceived limitations. But it shouldn't be that way all the time. There should be balance to the workout. There should be a reason for everything you do. If you're going to sprint, I want to know the reason. A lot of classes tend to. Instructors tend to throw in sprints at every class and no one's doing them right. So why do them better? To do them correctly less often and then really get the benefit from them.

And I noticed in your book that you actually have some sample interval class profiles. It looks like you have, looks like maybe about 12 different workouts here that someone could do on their own on a spin bike. But let's say that someone is in a class and the instructor is doing some of the things, say One of the 13 mistakes that you talk about in this book. As far as proper etiquette goes during a class, what would someone do in a situation like that if they'd read this book and realized that maybe a couple things that were going on are things that they should avoid?

That's an excellent question. I talk about, you know, once you know what the proper and safe and effective. I say proper, but some other instructor might come along and say, well, I think this is proper, but I'm talking about safe, effective, using an understanding of biomechanics and the mechanics of the bike and physiology. Once you know those things, and if the instructor does something that you don't care to do because either it's in my book or it hurts you or whatever, you can sit down, you don't have to do what everyone else is doing, stay in the saddle. I do allow my students, I teach four classes a week and I'm always telling them, you don't have to do everything I'm telling you. But I'm usually talking about you don't have to go as hard as we do. One thing that would be proper etiquette or would not be proper etiquette is you don't want to start sprinting your own little interval workout when they're doing something easier or something different. Better if you have the intention to go do some interval workouts, better to do that on your own than do it in the middle of a class where they're doing something else. What you can and should do, just ride the bike. That's a good place to get your endurance training. That's a good place. If you did a couple hard workouts that week, maybe use it as your recovery ride. It's a phenomenal place to do your recovery. It's also a good time if they're doing something you don't want to do, to maybe do some threshold riding. You're going to be breathing hard, but you're not going to be stuck in wind. You know, you don't want to be really pushing the breath out when. Because everyone will hear you. So proper etiquette is just maybe take a back bike and just ride. And I even say in the book, you know, if you know cyclists, this might be the time for you just to sit in the saddle the whole time, because that's what cyclists do. When you get on a bike, you spend most of the time in the saddle. I do understand that non cyclists find that boring and it is okay to do, you know, some of the other things we do in spinning and other indoor cycling programs where we'll do jumps, runs. There's nothing wrong with that. Just. It's just better to spend more time in the saddle than out.

Yeah. And I've actually, I took a couple of the workouts that you have in this book and did them on a non spin bike in a hotel room a couple of weeks ago when I was traveling. And they're great workouts for that. I don't want to give people the impression that they have to be on one of these, on one of these fancy spin bikes to actually get the benefit out of indoor cycling. As a physiologist, that's one of the things that I've studied is how many calories are burnt during different modes. And the fact is that if you ride a bicycle correctly, you can actually burn more calories on a bike than you can while you're running. What's called your VO2 max, or the amount of oxygen that you move in and out of your body, you can get to a higher VO2 max on a bicycle versus a treadmill. So for fitness, there's no denying the benefits of indoor cycling. And what I wanted to ask you, Jennifer, was for the athletes and the triathletes and the cyclists out there in the audience who might be scoffing at the idea of doing a spin class to stay fit, do you have any examples of athletes that have used a spin class in that way or tips for a cyclist who maybe can't ride outdoors but wants to use indoor cycling?

Well, one of the beauties, I think, of indoor cycling classes is that they are motivating, they're fun. You know, as a personal trainer, one of the things we tell our clients is to set an appointment. And when you have an appointment, you put it in your appointment book, and you're more likely to keep it than if you just say, oh, I think I'm, you know, maybe this week I'll go to a spin class, or maybe this week I'll work out. The beauty of it is adherence. If you're a cyclist or a triathlete training for an event and it's winter and it's snowing outside where you live or you live in a metropolitan area, and you just can't really get out on your bike, riding a trainer can be really, really boring for a lot of people, and their adherence will fall, and therefore they're just not going to get as much out of it. Go to an indoor cycling class, set that appointment. Go. It is fun. The music's fun. It's motivating. You might have to modify it a bit to fit your own personal training plan and using some of the tips in the book. But, you know, that's the beauty of the classes. You can really use it to help you stick to your training program and therefore, you know, improve your performance. You asked if I knew any athletes who are using it to train. I do know quite a few. And just the other day, I was talking to this man who has kind of the same passion as me. He has a website called Cycling Fusion, and just to merge the two together. And he has a goal to go to the Giro d', Italia, the first four or five stages, which. Which is like doing four or five centuries in a row. He wants to go ride each one, but his plan is to use indoor cycling to train almost exclusively. And so he's, you know, going to kind of use it as a proof, you know, that. That it really can work if you. And I'm talking about on a. Like a spin bike, not a. Your bike, on a trainer.

Well, when you go to Europe for these cycling tours that you're doing, are you doing a lot of outdoor training in the States or are you using. I know you're a spin instructor, but is that what you're using to stay fit?

I live in Vail, Colorado. It's snowing right now. And I'm also a wimp, so I don't get on my bike hardly at all. I actually took a ride a few weeks ago because we went to Las Vegas and rented some bikes. But there's a good six to seven months where the only training I do is indoors on a spin bike as opposed to, you know, I do have a bike and a trainer, but I know I teach enough spink. I teach four times a week. And I'm also cross training during the winter, but I start my season, I might have a few rides under my belt. Again, I live in the mountains. So you say that probably 95 or more percent of my training is done indoor spin classes, and then I'll go to Europe and ride Alpe d' Huez or move on to or something like that. So.

And how do you. How do you do. I mean, do you notice the difference between the indoor and the outdoor cycling is your performance? How would you. How would you say your performance is?

The more it's. It's absolutely blows me away. In fact, you know, I've been spinning for 12 years, but I am still. I sing its praises constantly, and I am eternally grateful that it came along because I come out of my season ready to go. You know, I might have to suffer up a few hills, and it might be better if I jumped on my bike a little earlier in March and April, but it did. You know, we have pretty deep snow here all year. Unless I drive somewhere, you know, for two hours to get to a lower altitude, it's hard for me to do. So I am the proof that it really does work. If you do it properly, if you adhere to some of the principles that are in this book, if you're going to spin your legs super fast with high cadence and low resistance, it's not going to benefit you very much for your outdoor training. If you're going to do some fancy aerobics moves on a bike, you're not going to improve your pedal stroke, you're not going to improve your technique. But once you adhere to these principles, yes, you can come out of the winter season, into the cycling season primed and ready to go. Maybe not for a racer, an elite athlete, they're going to have to, you know, start adding more road riding or mountain bike specific workouts on their bikes, but for that base fitness, muscular endurance, strength, cardiovascular endurance, and even some of the performance improvements. As you mentioned, those high intensity intervals that I do have in the book, they work. They really do work.

Yeah. For my first three years of triathlon, all I did for most of the year was indoor cycling. I was a spin class instructor. And since that's how I was putting food on the table, that was also when I was getting some of my workouts in. And I would spin outdoors about once every two weeks and would have no problem throwing down very high intensity time trials outdoors on the bike after doing spin class. And again, we're using quite a few intervals kind of similar to what you talk about in the book. I noticed also in the book you have a handful, over a dozen actually different drills to optimize your cycling technique. And yeah, like you say, I think there's a big crossover between the indoor cycling and the outdoor cycling. I know there's a few things that we didn't get to in this interview that are in your book that I wanted to mention to the audience. The fact that there's a lot of talk in there about how to train using your heart rate as a parameter and how to set up heart rate training zones and how to do it properly. About 99% of spin instructors out there that I'm aware of actually really don't do it the correct way. We don't have much time to get into that. But case in point is that the 220 minus age really doesn't work. And then the other thing is you talk about how to, how to change up your training throughout the year or how to periodize your indoor cycling. And I liked that discussion as well. I've got the book, or I'm going to put the book, the link to your book in the show notes of this podcast. For those of you listening. It's 1999 and it's quite a bit of information. It's about 12. Well, how many chapters is it? 16, 14 chapters, about 165 pages. Took me a few hours to go through kind of on and off coming back to it. Well worth the read. I would definitely consider adding this into your exercise library, whether you're doing this for performance or for weight loss. And Jennifer, I wanted to thank you for coming on the show.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

All right. And we'll stay in touch. And once again, I'll put a link to all this stuff up in the show notes. This is Ben Greenfield and Jennifer Sage signing out podcast listeners. I have one final announcement. If you remember, I in January at the beginning of 2009, took on a limited number of individuals and put them into some of my special programs for sports performance or for fat loss and general health. And I've been posting everything I do with those people, the phone calls that I have with them, recorded video of them working out, recorded video conferences with me about nutrition and fitness and basically everything before after photos, their weight, their body fat percentage. If you want to go track the stores of those people. And the nice thing is you might find someone who has a very similar profile to you and you could use a lot of the information that I'm using with them and use it in your own training or your own nutrition plan. Check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com help and I'll put a link to that in the show notes to this podcast episode. Remember, go to itunes. Leave us a ranking if you get a chance. It's very simple. There's a link at the very bottom of the show notes that tells you how to do that. And until next week's Personal Trainer Roundtable and Fat Loss Burning Secrets seminar, this is Ben Greenfield signing out. Have a great week.