What's with all the hills?

Spin class today with instructor Lindsay really worked me hard.  There were 3 wind sprints, 3 weighted sprints, 3 seated climbs and 3 standing climbs.  There were also two sessions of jumps which I don't do for my own reasons. For those of you who are not familiar with the Keiser M3 indoor cycle, it has a lever on it with which you can select an actual gear, from 1 - 24.  You can't go over 24, it just locks up.  Most of the time you will be working at a minimum of 8, but in reality you can't pedal very fast at less than 12 or you will be bouncing all over the saddle which is definitely not good for you and gives you no results.  Have you heard the expression "just spinning your wheels", yep, that's about what it amounts to.  As you increase the resistance by going to a higher gear it simulates going up a hill.  If you are new to indoor cycling you many not get much over about 16.  If you have been riding for a while and are strong you may be able to push on up to 24 for a period of time.

Today Lindsay had me at 24 on all three standing climbs and on one of the seated climbs.  The last song was a standing climb ending with 2 full minutes at 24!  Whew!  Obviously your cadence is not real fast at this resistance but it really gives you a great burn.

Wind sprints were all done in the saddle.  The idea of a wind sprint is that you set your resistance at a moderate level, 14-16 and pedal at about 80 rpm.  When she says go you immediately kick up the cadence and go at 100 - 120 rpm for about 30 seconds.  Interval training on the bike.  Weighted sprints are a little different.  You spin at about 80 rpm in a little bit lower gear, then you turn up the resistance to a heavy 15-20 gear, stand up and push hard for 5 seconds to get some momentum going then sit down and try to keep that same pace until she says stop, 15-30 seconds.  Each session of sprints will generally contain 4-5 of these intervals. 

All in all a great workout.  Here is a photo of the dashboard.  1 is a backlight sensor, 2 shows your cadence, 3 alternates between your watts of power and your calories burned, 4 shows your heart rate (requires a Polar heart rate strap), 5 is your elapsed time, 6 shows you what gear you are in and 7 shows you how many miles you have traveled.