New Tools to Use Beat Even if You Can’t Hear it!!

Music is a great way to motivate riders in a Spin class. But what if you’re NOT the Go-Go’s and you don’t have the beat at all? Whether you’re a Spin instructor, aspiring instructor, or Spin enthusiast, we’ve got good news for you: lots of people can’t hear the rhythm in a song, and there are tools for you to find it!

Cat Kom is with Studio SWEAT onDemand, one of the best fitness apps out there. We’re well known for our world-famous Spinning classes, and our trainers are trained to use music as an integral part of the design of their Spin classes (plus they do the workout with you!). Cat’s got some easy tips to get the best out of your music selections and class design.

Why using the beat is so important:

• Staying in sync: You’ll find that some of your riders that do hear the beat will get irritated when the song and the RPMs don’t match up.
• Motivation: Focusing on riding to a specific cadence motivates riders, giving them a distraction so they can work harder.

How to use the beat (even if you can’t hear it):

• Drills first/Music next: Decide on your drills first, then match the music. Let’s look at an example.
  • Start with a hill climb for song 1, then transition into a fast flat before finishing with a breakaway.
  • Think about what RPMs or cadence you want for each of those drills. For example, Climb: 60-70 RPMs. Fast flat: 100 RPMs. Then the breakaway we’ll cover in the next section.
    • For the climb, we’ll want to find a song with 60-75 beats per minute (BPMs). Cat likes “Get this Party Started” by Pink. Here’s a tricky thing though – this song is published at 130 BPM (or 65*2). So in some cases, you’ll take your desired RPMs and multiply by 2 when you’re doing your song search. Trust me, this works. 
    • For the fast flat, Cat chose “Wow.” by Post Malone. This is published at 100 BPM, same as our target cadence. 

• Finding your songs: you can use a site like SongBPM.com or even an “old school” Google search to find songs that match your targeted cadence. 
  • If you’re an instructor, check out our huge library of onDEMAND classes that can give you lots of options for beat-driven classes.

When you shouldn’t ride to the beat:

• Breakaways and sprints: Remember that breakaway we added as our final drill up above? Well, if you tell your riders to ride to a specific beat, some will find that too hard or too easy. Instead, pick a song like “Centuries” by Fall Out Boy, give your instruction based on a target exertion, and when you hit that breakaway, just call “go!”.
• Tabata drills: If you are doing Tabatas like we do in Max Burn Tabatas, with 20 seconds “all out” and 10 seconds of active recovery, “all out” could mean 85 RPMs to someone and 115 to someone else. Instead, use high energy music and ignore any target RPMs.
• Other drills where your focus is on effort level and you know it can really vary based on the drill’s objectives. 

We sure hope that these tips help you use music to your advantage in your Spin class design. For more body-sculpting, fat-torching workouts where we’ve GOT the beat, check out a Free Trial over on Studio SWEAT onDemand! Download the app, or if you happen to live in southern California, visit us in our San Diego studio.