- How Often Should I Spin in A Week
- How Long Should I Ride An Exercise Bike
- How Often Should I spin/ Cycle at the Gym for Weight Loss?
- How Often Should I Cycle to Build Cardio Endurance
- How Long Should I Spin to Gain Toned Muscles?
- What Happens If You SpinFor A Whole Month?
- How Much Spinning is Too Much Spinning?
- Is it bad to do spin class every day
- The Five Unwritten Rules of Spin Classes
- Things you need for spinning
If you’re just starting out on spinning, I know you might be wondering how many times a week you should spin.
How Often Should I Spin in A Week
Generally, most of the spin class instructors recommend three times a week. Sure, spinning has no limits and you can even do it seven times a week, but that is just asking for crash and burn. At most, you would want to do no more than four. And if you’re a complete newbie just starting out, one or two is recommended, and then you can increase later.
The intensity and frequency of your spin classes are determined by your fitness goals.
Ideally, attending a spin class at least one a week or every other week will offer a decent workout.
See, spinning is a high-intensity workout, which offers numerous cardiovascular health benefits and can burn anywhere from 400-700 calories per individual sessions.
However, as we mentioned earlier, depending on your fitness goals, and more importantly, your recovery period, you may wish to attend spin classes more than a week.
Spinning is recommended, and like many other exercises, it will promote an active lifestyle and allow you to reap numerous health benefits. Know more if spin classed are good for you here.
Be it as it may, it’s important that you don’t overdo it. In any case, hitting the spinning room many times a week will serve you no good but rather result to the damage of several parts of your body, including your knees and hips. There’s even a possibility that you could develop tendinitis.
In our opinion and what we’ve gathered from the fitness experts, you would be rightly served by attending two or three classes a week.
These classes should be sufficient to provide you with a level of activity that will stimulate the muscles, improve on your stamina, lead to weight loss, and tone your body, while at the same time reducing the chances of getting injured.
And given spinning is a low impact exercise, meaning it’s easy and does not exert pressure on your joints and bones, you should have no trouble doing this workout multiple times a week.
How Long Should I Ride An Exercise Bike
We are already aware of the number of times that one should attend spinning classes. But for how long?
An hour, two, or even the whole day?
Well, according to a report by Huff Post, you’ll not need to pump the pedals of your indoor bike for a whole excruciating 90 minutes.
Generally, most of the professional spin classes have a time range of between 30-45 minutes-long sessions. That’s not too terrifying, right?
Yes, because you can leave whenever you want.
Since indoor cycling is largely about building strength and endurance, many of the professional studios recommend a 45-minute long session.
In any case, by the time you’re done with the 45-minutes, you’ll be physically exhausted and drawn.
However, if you’re just starting out, you do not have to go through the entire session, and you can start with maybe 20-30 minutes and later, build up to a full class.
While still at it, however, understand that the frequency and length of your session are also dependent on your fitness goals.
Let’s look at some of the common scenes;
How Often Should I spin/ Cycle at the Gym for Weight Loss?
Indoor cycling is an incredible way of increasing your heart rate and boosting energy expenditure. As such, it’s ideal for burning calories and subsequently leading to weight loss.
A report by the American Council on Exercise indicates that a 45-minute indoor cycling session is sufficient to burn up to 600 calories.
Now, when you compare this figure to other workouts such as aerobics (532 calories per hour), or walking (356 calories per hour), it’s not hard to see why indoor cycling is a popular way of losing weight.
But how long do I need to cycle to lose weight?
Well, you’ll determine how long you need to cycle, you’ll need to factor your weight as well as body structure.
To stay healthy, the Physical Activity Guidelines, require that the average adult incorporates 150 minutes a week, which roughly translates to 20 minutes a day.
However, if you’re to lose weight, you need to ramp up this figure to a total of say 30 minutes, or rather 180 minutes a week. You don’t need to perform the entire 30-minute session in a single sitting as you can spread out the 30 minutes throughout the day.
And as you get stronger, you can increase this figure to something like 50 minutes. However, understand that weight loss through spinning is a long term approach, and you should not expect to shed all your weight within the first week or month.
How Often Should I Cycle to Build Cardio Endurance
Strong cardio endurance is what will allow you to withstand the intense physical activities for extended periods.
The good news is, you can as well as yield the benefits of cardio endurance in your strength training.
If you’re looking to build on your cardio endurance, you can start by doing 30 minutes a day for at least three times a week.
As you increasingly build on the endurance, you can increase the length of your workouts as opposed to the days spent in spin class.
For instance, you can ramp up your session to 45-60 minutes for the three days, as opposed to ding 30 minutes for 7 days. Lengthening your training sessions is what will build on your endurance.
How Long Should I Spin to Gain Toned Muscles?
Everyone desires of a sculpted and toned body.
Though indoor cycling has a limited effect on your total muscle mass, it helps in defining the curves, especially from your waist down.
To get the desired muscle definition, you could start doing at least 30 to 45 minutes for two days a week. And if you are a beginner, try 20 minutes for two days, until you feel stronger and more confident.
Unlike other fitness goals, you should always be conservative at this, and refraining to doing too much of the cycling. This is because pushing your muscles too far will only result in burnout and set you back.
What Happens If You SpinFor A Whole Month?
Wondering what would happen if you kept a regular class spinning routine?
Well, we reached out to one of the fitness instructors and here is a brief overview of what would happen if you were a regular at a spin class for a whole month.
For starters, you would notice that your legs begin to show more of a muscular definition. The calves and thighs, in particular, would greatly benefit as they’re at the core of the movement of the peddles.
The good news is that indoor cycling results to the greater definition, without compromising the integrity of your joints, calf muscles and glutes, as it’s a low-impact exercise.
Secondly, you would start to feel your core getting much stronger, similar to what you feel the one you take a swim. When a correct posture is taken, cycling allows you to get your muscles relaxed, elongate your spine, open your chest and engage your core.
Beyond the physical changes, an exciting thing about indoor cycling is that you feel stronger, and the visible progress makes you even bolder.
Generally, indoor cycling enthusiasts feel happier and are healthier.
How Much Spinning is Too Much Spinning?
Spinning is like a cult; every time you’re in a class, you hear ‘come on guy, pedal. Keep up.” But when does this cult-fad go too far?
Undoubtedly, spinning more and for longer will result in the loss of calories and you’re going to shed weight in a really short amount of time.
However, if you’re not keen, you might actually be doing damage to your body.
While going too hard on spinning seems like an incredible idea, it can have serious effects such as:
- Development of lower back pain
- Neck strain
- Pain in the knees, hips, and ankle
- Muscle soreness
- Muscle cramping
- Tendonitis
- Exercise-induced vomiting
So, how do you ensure you’re not overdoing it?
We look at the unwritten rule of spin classes.
Is it bad to do spin class every day
Yes. even if you can do, the daily spinning season may be overkill. Instead, you can do 3-4 times along with good exercise and diet.
The Five Unwritten Rules of Spin Classes
You stand to reap tons of health benefits in a spin class provided you follow the rules. Anything away from that will result in frustrations and disappointment.
Here are a few rules to keep in mind;
- Moderate how much you spin- Spinning for 30 to minutes a week, alongside other exercises is definitely going to keep your physically fit and healthy.
- Drinks lots of water-After a dehydrating and sweaty spin class session, ensure that you rehydrate by drinking plenty of water.
- Follow the instruction: If you’re in a spin class, always follow what the instructor says. If he says pedal at 135 RPM, don’t do 90. Anything else is like doing squats when everyone else is doing pushups.
- Don’t start a class with an injury: It’s always a good idea to inform your instructor before the session begins if you have an injury or any medical condition.
- Save your conversations after the session
Things you need for spinning
Shoes
Alright so now, it’s time for gears. There are many things you need before you jump on your spin bike. One of the most undertated product is a spin shoe. These are made specifically for spinning activities. If you’re a female, I recommend you to take a look at our best spin shoes for women guide here.
Computer:
A spin bike computer is essential if you want to track your fitness level and other necessary stuff. For the new spin class enrollees, I highly recommend it as it will help you to track your fitness level. I personally prefer Strada by cateye but, you can read the entire spin bike computer article here.
We will be getting more spin accessories soon.
Now, you have it; the intensity and duration of your session will depend on what fitness goals. But, look, doing a 20-30 minutes session three times a week is a good place to start.